Trees and Water: Mainstreaming Environment in the Graduate Policy Analysis Curriculum

Abstract

In this article, we describe and evaluate a teaching project embedded within a core policy analysis course that allows students to engage with a major public policy issue—in our case, environmental policy—without a corresponding cost in terms of reducing curricular space for developing general policy analysis skills. We think that a win-win arrangement is attainable: a fairly intense immersion into a key thematic area of public policy and a correspondingly more vivid, realistic, and integrated treatment of general policy analysis. The project has the potential to allow teachers and students to explore in depth and develop the skills and appreciation required for practice in any major policy area, even in tightly packed graduate policy programs.

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Sunil Tankha

Sunil Tankha teaches public policy and public sector management at the International Institute of Social Studies, The Hague, a unit of Erasmus University Rotterdam, in Holland. His research work spans a broad range of fields, including energy and environment, economic development and infrastructure, and public sector and governance reforms. He has worked on these issues in several countries in the Americas, Asia, and Africa, in particular Brazil and India. He holds a PhD in Economic Development from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Communication regarding this paper can be sent to him via e-mail at [email protected].

Des Gasper

Des Gasper teaches public policy analysis and discourse analysis at the International Institute of Social Studies, The Hague, a unit of Erasmus University Rotterdam, in Holland. New publications: Development Ethics, with A. Lera St. Clair (Ashgate, 2010); Transnational Migration and Human Security, with T.-D. Truong (Springer, 2010).