BSc Environmental Management and Sustainability with Foundation

Our BSc Environmental Management and Sustainability with Foundation degree explores the scientific and socio-economic issues behind sound environmental management, while developing your professional, transferable and scientific skills.

Study at the UK’s leading university for environmental and ethical performance (the 澳门六合彩开奖记录 is ranked 1st in the People and Planet University League, 2023/24).

This four-year programme includes a foundation year that leads directly into our three-year BSc Environmental Management and Sustainability course.

Taught by the Department of Sustainable Land Management, our BSc Environmental Management and Sustainability with Foundation degree enables you to build on your interests and prepare for a career in this area.

Land is facing increasing conflicts related to its management for different purposes. These include food production, renewable energy, protection of soil and water resources, nature conservation, urban development and the provision of space for recreation and tourism.

During this degree you will learn about the technical, scientific and socioeconomic aspects of environmental issues, and develop methods for tackling them. The course focuses on the needs of employers and you will develop your professional skills alongside your scientific knowledge, using exercises such as mock consultancies. Additionally, you will carry out a short industry placement and have the chance to study abroad.

You'll be able to tailor this course to suit your specific interests by selecting from a range of optional modules. You will be taught by staff from a number of Schools and Departments across the University, covering subjects such as human geography, environmental science, ecology, economics and international development.

The 澳门六合彩开奖记录 has been at the forefront of research into sustainability and the environment for many decades. You'll be based in a school that is the highest placed UK University for Agriculture and Forestry at 22nd in the world (QS World Rankings by Subject, Agriculture and Forestry, 2024).

Our BSc Environmental Management and Sustainability course shares some modules with environmental and ecology courses offered by other departments and you will be able to tap into their specialist knowledge.

Fieldwork

There is a strong practical element to the course and many modules offer frequent field trips. The 澳门六合彩开奖记录's award-winning campus is home to over 1,000 different animal species and is extremely useful for learning fieldwork skills. It offers multiple habitats for study, including meadows, lakes and semi-urban areas, and allows you to step straight from the classroom to the field.

The University's large farms provide access to farmland and woodland environments, as well as the River Thames. The course includes two compulsory residential field courses, which will give you exposure to the management of sustainability in coastal and urban environments in the UK and Netherlands. During the final year you will carry out an independent project, and will normally be embedded within one of the School's research groups, working alongside leading academics. Our specialist areas include land management, biodiversity conservation, climate change and food security.

Placement

You will carry out a one-week mini placement year in an organisation related to environmental management or sustainability. This will provide you with valuable experience of professional work, as well as enabling you to develop your professional, research, survey, data analysis and presentation skills.

Alternatively, you can choose our four-year BSc Environmental Management and Sustainability with Placement Year course, which incorporates a year-long professional placement at an environment based organisation.

The Department has a dedicated member of staff in charge of placements, who can provide you with advice and support.

Study abroad

As part of your degree, you could choose to spend two weeks, a semester, or an academic year abroad.

We have links with a number of universities around the world, and our students have recently studied in countries such as Sweden, the Netherlands, Australia and the USA.

Overview

Study at the UK’s leading university for environmental and ethical performance (the 澳门六合彩开奖记录 is ranked 1st in the People and Planet University League, 2023/24).

This four-year programme includes a foundation year that leads directly into our three-year BSc Environmental Management and Sustainability course.

Fieldwork

Placement

The Department has a dedicated member of staff in charge of placements, who can provide you with advice and support.

Study abroad

As part of your degree, you could choose to spend two weeks, a semester, or an academic year abroad.

We have links with a number of universities around the world, and our students have recently studied in countries such as Sweden, the Netherlands, Australia and the USA.

Entry requirements A Level See entry requirements

Select Reading as your firm choice on UCAS and we'll guarantee you a place even if you don't quite meet your offer. For details, see our firm choice scheme.

Our typical offers are expressed in terms of A level, BTEC and International Baccalaureate requirements. However, we also accept many other qualifications.

Typical offer

BBB - for applicants without an accepted subject.

CCD - for applicants withan accepted subject.

Accepted subjects: Biology, Business, Chemistry, Economics, Environmental Science/Studies, Geography, Geology, Law, Maths, Physics, Politics, Psychology, Sociology.

International Baccalaureate

30 - for applicants without an accepted subject at higher level.

24 - for applicants with an accepted subject at higher level.

If you would like to receive personalised advice on your eligibility for our Foundation courses, please ask us a question.

BTEC Extended Diploma

DMM

GCSE

Grade 4 (C) in Science if not studying sciences at A level

Extended Project Qualification

In recognition of the excellent preparation that the Extended Project Qualification (EPQ) provides to students for University study, we can now include achievement in the EPQ as part of a formal offer.

English language requirements

IELTS 6.5, with no component below 5.5

Further requirements

If you are an international student planning to apply for one of our degree programmes, you may need to take a foundation course or pre-sessional course if you do not have qualifications that are equivalent to British A levels or if you need to improve your English language level.

Compulsory modules

Mathematics Foundation

Develop competence in algebraic, graphical, numerical, and statistical techniques to support further scientific study. You’ll learn from examples of using mathematics to describe and analyse more complex scientific relationships and have an opportunity to apply this knowledge to a large data set and practice your skills.

Foundation in Academic Skills

Acquire essential academic skills for success in the Foundation Year and Undergraduate studies. You’ll learn from a combination of guided online tasks and practical workshops.

