Central Idea
Human interaction with natural landscapes and cultural spaces reflects underlying economic priorities, knowledge systems, and values, producing ethical tensions between conservation, development, livelihood, and long-term responsibility.
Venue
Kochi
Munnar
(Coastal Ecosystems | Hill Landscapes | Plantation Economies | Colonial and Indigenous Heritage)
“Landscapes, Livelihoods, and Responsibility” is a Diploma Programme experiential learning journey that uses the contrasting environments of Cochin and Munnar as interconnected systems for examining how human decisions shape nature, economy, and culture.
The programme situates students within real-world contexts where biodiversity conservation, plantation agriculture, tourism, heritage preservation, and community livelihoods intersect. Rather than treating ecology, culture, or economy as isolated topics, students analyse how these systems influence and constrain one another through everyday practices and institutional decisions.
Experiences across tea plantations, protected national parks, dams, waterfalls, coastal ecosystems, cultural performances, colonial heritage spaces, and community-based environmental action require students to confront trade-offs rather than ideal solutions. Students are encouraged to interrogate whose interests are prioritised, whose knowledge is legitimised, and who bears the cost of development and conservation.
The journey is intentionally structured to generate uncertainty and ethical complexity. Through inquiry framing, field observation, journaling, and guided reflection, students revise assumptions, tolerate ambiguity, and construct responsibility-oriented perspectives grounded in lived experience.
Aligned with IB Diploma Programme philosophy, the programme integrates conceptual inquiry with experiential learning, ensuring that understanding emerges from analysis, comparison, and ethical reasoning rather than from passive observation.
Individuals and Societies
Students analyse plantation economies, tourism systems, conservation policy, colonial history, and community livelihoods as social systems shaped by power, governance, and economic decision-making.
Environmental Systems and Societies / Sciences
Engagement with hill ecosystems, wildlife reserves, water systems, and coastal environments supports systems thinking related to biodiversity, sustainability, human impact, and conservation ethics.
The Arts
Cultural performances such as Kathakali and Kalarippayattu enable analysis of artistic expression as a carrier of identity, discipline, history, and cultural continuity.
Language and Literature
Students develop analytical and reflective communication through journaling, discussion, and synthesis, examining how narratives, symbols, and spaces communicate meaning.
Theory of Knowledge (TOK)
The programme generates real-life situations related to ethics, authority of knowledge, and decision-making. Students confront questions about whose knowledge counts, how values shape action, and where certainty breaks down in complex systems.
Inquiry-driven • Concept-based • Experiential • Analytical • Reflective • Interdisciplinary • Ethics-centred
IB Learner Profile Focus
Inquirer • Thinker • Knowledgeable • Open-Minded • Reflective • Caring • Balanced
Learning Intent
This programme is designed to move students beyond environmental appreciation toward critical analysis of responsibility, trade-offs, and consequence. Students are expected to engage with unresolved tensions and construct informed perspectives grounded in lived experience.
Includes
Pre-Tour • On-Tour • Post-Tour Learning Engagements
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