Bachelor of Environmental Policy and Planning with Honours

This is an invitation to nurture a career specialising in urban or regional policy and planning. Gain the capabilities to address local opportunities and global challenges, together with specialist knowledge of the physical and ecological sciences, risk and resilience, the Treaty of Waitangi, resource management and planning law.

Environmental planning is going through a period of accelerated change in response to shifts in society, climate issues, economic priorities and other factors.

This Honours degree blends practical experience and theory to develop your potential in the exciting and fast-evolving fields of urban and regional planning. Learn and grow to enhance the future by shaping our environment.

How you’ll grow

• By developing a sound understanding of the complex relationships between gender, culture, ethnicity and equity – and how they influence environmental policy and planning.
• By spending time with people who seek the permissions to carry out, prevent or modify a wide range of activities in different environmental contexts.
• Crafting various plans and strategies, and making recommendations on what people can do in the environment.
• Learning how to analyse and make evidence-based decisions in multi-disciplinary situations.
• Expand your potential to make a tangible contribution to the processes leading to positive sustainable outcomes.
• Becoming accredited by the New Zealand Planning Institute (NZPI*).

*The BEPP (Honours) is accredited by the NZPI, providing professional recognition of the degree. This enables you to be a student member of the Institute when you start study, and creates a pathway to full ‘accredited member’ status.

Career opportunities

There is high demand for skilled and visionary professional planners. As a graduate planner with Lincoln University’s accredited degree, you’ll be qualified for environmental or policy planning roles at city, district, regional and central government levels as well as in exciting private sector enterprises.

> I found the field trips and way the courses are applied to real life situations really effective for showing how the theories and processes we discuss in class happen in the real world.

Lisa Arnott

Bachelor of Environmental Policy and Planning with Honours

Graduate Attributes

Graduate Attributes refer to the knowledge, skills, and values that you gain from completing your qualification. These high-level qualities will prepare you for career success, further study or research and making a valuable contribution to society in your chosen field.

Knowledge

• Explain the relevance of environmental policy and planning theory covering nature and purpose of planning, history, current debates.
• Apply environmental policy and planning theory and methods at different (global to local) spatial, governance and temporal scales.
• Describe and explain the interactions between social, economic, bio-physical environmental and cultural issues and processes.
• Distinguish between different environmental policy and planning principles, methods and tools and apply them (to a class case study).
• Describe various processes of policy and plan development and implementation.
• Describe the advantages of multiple disciplines of strategic significance to environmental policy and planning.
• Outline the advantages and disadvantages of single, multi-disciplinary, inter-disciplinary and trans-disciplinary approaches to the formulation and resolution of environmental policy and planning issues.
• Explain the New Zealand legislative environment and case law associated with environmental policy and planning.
• Recognise New Zealand’s bicultural mandate, multi-cultural society and outline the implications for environmental policy and planning practice.

Skills

• Conduct both independent research and group work.
• Location, evaluate and use information / data from a range of resources (information literacy).
• Acquire, evaluate and synthesis a wide range of knowledge.
• Think critically for problem-solving.
• Communicate effectively to specific audiences using appropriate media.
• Demonstrate strong interpersonal skills, including an ability to relate to people from a wide range of backgrounds and communities.

Values

• Commit to professional and ethical standards of behaviour, based on knowledge and application of professional ethics and codes of conduct.
• Appreciate gender, cultural, ethnicity and equity issues and perspectives relevant to environmental policy and planning.