Program Overview

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BSc (Honours) Climate, Sustainability and Environmental Management

Overview

Tackle the challenges of the global climate emergency and nature’s recovery by integrating natural and social sciences with real-world learning opportunities.

How You Learn

On this course you’re able to specialise in critical areas for green careers, building your education around your ambitions. Crucially, the course is centred on applied, real-world experience, developed through employers, international partnerships, and civic activities within the local community.

Learning and assessment is focused on hands-on, skills-based learning – taking a positive, solutions-based approach to the existential challenges posed by complex connections between the natural world and society. You’ll benefit from both classroom and real-world training – preparing yourself to face a future that demands urgent action.

High-quality teaching will be delivered by academics who conduct cutting-edge research – many of whom have professional experience in the environmental sector. Their specialisms include social patterns of resource consumption, rewilding and ecology, and environmental geoscience.

You learn through:

• Outdoor learning
• Work placements
• Site visits
• Laboratory work
• Residential field trips
• Workshops
• Seminars
• IT sessions
• Lectures
• Online learning
• Debates and discussions

Key Themes

This course is designed to ignite your passion for change. With inclusion at its core, the course takes an anti-colonial, international approach to climate, sustainability and environment teaching and learning. By bringing together natural and social sciences, you’ll explore a range of interconnected themes crucial to understanding and addressing the climate and biodiversity emergencies.

Pathway themes include:

• Energy, resources and consumption
• Environmental change
• Sustainable societies
• Nature’s recovery

Within these themes, topics include the energy transition, conservation and habitat management, adaptation and mitigation for a low-carbon future, sustainable waste and resource management, social and environmental justice, and disaster risk reduction.

Course Structure

Year 1

• Building A Sustainable Future (20 credits)
  • Module aim: To develop an understanding of the pathways to a sustainable future for people and planet.
  • Indicative content: Sustainability and social justice principles, wellbeing in environmental education and advocacy, nature recovery, circular economy, energy transitions, modelling for a net zero future.
• How Did We Get Here? Climate Change From Deep Time To The Anthropocene (20 credits)
  • Module aim: This module will develop key foundational knowledge of Earth System Science, climate change through deep and historical time, the concept of the Anthropocene, and social drivers of the climate emergency.
  • Indicative content: Introduction to Earth systems science, introduction to the biosphere, lithosphere, atmosphere and hydrosphere, and energy pathways that link them, introduction to Global environmental change through deep time and historical time, introduction to the concept of the Anthropocene, introduction to the key social, political and economic drivers of climate change.
• Skills And Tools For Tackling Global Environmental Challenges (60 credits)
  • Module aim: This module will enable you to develop techniques and professional skills which build a foundation for your future studies and career.
  • Indicative content: Digital skills, GIS, analysis and presentation of data/information, research skills – qualitative and quantitative/mixed methods, employability and careers, practical skills, fieldwork, laboratory work, communication, environmental challenges, EDI awareness, reflection/personal growth/self-awareness.
• Under Pressure – The Impacts Of The Climate Crisis (20 credits)
  • Module aim: The module will introduce you to the interdependence between climate change and biodiversity decline, examining the key drivers of global biodiversity loss and how they directly and indirectly relate to climate change.
  • Indicative content: An introduction to the IPCC reports, an introduction to biodiversity crisis and the IUCN typology map, concepts of novel ecologies, conservation, restoration, and rewilding, lectures and workshops, digital skills and GIS, one-day field trips, peer-support and learning through online presentations.

Year 2

• Climate Change And Sustainability In Research And Practice (40 credits)
  • Module aim: This module aims to develop understanding of how to design, plan and co-ordinate research in a range of settings (lab and field) to tackle challenges related to the climate crisis, sustainability and environmental management.
  • Indicative content: Work integrated learning experience, research design skills, data collection in laboratory and field settings, analytical skills, statistics skills, communicating analytical findings, reflective practice.
• Fieldwork And Gis For Global Challenges (40 credits)
  • Module aim: To use fieldwork and spatial research toolkits to explore a range of global challenges in distinct geographical contexts.
  • Indicative content: Environmental hazards and impacts in distinct geographical contexts, sustainability challenges and approaches in distinct geographical contexts, social inequality and injustice in distinct geographical contexts, the intersection of human and physical geography field work for a fuller understanding of the world and real-world challenges, understanding the past and present factors/processes that shape places, GIS site context mapping and analysis, GIS in the field, fieldwork and field data gathering methods – quantitative and qualitative, collaborative research.
• Global Climate Emergency (20 credits)
  • Module aim: The Global Climate Emergency module aims to enable students to learn in a multi-disciplinary and international environment, focussed on introducing the biggest challenge in the world – the Climate Emergency.
  • Indicative content: Global environmental change and drivers of the climate crisis, the uneven impacts of the climate crisis on society, nature and the environment, an international view of social justice and human rights with respect to the Climate Emergency, introduction to international agreements and frameworks, such as the Sustainable Development Goals, relevant to the Climate Emergency, an exploration of climate solutions, mitigation and adaptation, an introduction to governments, organisations and business in driving change, the economic challenges and opportunities of climate change, driving change through activism, communication and media.
• Leave No One Behind: Just Transitions To A Sustainable Future (20 credits)
  • Module aim: To develop an understanding of the spatial distribution of climate vulnerabilities and consumption inequalities, and the initiatives to address them, in order to understand how transition projects will have the most impact in terms of environmental benefit and lifestyle change.
  • Indicative content: GIS mapping and analysis of environmental, demographic and consumption data to identify climate vulnerabilities and consumption inequalities, sustainable futures (e.g. Net Zero) modelling approaches to understand transition challenges and opportunities, exploration of policy and legislation toolkits that support a just transition to a sustainable future.

