ENST20901: Fall 2009 | Schedule, V. 1.5

This Schedule page provides a road map to the implementation of both

• ENST20901 (CRN40242), Professor Ashwani Vasishth
• ENST20902 (CRN40944), Professor Wayne Hayes

This is the page you need to follow to keep up with the flow of our course. See also the course Wiki Bulletin Board.The schedule may change occasionally, so check back often.

Important Dates ^

Please note the due dates below:

• September 30: Due is a graphic organizer and a short essay, defined in a separate memo. Counts 16 points. See definition and instructions on the wiki page.
• October 28: An essay that explains both the global crisis and the disabling analysis. This essay counts 32 points, as explained in the syllabus.
• December 10 through 17: The essay assignment on the enabling analysis asks for a review of practices and policies appropriate for World Sustainability. Counts 32 points: eight each for depth, content, coherence, and writing -- see syllabus.

After our introductions and some business, our first session provides a detailed overview of the course to establish expectations and to assist your planning and preparation.

1. Introductions, yours and ours: roster
2. Orientation, overview, and business of the course: syllabus, schedule, Wiki Bulletin Board: We will go over the flow of the course in detail.
3. Professor Hayes's companion Table of Contents of web-based course material, which will be updated throughout the course
4. How to do well here: tips and traps; Q. and A.;
5. Start documentary: Banking on Disaster.

We begin to explain what World Sustainability means in the context of ENST209. Class activities:

1. End film, Banking on Disaster.
2. Discussion, form groups, and play the Rainforest Game: please see Rainforest Scenarios.
3. We will explain sustainability in a historical context.
4. We will review the readings, with emphasis on Brundtland, Bazan, and Montague, and Schroyer.

Please read for class:

• Browse the Brundtland Report and sample its findings and logic. This is a seminal historical document.
• Read the important Overview, noting the way that sustainable development was framed and the language used to define sustainable development, quoted below. Read the Brundtland section on sustainable development carefully.
• See Professor Hayes's overview of Brundtland and the origins of Sustainable Development, which lays out important concepts for the course.
• Wiki on Intergenerational Concerns
• Professor Wayne Hayes: The short wiki page on paradigms.
• Wiki on Limits to Growth: note links and uploads within this page
• Wiki on Triple Bottom Line
• Schroyer and Golodik: Montague: Sustainable Development in Six Parts, pp. 59-86; also available on-line: Part I, II, III, IV, V, VI and as an upload from the Bulletin Board
• Schroyer and Golodik: Bazan: From Sustainability to Subsistence, pp. 311-324 and as an upload from the Bulletin Board

September 24: World Sustainability

Important as the Brundtland legacy has been, we must move beyond the original paradigm and travel from Sustainable Development to World Sustainability. A critique by Profesor Vasishth will be offered here.

• Schroyer and Golodik, Preface: Why "World" Sustainability, pp. vii-ix
• Schroyer, Introduction: The Inclusive Democracy Promise of the Earth Summit, pp. 3-5 and as an upload from the Bulletin Board
• Schroyer and Golodik: Schroyer, From Sustainable Development to Developing Sustainability, pp. 7-24

The graphic organizer is due by the end of September 30 as an attachment to an email to enst209@gmail.com. The assignment is defined in the wiki, explained in class, and will be distributed as an email attachment.

Class activities

1. View Frontline documentary on energy and climate change: Heat
2. Professor Hayes will start the review Part I of Brown, defining the global crisis.
3. See The Story of Stuff.

Please read for class:

1. Lester Brown, Plan B 3.0, Preface and chapters 1 through 6, pages xi-xiv and 1-127;
2. Professor Hayes: notes supplementing Brown on Beyond the Oil Peak, Global Warming, Natural Systems Under Stress and on The Social Divide.

1. Review of Sachs, Fairness in a Fragile World: A Memo on Sustainability;
2. Selections from The Atlas of the Real World that should be examined in tandem:
   1. The Resourceful World, maps 1-62, and The Environmental World, maps 325-366
   2. The Trading World, maps 63-114, and the Economic World, maps 115-204
   3. The Social World, maps 205-286, and the Perilous World, maps 287-324
3. Professor Vasishth will explain the origins of the global crisis from a global and historical perspective.
4. Organizational meeting for groups.

