Year One: Foundation Year Courses

Course code

Course title

Credits

Priority

ENL500

Writing for Graduate Studies

3

Required

NATS510

Global Environmental Awareness

3

Required

RESR525

Research Methodology

3

Required

Subtotal

9

Basic Major Courses

Course code

Course title

Credits

Priority

NATS511

Politics and Policies in Climate Change

3

Required

MGT530

Governance, Management and leadership Dynamics

3

Required

NATS512

Environmental Policy and Planning

3

Required

PA505

Analytical Skill for Policy Analysis

3

Required

NATS513

Advance Climate Change

3

Required

Elective courses

6

Required

Subtotal

21

Year Two: Core Major Courses

Course code

Course title

Credits

Priority

NATS521

Negotiation skill in Environmental Dispute Resolution

3

Required

NATS522

Environmental Decision Making and governance

3

Required

NATS523

Economic of Environment Regulation and Development

3

Required

NATS524

Large-scale conservation: Integrating Science, Management and Policy

3

Required

NATS525

Sustainable Landuse Planning and Management

3+1

Required

Subtotal

16

Course code

Course title

Credits

Priority

NATS599

Master’s Thesis

6

Required

Subtotal

6

Total

52

Course code

Course title

Credits

Priority

NATS 516

Pollution control and Management

3

Elective

NATS 515

Environmental Health and Toxicology

3

Elective

NATS 530

Selected Topics in Environmental Studies

3

Elective

NATS 531

International Law, Conventions, and Policy

3

Elective

MGT 535

Human Resource Management

3

Elective

POL 533

Global Problem and Policies

3

Elective

NATS310

Environment and Sustainability

3

Elective

NATS311

Geographic Information System-II

3

Elective

NATS312

Environmental Ethics, Policy & Planning

3

Elective

NATS410

Environmental Governance

3

Elective

NATS411

Environmental spatial analysis

3

Elective

ECON468

Political Economy

3

Elective

POL302

International Organization

3

Elective

ECON310

Economic Development

3

Elective

NATS461

Global Environmental Politic

3

Elective

NATS462

Fundamentals of Environmental Economic and Policy

3

Elective

NATS463

Environmental Law & Management

3

Elective

NATS464

Climate Policy-Past, Present and Future

3

Elective

ECON468

Political Economy

3

Elective

NATS402

Climate Change

3

Elective

ENL 500

Writing for Graduate Studies

This course covers various aspects of Basic English grammar and writing such as tenses, conditional sentences, reported speech, articles, subject-verb agreements, punctuations, connectives, etc. The course also discusses in detail the elements of a thesis and dissertation and the different styles of a research paper.

NATS 510

Global Environmental Awareness

Attention will be focused on patterns of resource availability, human impacts on the natural resources base, and the individual perception of the world about him/her (inscape), which results in a highly discriminating way of modeling landscape to match inner vision. It aims at providing students how to critically examine their role as a participant in the societal process of impacting the environment.

RESR 525

Research Methodology

This course is meant to strengthen students’ capabilities to conduct research and to write scientific papers. Focus is given to research purpose, conceptual context, research questions, research methods, reliability/validity, and report writing. Each student will select a research topic, develop a research proposal, pilot test the research design, and present and analyze the results in a final paper not to exceed 15 pages. A mock review of student proposal will take place at the end of the course.

NATS511

Politics and Policies in Climate Change

This course provides the policy of the climate system by examining the state-of-the-art science collated by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and through regular engagement with scientists and researchers. Students will learn about the theory and practice of the politics of climate change from global negotiations through to local movements for ‘transition’ to a post-carbon society. They also consider the tangle of acronyms-such as IPCCC, UNFCCC, and CDM-that define international policy discourses on climate change.

Pre-requisite: Basic Knowledge of Climate Change or NATS405

MGT530

Governance, Management and leadership Dynamics

This is an upper level course of management and leadership which looks at how managers and leaders behave and make a decision to deal with an organizational change and a crisis situation. Students will be expected to actively participate in the debate on studies relevant to the themes such as advanced management skills, leadership dynamics and leadership styles. The subtheme on Effective Governance is also introduced for the course followers in order for them to increase an understanding about responsibility, decision making and accountability in the field of management and leadership. A combination of readings and class discussions with hands-on exercises will familiarize students with the variety of approaches one might take to management and leadership. To advance the students’ knowledge in the discipline, case studies on corporations, business firms and public institutions are incorporated into the course.

