Accessibility statement

Environmental issues pose challenges. What are the biophysical and social causes of environmental change? What is an environmental issue, and why are they often controversial and difficult to resolve? How can we make a difference? You'll address all of these questions as you explore four key global environmental concerns – life, water, carbon, and food – through a rich and interactive set of study materials. As you do so, you'll develop a distinctive way of thinking about environments and environmental issues that draw on the insights of both natural and social sciences to be intellectually innovative and practically relevant.

The module is organised into six blocks, each of which combine print chapters with online textual, audio-visual, and computer-based interactive materials to offer a highly varied but tightly integrated learning experience. This multimedia approach aims to provide you with both a feeling for and understanding of global environmental issues as they take effect in particular locations and situations. Blocks 2 to 5 form the core of the module, each one focusing on a key global environmental challenge.

Block 1: Introduction

This begins by introducing you to a key focus of the module – the relationship between the Earth as a lively place, full of dynamism and change, and Earth as a place to live, a place we make home. Through exploring issues including climate change, emerging infectious diseases, bio-char production, and global land grab, you’ll discover the importance of an interdisciplinary approach to environmental issues that can do justice to both the biophysical and social causes of environmental change.

Block 2: Life

Next, you’ll explore biological life in its various dimensions, especially the contemporary challenge of how human lifestyles can place biological life at risk. Using the Deepwater Horizon oil spill as an example, you’ll investigate the relationship between biodiversity and economic development. In addition, you will consider whether the role of human activities as a driver of a sixth mass extinction supports the proposal that we have entered a new geological epoch known as the Anthropocene.

Block 3: Water

You’ll consider the challenge of ‘water security’ in this block and how what appears as a reasonably achievable goal is enormously complicated in practice, often leading to controversy and conflict. Using case studies of water scarcity, water pollution, sanitation, and watercourse management, you’ll see that making the right amount of water available at the right quality in the right place at the right time is a massive – and increasingly difficult – achievement.

Block 4: Carbon

The fourth block focuses on the challenge of carbon and how it changes form and location over a variety of timescales from the geological to the everyday. You'll learn how and why much of the carbon that formed coal or oil millions of years ago is now being consumed as fossil fuels; about the contribution this makes to global climate change; and about the resulting push both for low-carbon technologies and research into planetary technical fixes like geoengineering.

Block 5: Food

This block addresses the challenge that food poses as a global environmental issue. Now that agriculture has become a key driver of environmental change, it is becoming increasingly clear that different ways of providing food have different environmental consequences. Using examples from across the food chain, you’ll explore the implications of this and why food has become such a key focus for those attempting to shift our production and consumption patterns in more sustainable directions.

Block 6: Consolidation

The final block consolidates the module by demonstrating that the knowledge you'll have acquired, the skills you'll have practised, and the ideas you'll have traced throughout the module all add up to what we call an ‘environmental imagination’. This is a way of thinking about environmental issues that will serve you well, not only in any further studies but in your broader life. Using case studies of ecological restoration, climate-induced migration, and the Transition movement, your environmental imagination is put to work in analysing some of the key ways that people around the world are striving to create better environmental futures.

This an OU level 2 module, and you need to have a good knowledge of the subject area, obtained either through OU level 1 study or by doing equivalent work at another university.

Our key introductory OU level 1 modules Environment: journeys through a changing world (U116) or Introducing the social sciences (DD102) would be ideal preparation.

You’ll get help and support from an assigned tutor throughout your module.

They’ll help by:

Online tutorials run throughout the module. While they’re not compulsory, we strongly encourage you to participate. Where possible, we’ll make recordings available.

Course work includes:

You'll be provided with module books and have access to the module website, which includes:

Some of the web activities in this module use the HTML 5 system. In order to display this you will need Internet Explorer 9, the latest version of Firefox or Chrome or other modern HTML 5 compliant browser. If you have a computer with a Windows XP operating system, you will need to install Firefox or Chrome or other modern HTML 5 compliant browser for these activities, as you cannot use Internet Explorer 8.

The OU strives to make all aspects of study accessible to everyone, and this Accessibility Statement outlines what studying DST206 involves. You should use this information to inform your study preparations and any discussions with us about how we can meet your needs.

To find out more about what kind of support and adjustments might be available, contact us or visit our Disability support website.

Environment: sharing a dynamic planet starts once a year – in October.

This page describes the module that will start in October 2025, when we expect it to start for the last time.

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