Course Overview

Environmental ethics helps us not only think about interpersonal relations in society but also the ones between people and the natural environment. This expansive scope helps us see our daily activities, ethical or not, within ecosystems or biotic communities. This course invites students to think about a need to establish a universally applicable ethical principle/ law for global citizens to tacke with environmental problems. To answer this question, it introduces many environmental ethical ideas related to biodiversity, bioethics, animal rights/ welfare, and household activities.

Learning Achievement

In this course, you will be able to develop problem analysis skill, knowledge management skill and communication skill regarding your decision about the use of natural resources and daily activities that directly or indirectly affect the health of the natural environment. You will also be able to connect your activities to environmental conservation, water governance, localized practices, and others.

Competence

修士レベル
知の活用力・マネジメント能力・コミュニケーション能力・国際性
博士レベル
知の創成力・マネジメント能力・コミュニケーション能力・リーダーシップ力・国際性

Course prerequisites

特になし

Grading Philosophy

1 Evaluation/2 Percentage
In-class contribution/ 50%
Essay assignment/ 50%
*Minumum 70% of attendance is required.

3 Comments on Grading Practices for This Course
You may wonder why you received A+, A, A-, B+, B, B-, and other grading marks for your paper. Here is roughly what it means.

A+ or A: This paper has an excellent quality in terms of essay organization, writing skill, originality, mature insights, and independent argument. It is based on your considerable research effort and the sound and original interpretation of sources. The paper is also accompanied with clear and appropriate academic citation and references.

A-: This paper demonstrates its good quality of essay organization, writing skill, originality and independent argument in most part of the discussion. It is based on good research effort and the sound interpretation of sources. The paper is also accompanied with clear and appropriate academic citation and references.

A-/B+: This paper has a potential to be qualified as A- paper with some good revision effort.

B+ or B: This paper contains some good quality discussion with independent argument or insight. However, it falls short in essay organization and clarity of its writing. The argument may be inconsistent at some point or not cohesive enough to make a cogent discussion throughout the paper. It is based on some research effort but has a good potential to be improved by more research work and writing refinement.

B-: This paper basically understands the requirement of the course assignment, but falls short in fully expressing the importance of paper topic. It shows some effort of research on the paper topic but do not effectively convey your thoughts and analysis. Or it does not properly cite sources.

C+, C: This paper has some serious problem with essay organization, writing skill, originality and independent argument. It does not seem to respond to the assignment objective properly though it may be greatly improved with further research and writing improvement.

C-: This paper does not seem to understand the assignment objective. It does not seem to be based on research. However, this paper can be improved with additional research effort and better understanding of essay writing.

D: This paper fails to respond to the course requirement. It needs to resubmit or redo the assignment. Or it may have problem with plagiarism or academic honesty.

Course schedule

Assignments
Where to submit: Natural Science Bld. A209, report submission box
Deadline: TBA
Where to pick up: Natural Science Bld. A209 report return box(early February 2020)For this course, you will submit one written assignment in English. The topic of your paper can be chosen from the lecture contents of this course. If you have questions about this writing assignment, please feel free to ask the coordinator of this course. Although you are strongly advised to meet the deadlines, if you require extension due to some unavoidable reason, please contact the coordinator ASAP. In considering the extension, you may be asked to submit a proper document.

You may use the following academic style guides for detailed specifications for writing:
？ Chicago Manual of Style
？ MLA (Modern Language Association): http://www.mla.org/style_faq
？ APA (American Psychological Association): http://www.apastyle.org/elecref.html
？ Council of Science Editors (CSE)’s Scientific Styles and Format. Warning on Plagiarism: If one takes the words, ideas, or research of another person(s) without proper citation as if these were his or her own, such a person is considered to have committed the act of plagiarism. Plagiarism is intellectual theft and a clear violation of the code of ethics and behavior, which often result into a severe penalty. Some web sites (e.g., Wikipedia) often lure students to copy a large portion of its web pages without citation. Please be aware such a work cannot be considered worth being part of admitting a credit in this course.In-Class Contribution
This course seeks to provide “a safe learning environment,” in which all students are welcome to express their opinions without worrying about making mistakes. You are expected to share your opinion with other students and learn from each other with due respect. Keeping this in mind as the basic underlying principle of this course, I occasionally ask you to express or write your opinion in progress about some issues that are salient in environmental ethics.

9:00-9:30 Course Orientation (Matsui)
9:30-12:00 History of the Environmental Ethics (Matsui)
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13:30-16:00 Household Environmental Ethics (Matsui)
16:00-16:30 Discussion

9:00-12:00 Environmental Ethics and International Environmental Law (Watanabe)
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13:30-15:00 (1) Water Ethics (2) Indigenous Peoples and Environmental Ethics (Matsui)
15:15-16:00 Discussion

Course type

Lectures

Online Course Requirement

Instructor

Matsui Kenichi,Watanabe Kazuo

Other information

For this course, you will submit one written assignment in English. The topic of your paper can be chosen from the lecture contents of this course. If you have questions about this writing assignment, please feel free to ask the coordinator of this course. Although you are strongly advised to meet the deadlines, if you require extension due to some unavoidable reason, please contact the coordinator ASAP. In considering the extension, you may be asked to submit a proper document.

Site for Inquiry

Link to the syllabus provided by the university