Wealth and Sustainability

Overview

Students investigate how the environment can function as a financial asset through natural resources, land, energy, tourism, and ecosystem services. They will examine the provocative idea “Being rich = eco-friendly”, use a graph to identify patterns, and evaluate why wealth and environmental outcomes are unevenly distributed.

Learning intentions

• WALT explain how environmental resources can create wealth.
• WALT use indicators and graphs to compare countries’ economic development and environmental impacts.
• WALT explain how physical geography, human geography, and historical factors contribute to uneven wealth.
• WALT evaluate whether being wealthier necessarily makes a country more environmentally sustainable.

Success criteria

• I can describe at least two ways the environment creates financial value.
• I can accurately plot and interpret data on a graph.
• I can explain one reason wealth is unevenly distributed between countries.
• I can use evidence to agree, disagree, or qualify the statement “Being rich = eco-friendly”.

Curriculum links

• Understanding the global economy: levels of economic development, including low-income, lower middle-income, upper middle-income, and high-income countries.
• Understanding the global economy: development challenges arising from physical geography, human geography, and historical factors.
• Understanding the global economy: analysing indicators used to classify countries and measure economic development.
• Social Sciences: exploring how financial and economic systems operate in a global context.

Lesson structure (75 minutes)

1. 0–8 min · Hook and initial thinking. Display the provocative question “Being rich = eco-friendly: agree or disagree?” Students independently record agree or disagree and one brief reason. They compare responses with a partner, then several students share ideas without confirming an answer.

2. 8–23 min · Environmental-assets station investigation. Students independently rotate through short information and data stations on forests, water, minerals, energy, productive land, tourism, and ecosystem services such as flood protection and pollination. At each station, they complete a table with four headings: asset, economic value, environmental risk, and who benefits. Give brief instructions and circulate to clarify vocabulary, check progress, and prompt thinking about ownership, infrastructure, education, trade access, and government decisions rather than presenting the content.

3. 23–38 min · Self-directed case-study task. Students choose or are assigned one country scenario: resource-rich, landlocked, renewable-energy or ecotourism-based, or another contrasting example. They complete a cause-and-effect organiser identifying physical, human, and historical factors and how these shape wealth and sustainability. Students compare answers with a partner and revise one response. Scenarios should highlight that resources do not automatically create shared wealth and that colonisation, conflict, global demand, infrastructure, ownership, and government decisions can shape outcomes.

4. 38–55 min · Graphing and data investigation challenge. Pairs use rulers, coloured pencils, and the six-country data cards to construct a shared scatter plot or floor graph showing income per person and carbon emissions per person. Students choose and label a suitable scale, place country cards, and identify patterns and outliers. They independently record three observations, one outlier, and one possible explanation. Provide only a short demonstration of scale, axes, plotting, or interpreting an outlier if needed. Students distinguish between describing a pattern and explaining a cause.

5. 55–67 min · Evidence carousel or structured data walk. Display graphs and statements around the room. Students move between them and record whether each claim is supported, unsupported, or needs qualification. They justify one decision with evidence, considering cleaner technology, consumption, historical emissions, imported goods, unequal access to energy, and who controls environmental assets.

6. 67–73 min · Independent evidence-based evaluation. Students write a short evaluation of “Being rich = eco-friendly”. Their response must use one graph observation and one physical, human, or historical factor to explain or qualify the claim.

7. 73–75 min · Exit check. Students answer three concise written questions: “What is one environmental asset?”, “What does your graph show?”, and “What is one reason wealth is unevenly distributed?” Collect responses as the exit assessment.

Resources

• The global wealth and environment slide deck and opening question slide
• Printed environmental-assets station cards and information sheets for forests, water, minerals, energy, productive land, tourism, and ecosystem services
• Country scenario cards and cause-and-effect organisers for the case-study task
• Six-country data cards and environmental wealth investigation worksheets
• Station tables, graphing worksheets, and evidence carousel/data-walk recording sheets
• Rulers, coloured pencils, calculators, clipboards, and sticky notes where useful
• Floor-graph materials, including tape, labels, and large axes or grid paper
• Projector or interactive display
• Checklists, visual word banks, and partially completed table and graph templates

Assessment

• Check independent completion of environmental-assets investigation tables for accurate identification of assets, economic value, environmental risk, and who benefits.
• Check case-study organisers for accurate physical, human, and historical factors and clear cause-and-effect relationships.
• Check shared graphs for an appropriate scale, labelled axes, accurate plotting, correctly placed country cards, three observations, one outlier, and a plausible explanation.
• Assess evidence carousel or data-walk classifications as supported, unsupported, or needing qualification, including the use of relevant evidence.
• Assess the independent written evaluation and exit check for understanding that income, development, and environmental sustainability are related but not identical.
• Observe productive collaboration, including purposeful partner comparison, respectful discussion, accurate use of wealth and sustainability vocabulary, and independent follow-through.

Differentiation

• Provide chunked station instructions, checklists, visual word banks, simple definitions, sentence starters, and labelled examples for assets, income, development, infrastructure, and sustainability.
• Offer partially completed station tables, case-study organisers, and graphs with a suggested scale or labelled axes.
• Allow optional partner reading of station cards, scenarios, and data instructions, with oral rehearsal before independent writing and bilingual dictionaries where useful.
• Provide enlarged graph materials, calculators, clipboards, and clearly assigned roles for students needing additional access support, while retaining an individual written record.
• Extend confident students by asking them to propose and justify one policy for sustainable wealth in the selected country, using evidence from the stations, case study, or graph.