Year 3

• Placement (credits not specified)
  • Module aim: The aim of this module is to enhance students’ professional development through the completion of and reflection on meaningful work placement(s).
  • Indicative content: In this module students undertake a sandwich placement (min 24 weeks / min 21 hours per week) which is integrated, assessed and aligned to their studies.
• Independent Discovery And Communication (60 credits)
  • Module aim: This module aims to enable you to gain further research skills with hands-on training in a range of data collection and analytical methods in different environmental areas.
  • Indicative content: Research design, project management, ethics and risk assessment, employability skills, skills relevant to the 4 course pathways of Environmental Change, Energy, Waste and Resources, Nature Recovery, and Sustainable Societies, laboratory skills, field skills, statistical skills, digital skills and GIS, analysis and presentation of data, critical evaluation skills, communicating to specific audiences, EDI awareness and global perspectives, reflection/personal development.
• Living Well In A Low Carbon Future (20 credits)
  • Module aim: This module aims to develop a deep understanding of approaches to developing sustainable societies of the future and the opportunities, challenges and transitional processes involved in changing the way we live.
  • Indicative content: Energy demand reduction, equity and justice in transition, renewable and clean energy, greening of industry, carbon capture use and storage, circular economy, food systems, spatial planning, nature based solutions, transportation, wellbeing, case study-based learning.
• Living With Hazard And Risk (20 credits)
  • Module aim: This module aims to provide a holistic and global understanding of the interconnected natural and social elements of Disaster Risk Reduction, by examining a range of climate-related, geophysical, hydrological, and industrial hazards.
  • Indicative content: Key concepts in Disaster Risk Reduction, the complex social, political, economic and geographic factors impacting dynamic vulnerability, multi-hazard scenario analysis, governance and policy relating to Disaster Risk Reduction, ethics, colonialism and inequity in management of environmental hazards, extreme weather and meteorological hazards, drought, wildfires and climatological hazards, flood and landslide hazards, seismic and volcanic hazards, environmental pollution and industrial hazards, hazard analysis approaches; monitoring, modelling, data and geospatial information, uncertainty, risk evaluation and management, institutional and individual perceptions, preparedness and response, adaptation, mitigation and resilience to hazard and risk.
• Nature Recovery And Sustainable Resource Management (20 credits)
  • Module aim: This module aims to provide in depth knowledge and understanding of different approaches to nature recovery and natural resource management.
  • Indicative content: Embedding survey and analysis into evidence-based decision making, approaches to management of natural resources including land and water management, land-use policy and decision-making approaches, for example; scenario planning, Environmental Impact Assessments (EIAs) and Biodiversity Net Gain (BNGs) assessments, approaches to recovering nature; for example, concepts such as ecological restoration, conservation, rewilding, exploring sustainable livelihoods and environments through global cultural perspectives, examining different methods of valuing nature and how they change over space and time.

Entry Requirements

• UCAS points: 112-120
• GCSE: English Language or English Literature at grade C or 4, Mathematics at grade C or 4
• GCSE equivalents: Level 2 Literacy or Functional Skills Level 2 English, Level 2 Numeracy or Functional Skills Level 2 Maths
• Access course: in a relevant subject from an Open College Network accredited course with 45 credits at level 3 and 15 credits at level 2
• IELTS: 6.0 with a minimum of 5.5 in all skills, or equivalent

Fees and Funding

• Home students: £9,535 per year (capped at a maximum of 20% of this during your placement year)
• International students: £18,000 per year (capped at a maximum of 20% of this during your placement year)

Future Careers

This course prepares you for a career in:

• Sustainability consultancy
• Environmental consultancy
• Ecology and biodiversity consultancy
• Climate change governance and policy
• Energy and resources
• Waste management
• Green infrastructure
• Environmental science
• Geospatial modelling
• Wildlife conservation
• Academic research and think tanks
• Teaching

You can also work in climate and sustainability roles in many other sectors, including law, business, finance and management.

Equipment and Facilities

We’ve invested over £100m in new facilities to help you study how and when you want. This means 24-hour libraries and study spaces designed by our students.

On this course you will have access to:

• A wide range of field equipment for sampling, surveying, measuring and monitoring the natural environment
• Cutting-edge laboratories for analysing environmental materials and contaminants
• An engineering laboratory with a hydraulic flume
• Various Geographical Information Systems (GIS) software packages and technology
• A bespoke resources room for group work, IT work and quiet study

Where Will I Study?

You study at City Campus through a structured mix of lectures, seminars and practical sessions as well as access to digital and online resources to support your learning.

City Campus is located in the heart of Sheffield, within minutes of the train and bus stations.

Adsetts Library

Adsetts Library is located on our City Campus. It's open 24 hours a day, every day.