NATS512

Environmental Policy and Planning

The purpose of the course is to further develop an understanding of the elements of environmental policy at both national and sub-national levels and to explore how environmental policies are implemented at local levels. The students will also develop and apply knowledge of environmental analysis in planning and policy making. Throughout the course, we will consider topics constituting, history of environmental regulations, science behind environmental policies, efficacy of past hazard mitigation policies, challenges in implementing new ones, and how the approaches vary across scale and purposes.

PA505

Analytical Skill for Policy Analysis

This course is designed to provide students with analytical thinking of contemporary public policy and politics. It elaborates the fundamental approaches and applications for effective and efficient management in the public sector.

NATS513

Advance Climate Change

This advance climate change course introduces students to climate change as a global, intergenerational, moral and political problem. It explores the way that climate change strains major Western moral theories, understandings of individual responsibility, the place of science in society, and the ability of current democracies to deal with long-term problems and issues of global justice. During this course, students will analyze major debates over the environment, climate change, and related technologies; assessing how they are portrayed by experts, advocates, and the media; and the implications for effective scientific communication, and policymaker engagement.

Pre-requisite: Basic Knowledge of Climate Change or NATS405

NATS521

Economic of Environment Regulation and Development

This course explores the proper role of government in the regulation of the environment. It will help students to develop the tools to estimate the costs and benefits of environmental regulations. These tools will be used to evaluate a series of current policy questions, including: Should air and water pollution regulations be tightened or loosened? What are the costs of climate change in the U.S. and abroad? Is there a “Race to Bottom” in environmental regulation? What is “sustainable development”? How do environmental problems differ in developing countries? Are we running out of oil and other natural resources? Should we be more energy efficient? To gain real world experience, the course is scheduled to include a visit to the MIT cogeneration plant. We will also do an in-class   simulation of an air pollution emissions market.

NATS522

Large-scale conservation: Integrating Science, Management and Policy

Environmental sustainability and human dignity are crucial societal goals, but understanding how to achieve them large scale-geographic, temporal, and in terms of complexity-has shown to be absolutely challenging. Abundant trend data depict that many species, ecosystems, and other environmental and human systems are being stressed, overused, or degraded, therefore, undercutting the likelihood that we can reach sustainability and human rights for all. This course explicitly uses an integrative (i.e., via interdisciplinary) framework to observe the conceptual and contextual basis for environmental conservation and natural resources management; compares and contrasts their scientific, management, and policy components; explores themes of leadership, problem solving, decision making, governance, change, and learning. The course takes a problem-oriented, contextual, and multi-method approach that offers students conceptual, practical, and professional benefits.

NATS523

Sustainable Landuse Planning and Management

The course instructs student how to survey land use planning and management approaches for the major environmental perspectives: natural resources, natural systems, natural hazards, sustainable settlements, public health, and integrative management. For each of these perspectives, it examines the social-ecological systems of concern, associated planning goals and methods, and illustrative case studies; and it also demonstrates the use          of cross cutting planning tools.

NATS524

Negotiation skill in Environmental Dispute Resolution

This course develops skills in bargaining and negotiation as they can be applied to the resolution of environmental and other disputes. It will help a student prepare for and carry out a negotiation, become a more effective communicator and listener, and understand the psychological dimensions inherent in negotiation processes. Additionally, the course will examine mechanism of assisting negotiations – facilitation and mediation.

Pre-requisite: NATS521, NATS522

NATS525

Environmental Decision Making and governance

The course allows students to critically think about environmental problems and the varied social, political, cultural and economic contexts under which these problems arise. It will examine the existing a political and a historical understanding of environmental problems and sustainability through approaches and perspectives associated with the study of society and the environment. These will include environmental ethics, the social       construction of nature, population and scarcity, and political economy

Pre-requisite: NATS521, NATS522

NATS516

Pollution control and Management

This course instills students the skills to recognize pollution sources and methods of control for reducing adverse effects in the ambient environment. It focuses on fundamentals and practice of pollution prevention through decisions about resource, product life cycles, residual and emission management and sustainable engineering progress in the development of pollution prevention programs.

