ENS5020 · Perspectives on sustainability

Overview

This unit, together with ENS5010, sets the context for considering the interactions and interdependence between nature and society and the basic principles of sustainability (social, economic and environmental), as reflected in the Sustainable Development Goals. This unit explores the values and perspectives of stakeholders alongside existing social structures that inform and affect how global challenges (as taught in unit ENS5010) are perceived and acted upon. Within society there are varied understandings of the relationships between the social, environmental and economic dimensions of sustainability. How sustainability is viewed and addressed is shaped by a diversity of multi-stakeholder perspectives and value systems along with their capacity to influence economic, regulatory, and policy regimes. This unit develops your capacity to map and critically analyse: i) multi-stakeholders and social structures affecting sustainability; ii) different ideological, cultural, philosophical, psychological and disciplinary perspectives on sustainability; and, iii) their implications for policy making, development of business cases, disciplinary research, and action.

Areas of study: International sustainable tourism management

Offerings

Assessment

The Handbook does not list a final examination among the assessment items. That is not a guarantee there is none.

Assessment details may change. Please refer to the assessment information in Moodle closer to the start of the teaching period.

Requisites

The Handbook lists no prerequisite, corequisite or prohibition for this unit.

Learning outcomes

1. Evaluate and critique the historical roots, conceptual notions, frameworks and current debates on sustainability and sustainable development.
2. Examine environmental, social and economic dimensions of sustainability, and their interactions, through analysing different philosophical and ideological values and perspectives on sustainability and sustainable development.
3. Recognise the complex economic, regulatory and policy regimes that stakeholders influence and are shaped by.
4. Integrate the perspectives of different disciplines within an interdisciplinary context.
5. Plan practical courses of action, policy-making and business cases by considering and analysing the implications of differing stakeholder perspectives and social structures.
6. Construct, articulate and effectively communicate critical and analytical arguments, in oral and written form, relevant to discussions of sustainability worldviews and philosophies.

Workload

• Contact hours equivalent to minimum 5 hours per week. • Additional requirements for at least 19 hours of independent work.

Student experience, not official rules. Nothing here changes what the Handbook says.