BSc Environmental Management and Sustainability

Compulsory modules

Global Sustainability: Challenges and Prospects 

Explore key ecological and eco-social challenges of our time, their causes, proposals to address them and associated debate across several disciplines.  

Ecology and Environmental Management

Learn about the complexity of managing a range of local environments and receive an introduction to the application of land designations and the changing nature of landscape management.

International Development: Global and Local Issues

Identify the challenges that confront societies, governments, and households. You’ll examine how researchers seek to understand these challenges to enhance welfare, global sustainability, and protection of rural livelihoods. 

Key Skills for Environmental Management and Sustainability

Gain fundamental knowledge of the different research approaches used in the scientific and socio-economic disciplines. You’ll develop your study skills, including literature-based research, digital literacy, data manipulation and analysis, scientific writing and presentation, along with transferable skills such as teamwork, project planning, time management, risk assessment and ethics. 

Optional modules

The Fundamentals of Management and Marketing

Learn concepts of marketing and management and critically relate them to contemporary practices. You’ll explore traditional and contemporary approaches to marketing and management, and understand the issues arising in this field. You'll also familiarise yourself with managerial techniques used to plan and operate as a business.

Fundamentals of Ecology

Learn about ecological concepts and how they are applied in both the field and laboratory. Explore how species interact with each other and their environment, how biodiversity assembles in communities and forms entire ecosystems and biomes, and how human activities are influencing many ecological processes.

Approaches to Human Geography

Examine 'everyday' matters from disciplinary and sub-disciplinary themes, which will enable you to cultivate a geographer's mindset, actively honing your skills and perspectives in Human Geography through guided instruction and hands-on learning.

Restless Planet

Learn about the fundamental processes in the Earth System, encompassing the lithosphere, hydrosphere, atmosphere, and biosphere. Discover the interactions between the spheres, particularly the Earth System's integrated nature and how alterations to key biogeochemical cycles, can have far-reaching impacts across the globe.

Landscapes and Resources

Discover the ways that spatial structure and renewable resources characterise natural landscapes, and how resilient these resources are in the face of global climate change. 

These are the modules that we currently offer for 2026/27 entry. They may be subject to change as we regularly review our module offerings to ensure they’re informed by the latest research and teaching methods.

Please note that the University cannot guarantee that all optional modules will be available to all students who may wish to take them.

You can also register your details with us to receive information about your course of interest and study and life at the University of Reading.

Compulsory modules

Data Skills

Understand the principles of experimental design, data management, visualisation, and common statistical methods for analysing datasets. You’ll learn to collect, process, analyse, and interpret data and communicate the results.

Environmental Management and Sustainability in Practice 

Gain exposure to environmental management and sustainability careers through practical experience and networking. Develop essential career planning skills while engaging with employers and organisations in the sector.

Tools for Environmental Management and Sustainability  

Acquire skills in gathering, interpreting, and presenting information on natural and human-modified environments. You’ll learn through practical exercises on monitoring and sampling strategies for biodiversity, habitat mapping and condition assessment, Geographic Information Systems, Environmental Impact Assessment, Strategic Environmental Assessment, biodiversity offsetting, and Biodiversity Net Gain.

Optional modules

Farmland and Woodland: Ecology and Management

Discover the ecology and management of agricultural and forestry land, including various habitats like woodland, grassland, and heathland. You'll examine the historical development of human land use and current factors influencing productivity and biodiversity and learn management planning and complex decision-making concepts necessary for managing sites.     

Earth Processes and Hazards

Discover the dynamic processes and resultant hazards that stem from the tectonic and geomorphological evolution of the Earth, including volcanoes, earthquakes, tsunamis, weather events and landslides, and the impact these can have on the natural world and human societies.

Environment and Development

Investigate the two-way relationship between environment and development by exploring the theoretical frameworks such as political ecology and post-colonial theory to assess how societal values and power dynamics drive environmental management approaches and sustain uneven and unequal development.

Energy Resources

Explore past, present, and future social, environmental, health and political aspects of energy resource use. Gain a holistic consideration of the role of different energy resources in the national, international, and global energy mix. 

Applied Marketing and Management

Develop a clear understanding of marketing as a managerial orientation applicable to all organisational types. You’ll explore how marketing activities at strategic, tactical, and operational level are influenced by specific marketplace environment, and learn to specify management problems, select appropriate tools and techniques, and apply them to provide solutions to business challenges. 

Water in the Earth System

Get an introductory understanding of the connections between the abiotic and biotic components of the atmosphere, hydrosphere, lithosphere, pedosphere, and biosphere. Where relevant these relationships will be considered within the Drivers, Pressures, State, Impact, Response (DPSIR) Framework.

Climate and Environmental Change

Explore the evolution of atmosphere and climate, alongside ecosystem dynamics. Examine the main processes of climate formation of energy balance and atmospheric circulation and discuss natural climatic variability and climate change.

