Theories and Practices of Sustainable Development

This course aims to provide students with the knowledge and skills that will enable them to:

(a) understand the conceptual framework of sustainable development, including the main concepts and the logical and empirical relationships between them;

(b) use their knowledge of these concepts and relationships to develop arguments in debates on public policy;

(c) understand the plurality of perspectives in which the concepts of development and sustainability are currently considered, given that they reflect different disciplinary understandings and social projects;

(d) apply this plurality of perspectives and understandings to unravel the complexity inherent in any wicked problem of unsustainability;

(e) use quantitative and qualitative tools in combination to analyse problems of unsustainability and evaluate alternative measures to address them;

(f) use the concepts of development and sustainability to develop indicators of progress towards sustainable development.