Themes

Theme 1: Environmental Sustainability

  • The science and technology of environmental sustainability.
  • Ecosystemics.
  • Sustainable agriculture.
  • Urbanisation and its consequences.
  • Ecological footprints and ecospaces.
  • Atmosphere and biosphere: global warming, the ozone layer, pollution.
  • Energy: renewable and not.
  • Water: sources and uses.
  • Land and sea, mountain and savannah, desert and wet zones, forests and coasts: variable impacts on varied environments.
  • Biological diversity: its past and prospects.
  • Biotechnology and its critics.
  • Bioethics.
  • Nature as intellectual and physical property.
  • Danger signs: rising sea levels, desertification, soil degradation.
  • Wastes and waste management.
  • Measuring impacts: environmental assessment.

Theme 2: Cultural Sustainability

  • The meaning of cultural sustainability and sustainable heritage development.
  • Belonging and identity: their environmental, economic and social significance.
  • Changing patterns and cultures of consumption.
  • Cosmopolis: local cultures, globalisation, diaspora.
  • Civic pluralism: multiculturalism and cultural sustainability.
  • Cultural and political liberalisation: challenges and dangers.
  • Women and men, children and the elderly, families and sustainability.
  • Cultural dimensions of childbearing and population growth.
  • Cultural resources and indigenous or local intellectual property.
  • Cultural tourism.
  • Indigenous peoples: self-government, self management and cultural autonomy.
  • Indigenous knowledge and traditional practices of sustainability: broadening the scope of valid knowledge.
  • The arts and creativity as a resource for sustainability.
  • Religion and human sustainability.
  • Community and identity as sources of resilience.
  • Education sustaining language and culture.

Theme 3: Economic Sustainability

  • The economics of environment, culture and society.
  • What is economic value?
  • Cultural, social and environmental capital.
  • The economics of sustainability.
  • Needs, wants and demand: reconfiguring the economic equation.
  • Business cases: the cost and value of sustainability.
  • Risks and risk management: where economy meets environment, culture and society.
  • Free trade and fair trade.
  • Global flows: finance, trade, technology transfer and debt.
  • Sustainable aid and aid for sustainability.
  • The dynamics of production and consumption.
  • Accountability: beyond financial years and bottom lines.
  • Measuring performance and reporting sustainability.
  • Organisations and corporations: defining the stakeholders and meeting their interests.
  • Corporate values and business ethics.
  • Development, underdevelopment and sustainability.
  • Tourism and its impacts.
  • Sustainable and unsustainable transportation.
  • Structures of ownership: private property, public property and the commons.

Theme 4: Social Sustainability

  • One, two, three, four, how many ‘bottom lines’?
  • Good citizenship in fragile environments, cultures, economies, societies.
  • Levels of governance: sustainability at local, regional, national, and international levels.
  • Domains of responsibility: NGOs, corporations, persons.
  • Wellbeing and quality of life: sources and strategies.
  • Gender and sustainability.
  • The sources of sustainable innovation.
  • Planning for sustainability.
  • Capacity building in theory and practice.
  • Sustainability and community participation.
  • Managing human ‘resources’.
  • Poverty and its eradication.
  • Health in its environmental, cultural, economic and social contexts.
  • Population growth and its consequences.
  • Urbanisation and the sustainability of human settlement.
  • Theories of complexity and uncertainty.
  • Knowledge sources, information resources and data collection processes.
  • Natural and social sciences: taking an holistic view.
  • Researching sustainability.
  • Knowledge capacities: developing science and technology locally.
  • Public knowledge: the role of the media and government.
  • Teaching and learning sustainability: schools, universities, communities.