Sustainable Development BA/BSc(Hons)

Why choose this course?

If you are keen to help improve the future for our planet and its people, this course is ideal. You will study people and societies and their interactions with our environment and resources. As well as evaluating current practice, you will explore alternative solutions to development so that good living standards are achieved without damaging the Earth's environment. 

Watch a video to find out why you should study at Kingston University:

What will you study?

Early stages of the course provide a broad coverage of the Earth's environments, people and cultures. You then gain a more in-depth understanding of environmental principles and how they apply to environmental management, studying political and cultural influences on development processes. In the final year you can choose modules in areas such as policy, economics, development, conservation and resource management. 

Please note that this is an indicative list of modules and is not intended as a definitive list. Those listed here may also be a mixture of core and optional modules.

Year 1

• Sustainable Development: Issues and Concepts
• Understanding the Environment
• Business Management
• Digital Earth
• Investigating the Earth and Environment
• Globalising Worlds
• Sustainability in Practice
• Hazards, Resources and Society

Year 2

• Culture, Place and Society
• Political Economy of Globalisation
• Ecology: Principles and Practice
• Planning and the Environment
• Environmental Management: Tools and Methodologies
• Environmental Pollution
• Hydrology
• Geodemographic Analysis

• Geodemographic Analysis

  This module introduces demographic analysis, before examining multivariate statistical techniques used in market analysis, lifestyle and area classification systems.

  You will produce a case study of a local authority in the UK, applying these methods. We put particular focus on investigating problems of analysing demographic and socio-economic change over time.

  
   
• Marine and Freshwater Ecology
• Design and Management of Projects
• Collection and Analysis of Environmental Data
• Environmental Economics

Year 3

• Achieving a Sustainable Future
• Global Environments: Strategic Assessment (Developing World Field Study) OR
• Sustainability at Work
• Sustainable Cities
• Research Project
• Water Resource Management
• Ecology and Conservation in Temperate Ecosystems
• Restructuring the British Countryside
• Crime Pattern and the Environment

• Crime Pattern and the Environment

  This module covers the application of Geographical Information Systems to the analysis of crime and its geo-expression.

  
   
• Geographical Analysis and Modelling

• Geographical Analysis and Modelling

  This module develops your skills in spatial data analysis and modelling. You also explore:

  • the application of techniques using GIS;
  • methods for the analysis of point patterns, spatially continuous data, area based data, spatial interaction data and networks;
  • issues of data visualisation, exploration and modelling;
  • the philosophy of an applied GIS approach; and
  • uncertainty and limitations
  
   
• Conservation in Aquatic Environments
• Managing Environmental Change
• Development Geography: Asian and African Realties