Pre-requisite: General knowledge of environmental pollution or NATS

NATS515

Environmental Health and Toxicology

This course examines the environment as a factor of humans’ diseases. The primary fundamental is on identifying the biological mechanism and effects of biological, chemical, and physical agents on human health. It emphasizes understanding the principles of toxicology as they apply to understanding toxicant-human interactions.

Pre-requisite: General knowledge of environmental pollution or NATS

NATS530

Selected Topics in Environmental Studies

This course will accommodate guest lectures/adjunct or regular faculty to direct a reading course and proficient analysis on selected topics focusing on emerging environmental issues

NATS531

International Law, Conventions, and Policy

This course will first review basic legal principles and systems. Students will learn about the fundamental difference of domestic and international law aspects. For understanding the core topics of international law, modern world history and international relations will be presented in the context of conflict resolution through law. The UN system will be introduced including International Courts and Tribunals after 1945. Sources, standards, and instruments of international law will be explained with a special focus on history and legal aspects of diplomacy. Students are encouraged to think and discuss critically about legal implications of domestic and international politics.

MGT535

Human Resource Management

The course uses a workshop approach to explore day-to-day management issues, with specific focus on the management of human resources. Specifically, the course will examine issues from an international perspective. Topics include job evaluation, recruitment, selection, orientation and training, compensation management, performance appraisal, labor relations, and employment standards.

POL533

Global Problem and Policies

Advances in technology, communications, and transportation have created what has been dubbed a global village, wherein countries are no longer confined to physical borders but are becoming increasingly interdependent and interlinked in the spheres of politics, culture, security, and economics. While this trend toward a global community has brought with it benefits for many segments of the world’s population, globalization has also presented serious problems for a sustainable future. Climate change and environmental degradation, breaches in security, failure to safeguard human rights, global financial and economic crises are just a few of the problems facing us today. This course seeks to offer a theoretical and practical framework for understanding the global challenges facing the world today. Using lenses from international relation, peace and conflict studies, and globalization theory, this course will look at global problems and the efforts of nation-states to work toward establishing common framework, value systems, and institutions for the promotion of global equitable human and social development.

NATS310

Environment and Sustainability

This course introduces students the conceptual and practical knowledge of sustainable development issues. Students are equipped with the concept of sustainable development and how it relates to the changing of the environment and to the development. Students become acquainted with international conventions on environment and sustainable development, and the vital policy instruments in natural resource conservation and management, particularly national resources management and conservation importance.

NATS311

Geographic Information System-II  

This course is a more advance level of NATS304 course focusing on GIS application. It will explain how GIS can assist natural resource management work throughout its powerful tools and applications. This course also introduces the relevant subjects the GIS could be used as a tool to collect, manipulate, store, and analyze geographical and spatial data for its particular purposes such as land use planning, land evaluation, forest classification, watershed management, geology, geographical economics, etc. In term of Environmental Science point of view, students will learn how to manage and analyze the spatial data for environmental management project before displaying the results through maps and reports.

NATS312

Environmental Ethics, Policy & Planning

This course is designed to furnish students with explanation of how cultures and religions influence human’s perception and attitudes towards the environment. It follows by an introduction of fundamental concepts of environment ethics. This enables students to gain understanding of contradicting views on the value of the environment, and how the entities should be preserved. It then provides key example of environmental problems along with some economic tools for dealing with those issues. The course also discusses the environmental problems in more detail. It will look into different scales (local, national, regional, and global) of the issues, and the complexity of the multi stakeholders’ participation (for example, governments, corporates, environmentalists, conservationists, and the public) in environmental management. It will conclude by providing key successful examples of policies currently being used for coping with environmental problems. Practical knowledge will also be gained through student presentation in the class and practical exercises.

Pre-requisite: NATS 302

NATS410

Environmental Governance

The course is designed to introduce students the environmental issues and global environmental concerns as complex, transboundary level, and various issues, which require sorting out at all administrative rooms. The practice for policy-making and implementation of environmental policies will also be addressed by using theories of governance. It further fundamentally highlights a set of analytical perspectives which will be the key theoretical concepts necessary for the understanding of national, regional, and global environmental changes and environmental politics.

