Unit name | Sustainable Development |
---|---|
Unit code | UNIV10001 |
Credit points | 20 |
Level of study | C/4 |
Teaching block(s) |
Teaching Block 1 (weeks 1 - 12) Teaching Block 2 (weeks 13 - 24) |
Unit director | Professor. Chris Preist |
Open unit status | Open |
Pre-requisites |
None |
Co-requisites |
None |
School/department | School of Geographical Sciences |
Faculty | Faculty of Science |
A trailer is available for this unit here and social media shorts here
This unit will provide an interdisciplinary introduction to the concepts behind the challenges of Sustainable Development. It will draw on content from a diverse range of academics at UoB, showing how interdisciplinary research and practice can help (i) understand the challenges and controversies of sustainable development; (ii) understand the approaches used to explore potential ways forward.
In it, students will gain an overview of the history and philosophy behind the idea of Sustainable Development, the particular challenges that are captured in the UN Sustainable Development Goals, and critical perspectives on these. They will gain a more in-depth understanding of key challenge areas within Sustainable Development. Previous examples (from the 2018/19 academic year) of these include the challenges of (a) Access to Fresh Water (b) Climate Change and decarbonisation of Energy Supply (c) Meat consumption and (d) deforestation. These may change from year to year.
These challenges will in turn be used as examples to show how different disciplines and interdisciplinary approaches can be used to provide insight and ways forward. These approaches will be presented under five broad headings: Science; Economics and Legal Institutions; Politics and Justice; Individual and Organisational Behaviour Change; Engineering and Innovation.
The unit will include a number of workshops which will encourage students to apply the insights of these different (inter)disciplinary approaches to specific case studies and critically discuss how contemporary sustainability challenges intersect with and influence our day-to-day lives.
The unit aims are:
By the end of the unit, students will:
Online content including videos, written materials and interactive exercises, equivalent to 24 hours of lecture content.
Six 2-hour workshops.
Elliott, J.A. An Introduction to Sustainable Development, 4th Edition 2013.Routledge Perspectives on Development.
Blewitt, J. Understanding Sustainable Development, 2nd Edition 2014. Routledge/Earthscan 978-0-415-70782-4
The Earth Charter: www.earthcharterinaction.org.
Sustainable Development Goals - https://sustainabledevelopment.un.org/topics