Conservation Science in Practice 

Gain knowledge of conservation science and its practice. You’ll learn about inherent conflicts and challenges associated with nature conservation, develop effective tools and methods to accept and address these challenges, and understand how data-driven conclusions can help to generate conservation solutions.

Social Responsibility in Action

Draw on knowledge and experience gained during your first year and apply it to a contemporary management problem or issue related to the social purpose of the businesses and 17 UN Sustainable Development Goals. The practical actions are developed in conjunction with specific organisations and address a topic relevant to Principles for Responsible Management Education (PRME).

Living Together: Social and Cultural Geographies

Explore social and cultural issues and concepts, such as analysing census data, iconography and participatory methods to understand local and international geographies. Key topics include identity, inequalities, landscape and consumption.

Marine Biology and Conservation

Explore marine habitats, environments and associated biodiversity present within the biosphere and gain an overview of the physical and chemical mechanisms underpinning oceanic processes. You’ll learn key aspects of biology, ecology and environmental physiology of marine organisms, study the ecological impacts of human activities and discover the threats to marine and coastal ecosystems. 

These are the modules that we currently offer for 2026/27 entry. They may be subject to change as we regularly review our module offerings to ensure they’re informed by the latest research and teaching methods.

Please note that the University cannot guarantee that all optional modules will be available to all students who may wish to take them.

You can also register your details with us to receive information about your course of interest and study and life at the University of Reading.

Compulsory modules

Independent Research Project 

Build on the skills, knowledge and experience you’ve gained throughout your studies as you embark on your own research project. You’ll identify a suitable topic, develop a hypothesis, and conduct your project using your critical skillset.

Transitions to Sustainability

Learn about the latest professional practice in the Environmental Management and Sustainability sector. You'll examine the motivations for businesses and organisations to improve their sustainability performance, the tools and processes available to achieve this and how transitions towards more sustainable practices are achieved.

Optional modules

Climate Change and the Geographies of Responsibility

Analyse and discuss the role of businesses in mitigating climate change. Build practical skills relating to corporate carbon accounting and disclosure. Critically engage with corporate climate activities, including carbon reduction claims, science-based climate targets and carbon offsets.

Climate Smart Agriculture

Develop your knowledge of climate change and agriculture and your ability to use and critique research methods. You’ll gain a detailed understanding of the complexity of tackling worldwide issues, all within the framework of climate-smart agriculture.

Digital for Development: Transformation or Tyranny?

Assess the successes and failures of digitalisation for development within different contexts and debate the future implications of AI for development within the “Global South”. You'll critically assess the changes in power dynamics brought about by the use of digital information and communications technologies and social media platforms. You'll assess the implications in terms of political stability, governance and security.

Ecosystem Services and Nature-based Solutions

Gain a comprehensive understanding of ecosystem services and the role of nature-based solutions in promoting their delivery. You'll explore ecosystem ecology and the relationship between biodiversity and ecosystem function and understand the benefits of ecosystem services to human well-being.

Power and Development

Learn how to analyse power structures, identify and investigate sources of power such as institutions, influence, knowledge, and agency, and advocate for social change. The tools of power analysis will help you understand the agendas and functioning of global institutions; the role of the state in development (including corruption, lobbying and vested interests); and the power of civil society.

Environmental Pollution

Develop an understanding of sources of key environmental contaminants and the mechanisms by which contaminants behave in the environment and cause toxicity to biological organisms. You’ll learn to apply contemporary methods to assess the effects of contaminants in the environment and interpret environmental data.

Consumption, Politics and Space

Understand the theoretical and empirical links between geography, consumption, media, and the politics of sustainability and sustainable behaviour change, develop a critical understanding of cultural and geographical politics, and explore practical and real-world responses to these issues and concerns. You’ll gain skills to critically analyse academic, media, activist discourses, and visual media. 

Ecology of Urban Areas

Study the explosion of urban life and the negative impacts it has had on global flora and fauna. You’ll consider the impact urban life has had on different species – from those that have not survived it, to those that have exploited them and actively thrive in these novel habitats. 

Soil Ecology, Environment and Sustainability

Gain a comprehensive understanding of the diversity of organisms living in soil, their adaptations to the soil habitat and their impact on the wider environment. You’ll also gain practical experience of isolating, culturing and observing soil organisms, as well as methods for measuring biologically mediated biochemical processes.

Water Resources

Engage with past, current and future water quality problems and critically examine their impact, particularly on public health, as well as effectiveness of water resource management strategies and legislation. 

These are the modules that we currently offer for 2026/27 entry. They may be subject to change as we regularly review our module offerings to ensure they’re informed by the latest research and teaching methods.

Please note that the University cannot guarantee that all optional modules will be available to all students who may wish to take them.

You can also register your details with us to receive information about your course of interest and study and life at the University of Reading.