NATS411

Environmental spatial analysis

This course provides knowledge about spatial analysis theoretical concepts and its application for environmental mapping, spatial modelling and analysis. Main topics include the relationship of GIS models to real world perception and map representation, vector and raster systems; spatial modelling; translation of problems into GIS procedures; attribute manipulation and recoding, operations including arithmetic and Boolean overlay, reclassification, proximity and neighborhood analyses; GIS data input and digitalization; as well as interpolation of surfaces from point and vector data. In addition to theoretical concepts, students will also attend practical classes, which emphasize problem-solving approach through environmental and agricultural GIS case studies.

Pre-requisite: NATS 304

ECON468

Political Economy

Students will learn the concept and function of political economy, specifically the interconnectivity of economics and politics, and how this nexus affects government behavior, or policies. Students will also learn the practical lessons and theories of the political economy that has profoundly impacted international politics and international relation. The course intends for students to grapple with the inter-relationship of the international financial institutions (IFIs) with society and the state as well as the global order.

Pre-requisite: None

POL302

International Organization 

The course focuses on those organizations that are international in nature, for example global and regional organizations like the UN and EU, and examine the role of these organizations in the international system, with special emphasis on environmental issues. Furthermore, the course also discusses the impact of such organization on the behavior of states and their roles in peace and conflict.

Pre-requisite: None

ECON310

Economic Development

This course aims to provide students a good understanding of the existing structure and system of economic development on global, regional, and national level, as well as to equip them with the conceptual factors necessary to analyze the advantages and disadvantages of various developments. It also gives students information and knowledge, including capacity development and analytical ability to evaluate economic development mainly based on classical and neo-classical approaches. It will also seek to identify the general root causes of national poverty, and define characteristics of economic problems in developing countries. In addition, the course will incorporate other sub-factors that affect economic development such as institutional reform, effective governance, infrastructure, social inequality, demographic growth and unemployment. Other specifics areas covered in this course are economic condition for development, sustainable development, and public policy encouraging economic growth, trade policy and open economy, as well as multilateral or bilateral relations amongst world economic development, environment, business, political economy, economic policy and international trade. 

NATS461

Global Environmental Politic

This course is designed to provide the students with a better understanding of global environmental issues and the politics that shaped by them. During this course, students will learn about the concepts of global environmental politic, its historical contexts and change patterns; political, social and cultural approach to environmental politics at national, regional and global contexts; UN goals on addressing climate change and environmental degradation. Current practice of international politics in response to global issues such as climate change and biodiversity protection will be illustrated through case study analysis.

NATS462

Fundamentals of Environmental Economic and Policy

This course introduces environmental economics as a sub-discipline of economics focusing on the inter-relationships between the environment and the economy. It attempts to provide a comprehensive overview of concepts of environmental economics and policy to students who are not specialists in economics. Topics covered include key concepts and methods of environmental economics; economic valuation of environmental goods and services; cost-benefit analysis for environmental management; economic perspective of non-marketable environmental goods and services; environmental policy design, assessment strategy, and decision making process; non-market valuation of environmental goods and services; and critical appreciation of the relevance of environmental economics to notions of sustainable development.

NATS463

Environmental Law & Management

This course is designed to provide the students with a comprehensive review of environmental law and policy application for environmental problem and management at national and sub-national level. The class sessions will cover the theoretical development and structure of environmental legislation, regulation, taxation, and policy in the context of ASEAN country, including Cambodia. Additionally, various case studies will be analyzed to allow the students to explore how the application and enforcement of legislation and regulation can lead to positive environmental changes in the industrial and domestic.

Pre-requisite: LAW 420

NATS464

Climate Policy-Past, Present and Future

This course will explore the issues concerned global climate change policies including the historical trends, current practices and future directions, and the factors that affect them. Students enrolled in this course will learn about general aspect of climate change problems at global, regional and national level, economic characteristics of the climate change problem, national and international policy design and current implementation issues, economic factors that shape global climate policies, and available tools necessary to evaluate climate change policies.

Pre-requisite: NATS405

NATS405

Climate Change  

This course instills student basic science of climate change, and the manifold fundamental key challenges to climate change in relation to greenhouse effect, interpretation on the projection of future climate change, impact of climate change, policy framework, especially the Cambodia climate change adaptation and strategic plans.

NATS 599

Master’s Thesis

To fulfill the graduate requirement of this master program, students are required to carry out thesis research during the final term. The thesis allows students to develop critically analytical and research skills which are transferable to various areas for a broad spectrum of career, and open a pathway for students to pursue doctoral study.