Please read carefully from Schroyer and Golodik the important article by Wolfgang Sachs, Fairness in a Fragile World: A Memo on Sustainability pp. 31-58. Also see the chart Professor Hayes prepared to de-code the article. Hint: Adjust the web page for each section of the chart.

Class activities:

1. Professor Hayes presentation: Framing the Disabling Analysis.
2. For group discussions: View and study the important case study close to home but of national importance: The Toxic Legacy web site by Jan Barry.
3. Hayes presentation: Economic Globalization.

Please read:

1. Schroyer and Golodik: Hayes, Economic Strategies for Sustainability, pp. 189-212
2. McKibben, Deep Economy, Ch. 1 and 2, pp. 1-94
3. Schroyer and Golodik: Schroyer, Introduction: Exposing the Hidden Realities of Corporate Domination, pp. 89-98
4. Recommended but not required: Schroyer and Golodik: Engler, Oil Barrels and Gun Barrels: The Quest for the Control of Energy Resources, pp. 99-120
5. Recommended but not required: Schroyer and Golodik: Morehouse, Corporate Power, Popular Resistance, and Sustainable Development in an Imperial Age, pp. 121-132

The essay on Part I of the course is due on October 28.

Class activities:

1. Hayes lecture on Strategic Sustainablity;
2. Transition from the disabling analysis to the enabling analysis;
3. Groups will prepare for the oral presentations that close the course.

The first half of our class will be devoted to a panel on the Amazon which has been arranged by Professor Eric Wiener. The participants will include Christine Padoch and Miguel Pinedo Vásquez to speak on the topic People, Environment and Change in the Amazon Basin. Dr. Wiener describes the panel:

Christine Padoch and Miguel Pinedo Vásquez have been conducting field research about social, cultural, economic and environmental issues in the Amazon basin of South America - the largest and most biodiverse region of tropical rain forest on earth. These remarkable researchers are two of the best at challenging a variety of conventional paradigms while fostering much deeper appreciation for the rich knowledge and complex strategies employed by the indigenous and rural folk who use and manage the natural resources found in the forests, farms, rivers and lakes of the region.

After the panel, we will return to ASB-135 for the remainder of the class.

1. Please examine the article for the Amazon panel: Urban Forest and Rural Cities: Multi-sited Households, Consumption Patterns, and Forest Resources in Amazonia
2. Overview of Part II, Creating World Sustainability;
3. Groups will meet to advance preparation for final presentations;
4. Lecture by Professor Hayes framing the enabling analysis based in part on the readings below.

Please read these articles from Schroyer and Golodik, Creating a Sustainable World:

1. Schroyer: Sustainability as Regenerating Knowledge Systems, pp. 135-142
2. Siddhartha: Cultural Alternatives to Development in South India, pp. 175-188
3. Lewitt: Participatory Democracy and Porto Alegre, pp. 253-262
4. Schroyer: Sustainability as Capacity Building and Democratization of Wealth, pp. 215-222;

Class lecture and discussion, based on readings:

1. Professor Hayes lecture and discussion on ecological economics, which expands on Hayes, Economic Strategies for Sustainability, in Schroyer and Golodik, pp. 189-212
2. Review articles in Schroyer and Golodik by Montague and Sachs for ecological economic aspects.

Please also read from Schroyer and Golodik:

1. Makofske: The 21st Century Transition to Sustainable Energy, pp. 279-292
2. Gussow: Creating Sustainable Agriculture and Relocalizing Food Systems, pp. 263-278
3. Schuman: Going Local: How Can We Create Viable Local Economies?, pp. 223-242

Class activities:

1. Presentation by Prof. Wayne Hayes: How Can We Transition to World Sustainability?
2. View PBS Wide Angle: The Burning Season.
3. McKibben, Deep Economy, Ch. 3, 4, 5, and Afterword, pp. 95-232
4. Group meetings for preparation of presentations.

We intend to wrap up the enabling analysis before the Thanksgiving break.

The student presentations will conclude World Sustainability. The presentations will count as half of your participation grade, 10%. We will assign the sequence and schedule the presentations before the Thanksgiving break.

The paper on the enabling analysis is due between December 10 and 17, the assigned exam date for this course.

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The World Sustainability Web Site | © Michael Edelstiein, Ph.D., Wayne Hayes, Ph.D., Ashwani Vasishth, Ph.D.
Initialized: 1/10/2007 | Last Update: 10/20/2009