Ecology and the Environment

Explore the key concepts and processes associated with the physical and living environment and their interaction within ecosystems. You’ll also undertake a field project and develop critical and scientific skills.

Environmental Sustainability

Discover the causes and consequences of contemporary global sustainability issues. You’ll critique and evaluate the theoretical and actual methods used to minimise the harm caused by anthropogenic activities and recognise the interconnected nature of environmental problems.

Optional modules

Foundation Statistics and Data Science

Learn Statistics and Data Science to develop theoretical, practical, and numerical skills to succeed in your future undergraduate studies. You’ll learn basic statistical concepts and apply hypothesis test methodology to various scenarios.

Foundation Programme: Biology

Develop a solid foundation and understanding of animal and cell biological principles required for further study in science-based programs. You’ll also familiarise yourself with the analytical and practical skills appropriate to subsequent degree work.

Chemistry

Learn to predict properties of the molecules from their structures and understand how and why reactions happen. You’ll apply your knowledge in the laboratory to develop practical skills and learn how to work safely in the lab environment.

Foundation Economics - Microeconomics

Learn the basic principles of microeconomics and the neoclassical model of demand and supply, markets failures and the behaviour of firms.

Foundation Economics - Macroeconomics

Learn the fundamental principles of macroeconomics, including models and theories used by economists to understand the performance of the economy. You will develop basic mathematical and statistical skills and learn how to apply them in economic decision-making.

An Introduction to Business Management

Develop critical thinking, logical organisation, and persuasive argumentation in management and business contexts. Gain insights by applying fundamental theories to real-world cases.

These are the modules that we currently offer for 2024/25 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 澳门六合彩开奖记录.

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.

Approaching 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 Natural 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.

Contemporary World Cultures: An Introduction to Social Anthropology

Gain a general introduction to social anthropology – the study of human societies and cultures. You’ll explore key themes in the discipline through the study of topics including kingship and marriage, gender and sexuality, the role of religion, ritual and witchcraft in social life, and contemporary hunting and gathering societies.

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 澳门六合彩开奖记录.

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.

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 the strategic, tactical, and operational levels are influenced by specific marketplace environments, and learn to specify management problems, select appropriate tools and techniques, and apply them to provide solutions to business challenges.

Approaches to International Development

Discover the roots of mainstream and radical ideas in international development spanning seventy years. You'll understand how these ideas are interconnected and their impact on global change. You'll also grasp the fundamental aspects of today's international development landscape and analyse theories and real-world cases to evaluate development decisions and understand potential obstacles.

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.

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 澳门六合彩开奖记录.

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

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.

Air Pollution

Explore the history of air pollution, the origins and effects of sulphur dioxide and smoke, nitrogen oxides and particulates, ozone and other secondary pollutants, carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases, acid rain, indoor air pollution and more.

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.

Ecosystems Modelling

Model ecological dynamics, particularly land and below water ecosystems, which are relevant to a range of global issues, from environmental changes to food security. Gain an understanding of the building blocks of ecological models, from empirical to mathematical, for better understanding the ecosystem processes.

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.

Climate Smart Agriculture

Gain a detailed understanding of biological processes and learn to apply and critique research methods to tackle global issues within the framework of Climate Smart Agriculture.

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 threats to marine and coastal ecosystems.

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.

Carbon and Global Change

Learn about the global carbon cycle as a basis for evaluating recent advances in scientific knowledge on the impact of climate change, land use and atmospheric pollution on carbon cycling in natural environments. Pay particular attention to carbon on the land surface.

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.

Climate Change

Learn about changes in global and regional climates that occurred in the last 1,000 years with emphasis on the recent (150 years) past. Examine natural and anthropogenic factors driving climate change such as changes in solar activity, aerosol concentrations in the atmosphere, and changes in greenhouse gas concentrations.

Preparing for Floods

Understanding key issues in flood preparedness, from the local to the global scale, including flood forecasting and warning, response and incident management and building community resilience. Encounter interactive seminars, computer practical, guest speakers and a visit to the Global Flood Awareness System operational centre.

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 澳门六合彩开奖记录.

Fees

New UK/Republic of Ireland students: £9,535 per year for 2025/26 then fixed per year at this fee for the standard duration of your course.

New international students: £29,950 per year for 2025/26 then fixed per year at this fee for the standard duration of your course.

Tuition fees

To find out more about how the 澳门六合彩开奖记录 sets its tuition fees, see our fees and funding pages.

Additional costs

Some courses will require additional payments for field trips and extra resources. You will also need to budget for your accommodation and living costs. See our information on living costs for more details.

Financial support for your studies

You may be eligible for a scholarship or bursary to help pay for your study. Students from the UK may also be eligible for a student loan to help cover these costs. See our fees and funding information for more information on what's available.

Careers

This course will provide you with a range of transferable skills, including communication, problem solving, personal development planning, time management and digital technology skills.

As a graduate you will have the core knowledge needed for a range of careers in fields such as environmental management, nature conservation, natural resource management, business sustainability, and environmental education. The course offers a route into land management or conservation careers in the public sector or non-governmental organisations such as the RSPB, National Trust or Wildlife Trusts.

Alternatively, many of our graduates have gained employment working in business, sustainability consultancy, and environmental consultancy. The skills learned through the course can also be transferred to other sectors such as rural development, estate management, project management and teaching. It is also an ideal stepping stone for further study and research.

澳门六合彩开奖记录