Essay Objectives and Marks Allocation

Write an essay of 1,500 words (at least eight pages) that focuses on a chosen and agreed-upon topic examining the relationship between people (or society) and their environment/resources.

The focus of the report may be at the local, regional, continental, or global scale.

Possible topics include:

Problems and potentials with respect to maintaining the quality or availability of a particular resource (water, forests, wildlife, ecosystems, open space, etc.)

Maintenance/loss of biodiversity

Land-use planning in an urban or non-urban context

Changing relationships between culture and environment

The differing views of sustainable development/sustainability between the LDCs and the HDCs

Differing worldviews such as traditional knowledge and Western-based "scientific" knowledge, and how these worldviews reflect different relationships between people and environment

Any topic of interest to you and which you can discuss with, and gain approval from, your Open Learning Faculty Member

For example, if you selected "loss of biodiversity" as an essay topic, you would need to consider developing a thesis statement about this topic that reflected the course's theme of humans and their environment.

One such topic could be, "habitat loss threatens biodiversity."

You must clearly identify a thesis statement in your essay; if you would like, once you pick your topic you may verify the appropriateness of your thesis question or statement with your Open Learning Faculty Member.

From our example above, an appropriate thesis statement would be:

"The destruction of habitat from urban expansion will eventually lead to an irreversible loss of biodiversity. As a society, we need to decide what is more important: new subdivisions and shopping malls, or preservation of natural ecosystems?"