Environmental 

Environmental systems and societies (ESS) is a dynamic interdisciplinary subject that takes 21st-century challenges and socio-environmental real-world issues and looks at them through the lens of human societies and the interrelationships of the natural world: biosphere, atmosphere, hydrosphere and lithosphere. Students explore how these relationships change over time and space, consider the potential adaptations and mitigations that human societies and the natural world may currently be undergoing, and how these could impact the future and our place in it.

At DISV, the ESS syllabus is split between the two years of DP, with half the course content taught in the first year, and the other half in the second year. The key concepts taught to students are 'sustainability', 'systems' and 'perspectives' and will be used to make connections within all topics taught as well as other topics (global politics, psychology, economics).

Timeline:

Topics covered in Year 1: Foundations, Ecology, Biodiversity and conservation, Water

Topics covered in Year 2: Land, Atmosphere and climate change, Natural resources, Human populations and urban systems

Resources and necessary equipment:

Students will be working with the Pearson 3rd Edition book for ESS, InThinking online resources, and class presentations. Student will be given an exercise book. They are required to bring calculators, pens, rulers, and pencils to class.  

Faculty's assessment system and reporting:

Throughout the course a number of summative assessments are given, which are closely modelled on the exam papers mentioned above, including pasted exam questions. The grade reports are calculated based on an average of these summative assessments. 

Formative assessments are intended to support students in acquiring the skills and knowledge needed to be successful on summative assessments and these can take a variety of forms from research, presentations or homework. 

Inquiry-based teaching:

Students are introduced to various topics and environmental issues, and throughout the course will be encouraged to conduct relevant research to build up case studies/examples on the topic/issue (e.g. a topic of energy security would lead students to develop case studies on countries that have high energy security and low energy security), which will be used for their essays in Section B of Paper 2. Students will, through investigation, evaluate various environmental management practices, to determine the best strategies. 

Connections to International Mindedness:

The ESS course emphasizes the importance of making local to global connections to develop an understanding of sustainability issues. This has remained strong in environmental education and is also reflected in the history of the environmental movement, with its initial focus on the local leading to a realization of the significance of the global context. During the 1940s–1960s, most environmental concerns were in relation to local and national interests, agricultural sufficiency and local pollution. By the 1970s– 1980s, this had moved to recognizing the need to manage regional issues, such as acid rain, and saw the start of global concerns around the ozone layer and climate change. By the 1990s, the essential global context of numerous environmental concerns had been more clearly recognized. Since the 21st century, the concept of the Anthropocene has gained growing acceptance as the term for the current epoch; essentially, there is the realization that the scale of global impact is no longer under the regulation of nature alone. In this century, the global environment is under new management: humanity.