Overview
Historical overview of environmental impacts and human expectations from the first settlement of Aotearoa to the present.
ENVI 211 examines the environmental history of New Zealand, with specific focus on the interaction between humans and their environment that has occurred since the arrival of humans about 800 years ago. As one of the last land masses to be settled by humans, and with endemic flora and fauna long isolated from evolutionary trajectories elsewhere, Aotearoa New Zealand is as an outstanding "laboratory" of environmental interaction. With two main pulses of settlement, it offers unique opportunities for comparative studies of human modifications of the environment and human responses to such change. Here we embed both colonial and indigenous perspectives of the environment, and how our shifting gaze and values of "nature" have changed over time, and how these ideals are codified in law. We are concerned with understanding human attitudes to their natural surroundings, human modifications of this environment, and human responses to these changes.
About this paper
| Paper title | Environmental History of New Zealand |
|---|---|
| Subject | Environment and Society |
| EFTS | 0.15 |
| Points | 18 points |
| Teaching period | Semester 2 (On campus) |
| Domestic Tuition Fees ( NZD ) | $1,040.70 |
| International Tuition Fees | Tuition Fees for international students are elsewhere on this website. |
- Prerequisite
- 54 points
- Schedule C
- Arts and Music, Science
- Contact
- Teaching staff
Course Co-ordinator: To be advised
- Paper Structure
This paper comprises of two 50-minute lectures each week supported by one 50-minute tutorial every other week.
- Textbooks
Recommended: Eric Pawson and Tom Brooking (eds), Making a New Land: Environmental Histories of New Zealand, New Edition (Dunedin: Otago University Press, 2013).
In addition, course materials will be made available electronically.- Graduate Attributes Emphasised
- Global perspective, Interdisciplinary perspective, Scholarship, Communication, Critical thinking.
View more information about Otago's graduate attributes. - Learning Outcomes
By the end of the paper students will:
- Have learnt about how perspectives of nature or the "natural world" and the place of humans have transformed over time
- Have learnt about the complex reasons for the extent and speed of the transformation of Aotearoa New Zealand through the decline of indigenous forests, wetlands, and tussock grasslands and the remaking of the landscape to and industrialised "ideal" embedded by English colonialism
- Critically reflect on how environmental legacies persist in contemporary environmental management in Aotearoa New Zealand
- Assessment details
Assessment includes short exercises related to tutorials and a research essay.