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MPhil in Environment, Society & Development

The Dissertation

The aim of the dissertation is to permit students to engage in a piece of sustained academic analysis, usually based on secondary sources, and focussed on some topic within the broad themes of the course. The dissertation should enable the student to integrate the substantive knowledge obtained from the core papers, the option papers with their own special interests. For most course participants the dissertation is an enjoyable challenge, and for some it is the pinnacle of their achievement at Cambridge, as is reflected in the high quality of many of those submitted.

Previous dissertations

Landscape

Examples of titles completed in the past few years include:

  1. Forest land rights in India: Analysing the roles of different stakeholders in the policy process.
  2. Casting the net wide: does small-scale fishing offer a more sustainable future for the UK?
  3. Caribbean fairtrade as a survival niche in the global banana industry.
  4. Use of improved cooking stoves as a carbon offset: lessons from Nepal.
  5. Organic farming as a sustainable agriculture option: a review of UK experience.
  6. Protection and community conservation: toward a conservation hybrid in Kajiado District, Kenya.
  7. Evaluating the success of agroforestry innovations: alley cropping in Honduras.
  8. Green Imperialism: Stories of Power, Politics and Parochialism from East Africa.
  9. The role of institutions in the ban on plastic bags in Rwanda.
  10. NGO advocacy in international environmental governance: the case of REDD in UNFCC.