Module Identifier | RS32410 | |||||||||||
Module Title | SUSTAINABLE SOCIETIES | |||||||||||
Academic Year | 2007/2008 | |||||||||||
Co-ordinator | Dr Ioan Fazey | |||||||||||
Semester | Semester 1 | |||||||||||
Course delivery | Lecture | 11 x 2 hour lectures | ||||||||||
Practical | 3 x 3 hour practicals during semester | |||||||||||
Assessment |
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These main topics will be explored within the framework of systems thinking. It will include discussion of sub-topics such as social-ecological resilience, uncertainty in decision-making; perverse policies; theories of transformation and adaptive governance. It will provide an overarching view of sustainability within which students will be able to hang their own area of specialization. Students will explore this framework from the perspective of their own discipline through the assignment. It therefore has relevance to students from a range of schemes, including Tourism Management, Tourism and Recreation, Countryside Management, Countryside Conservation, Sustainable Rural Development etc.
The work will be based on a conceptual analysis of the reinforcing and negative feedback processes in a social-ecological system that is of direct relevance to the students' background (e.g. tourism, countryside management). The work will require students to analyse underlying feedback processes to explain the likely impacts of a management or policy intervention. This will necessarily require students to demonstrate their understanding of how the human behaviour gave rise to the problems, what is required to ensure resilience of the system in question, and how resilience can be maintained over the long-term.
2) Current thinking about the requirements for societies to be sustainable:
3) How transformation towards more sustainable trajectories can be promoted and maintained:
Problem solving | Through the analysis of feedback in systems and developing appropriate strategies to deal with them This will be based on classroom-based workshops, and will be assessed in the report. | ||
Research skills | The report will require students to identify appropriate material to include in their report, to analyse feedback processes and find additional supporting material. | ||
Improving own Learning and Performance | Students will be developing critical thinking skills in being able to understand feedback in dynamically complex systems. This ability will be assessed during the report. | ||
Team work | Much of the project work during the practicals will involve working in groups (although the final assignment will be conducted by individuals) | ||
Information Technology | Students will learn the Vensim package for drawing conceptual diagrams of systems. These diagrams will be an essential component of the report. |
This module is at CQFW Level 6