World Issues: A Geographic Analysis, Grade 12 (University Preparation)

Unit 1: Geographic Skills and Careers

How geographic investigation of world issues builds transferable and spatial skills, applying them to current events, and the careers — from international development to GIS analysis — where a geography background is an asset.

• Skills geographic analysis builds
• Working like a geographer
• World issues in the news
• Careers in geography

Unit 2: Quality of Life and Access to Resources

How access to natural resources, demographic and political factors, and the ways the world is classified into regions relate to quality of life across countries and regions.

• Resources and quality-of-life indicators
• Resources and conflict
• The ethics of resource control

• Population distribution and quality of life
• Migration and quality of life
• Policies of the past and inequality

• Classifying countries with indicators
• The limits of classification
• Classification applied to global issues

Unit 3: Sustainability and Environmental Stewardship

Strategies and initiatives supporting environmental stewardship nationally and globally; the impact of population growth on natural systems; and the use and management of common-pool and global commons resources.

• International environmental agreements
• Who is responsible for the environment
• Values, beliefs, and public opinion
• National sustainability policies
• Local sustainability initiatives

• Population growth and the environment
• Theories of carrying capacity

• The commons and the global commons
• Human impact on the commons
• Managing the commons

Unit 4: Interactions and Interdependence: Globalization

How trade agreements and immigration policies shape global interdependence; the national and global impacts of globalization and who is responsible for managing them; and the characteristics and drivers of the globalizing process.

• Trade agreements and interdependence
• Immigration and interdependence

• Impacts on economies and the environment
• Globalization and connections between countries
• The responsibility of consumers
• The responsibility of governments and businesses

• The globalization of economic activity
• What drives the globalized economy
• The globalization of culture

Unit 5: Changing Societies: The Local and Global Community

How governments, groups, and individuals promote and manage social change; the impacts of agents of change such as technology, mass media, and urbanization; and issues of human rights, food security, and health care that challenge quality of life worldwide.

• Government population policies
• International aid
• Individuals as global citizens
• State security and human rights

• Technology as an agent of change
• Mass media and social change
• Urbanization as an agent of change

• Ethnic tension and crimes against humanity
• Protecting human rights globally
• The rights of women and children
• Food security and safety