The UB offers a new bachelor's degree in Geography and Global Change, with sustainability as its central theme

 
 
News | Institutional | Academic | Innovation | Sustainability
(09/03/2023)
The University of Barcelona will offer, during the 2023-2024 academic year, a degree in Geography and Global Change, a pioneering degree in Catalonia and Spain to train professionals who will contribute to building a more sustainable future. Structured in four years (240 ECTS credits), it will be taught in the Faculty of Geography and History.
 
 
News | Institutional | Academic | Innovation | Sustainability
09/03/2023
The University of Barcelona will offer, during the 2023-2024 academic year, a degree in Geography and Global Change, a pioneering degree in Catalonia and Spain to train professionals who will contribute to building a more sustainable future. Structured in four years (240 ECTS credits), it will be taught in the Faculty of Geography and History.

Over the last decades, the planet has undergone multiple transformations related to natural factors, but also of anthropogenic nature. The impacts of human action have increased as a result of the transformations resulting from rapid technological development and the spread of sometimes unsustainable production and consumption patterns. Moreover, the increasing interconnection of territories has meant that the elements of change have become global.

This new degree is aimed at the understanding and analysis of this global change and the design of territorial and environmental planning and management strategies to deal with the impacts of these transformations. Therefore, the degree will be connected to central themes of the scientific context of the 21st century and will train professionals capable of analysing and solving problems that arise from the interrelationship between natural systems and human systems at different scales.

The degree responds to a scenario characterised by processes that are emerging as major challenges in today's world and which are at the heart of many current scientific debates: climate change, loss of biodiversity, the threat to food security, accelerated change in land uses, global urbanisation, differences in demographic evolution, health crises, geopolitical conflicts and socio-economic inequalities, and so on. It is based on the principle that all dimensions of change require an integrated reading and a vision that addresses the territorial effects of global change, under the premise that, in order to act, it is necessary to understand reality.

Therefore, the degree in Geography and Global Change will provide a solid geographical training to understand global change. It will include the theoretical bases referring to the knowledge of geographical scenarios, the spatial organisation of natural and social phenomena and dynamics and their interrelationships at different scales. Moreover, it will be considered as training aimed at the design of territorial and environmental planning and management strategies aimed at adapting to and mitigating the consequences of global change.

The course will allow the students to take two specializations: one in Territorial Planning and Management, which will provide tools for developing planning and development instruments adapted to each territorial problem, and one in Environment, which will provide an in-depth study of the theoretical bases of the mechanisms of the functioning of the earth system, the impacts on the natural environment and the importance of environmental change, as well as providing knowledge of instruments, techniques and protocols for the evaluation and management of the environment.

This degree is expected to offer internships thanks to the wide range of companies and institutions with which the Faculty has signed collaboration agreements, encouraging student mobility so that they can study part of their studies in foreign universities.