Get the full course details
Explore full course descriptions, schedules, and registration details through Brown's Courses@Brown, or browse the complete list of ENVS offerings on the IBES website (available beginning November 15).
Institute at Brown for Environment and Society
Date
September 2, 2026
Environmental law, climate justice, and more: Explore new ENVS courses
Driven by student curiosity and emerging areas of study, new offerings in Environmental Sciences and Studies invite Brown students to explore pressing environmental challenges through fresh perspectives and approaches.
1
of
1
Students in ENVS 0717: Ocean Conservation explore the waters surrounding Prudence Island during a recent field trip to the Narragansett Bay National Estuarine Research Reserve.
What does environmental justice look like around the world? How do laws shape our relationship with the natural world? And what can the history of plastics tell us about today's environmental challenges?
These are just some of the questions students are exploring through new Environmental Sciences and Studies (ENVS) courses at Brown this academic year. Spanning environmental law and policy, climate justice, conservation, and sustainability, the courses reflect growing student interests and bring fresh perspectives to some of today's most pressing environmental issues.
Explore the new ENVS courses offered in the 2026–27 academic year below:
A semester in progress: New fall '26 courses
| ENVS 0732 | Environmental Impact Assessment: Opportunities and ChallengesThis course introduces environmental impact assessment (EIA) in the United States as a legal, technical, and political process for evaluating proposed development and environmental change. |
 | ENVS 0733 | Introduction to Environmental Law and PolicyStudents with no legal training are introduced to the core institutions, statutes, and debates that shape U.S. environmental law and policy. |
 | ENVS 0717 | Ocean Conservation: Ecology, Management, and PoliticsStudents will examine ocean conservation strategies, focusing on their design, implementation, and effects on ecosystems and people. |
 | ENVS 1415 | Power, Justice, and Climate ChangeStudents will explore the social, political, and ethical dimensions of climate change across local, national, and global scales, including adaptation efforts, media narratives, climate denialism, and the rise of climate-justice movements. |
 | ENVS 1544 | Climate and Nature Innovation Lab: From Ideas to ImpactIn this hands-on, interdisciplinary course, students will confront the realities of environmental degradation and identify root causes of pressing environmental challenges. Students will then design scalable, impact-driven solutions, focusing on real-world implementation. |
 | ENVS 1558 | Global Environmental Justice: Dams, Data, War, and MoreThis course explores environmental justice organizing around the world, examining place-based conflicts involving dams, data centers, warfare, tourism, energy transitions, waste, and more. |
 | ENVS 1911 | Narrating the AnthropoceneBack by popular demand! Students examine models for how nonfiction narratives can foster a better understanding of past and present environmental change, imagine an environmentally just future, explain technical information for a broad audience, and support an informed, politically active citizenry. |
Looking ahead: New spring 2027 courses
 | ENVS 1300A | Terrestrial Biogeochemistry, Ecosystems and the Global Carbon CycleStudents will explore the ways in which the biogeochemistry of Earth’s surface and ecosystems varies in space and time, and how dramatically humans are altering the planet's major biogeochemical cycles, with a focus on the carbon cycle. |
 | ENVS 1210 | Plastics, Power & Human RightsThis course spans nearly two centuries of industrial plastic history and covers the global emergence of plastics, from the 19th-century chemical transformation of bio-based polymers to synthetic plastics’ transformation into the byproducts of energy systems based on coal, oil, and gas. |
 | ENVS 1211 | Intergenerational Justice in a Time of Climate ChangeStudents will be asked how we might challenge current systems and imagine alternatives rooted in care: for people not yet born, for communities already bearing the costs of "progress," and for the more-than-human world. |
 | ENVS 1307 | The Nature of War: An Environmental History of Warfare, Conflict Zones, and Militarized LandscapesCourse content will cover case studies of warfare and conflict in the 18th century to the present, focusing on humanity’s relationship to the natural world. Students will examine how this relationship has played out geographically, socially, economically, and culturally. |
 | ENVS 1924 | The Politics of Consent and Contested Energy InfrastructuresStudents will learn about the role of consent and refusal in energy infrastructure siting. They will examine the extractive industries of mining, oil, gas, and large-scale energy infrastructures as central sites of contemporary political, economic, and social conflict. |