Sustainability Course Syllabus

ID811 CONCEPTUAL FOUNDATIONS & PERSPECTIVES OF SUSTAINABLE
DEVELOPMENT 3-0-1 4
AIM
The purpose of this course is two-fold.

First, to develop the theoretical and knowledge foundation on the concept of sustainable
development and to gain an empirical understanding of the emerging global challenges for
sustainable environmental and societal governance systems.
Second, to improve the communities, student’s and researcher’s ability and sophistication in
creating the necessary information links and feedback loops within the system to allow the
systems actors to possess wholesome understanding to develop sustainable solutions.This
would enable to visualise various factors that impact sustainability and propose a plan of action
for building sustainable communities.
1. Course Learning Outcome:

○ How sustainability considerations can actually be embedded within an
individual’s and community’s day to day activities and decision making processes
○ How existing sustainable development tools and methods can be
adjusted/fine-tuned accordingly
○ How to design sustainability performance metric to assess the impact on
community’s sustainable development
○ How to design feedback systems that can readjust the pathways of processes
and procedures to ensure success in implementing sustainable development
initiatives.
○ How to empower communities set sustainability targets using appropriate metrics
2. Learning Outcomes
○ Knowledge and Understanding

i. Understand the basic concept of Sustainable Development (SD), the
environmental, social and economic dimensions.
ii. In depth learning and analysis of factors that support to achieve
sustainability and resilience in an individual level and in a community
iii. Develop an encompassing understanding of sustainability issues.
iv. Understand the embedment of sustainability issues in environmental,
societal, and economic systems, and the relevance of the conditions,
interrelations, and dynamics of these systems.
v. Be familiar with potential strategic options for SD (efficiency,
sufficiency).
vi. Be able to discuss the (dis-)advantages of instruments for SD.
vii. Demonstrate knowledge and understanding of the current sustainable
development policies followed by selected countries.
viii. Demonstrate capability in designing specialized methodology for
designing and implementing localized sustainable development
measures.
ix. Understand the SD challenges for communities, industries, and
academic institutions, their responsibility and their potentials for action.
○ Competence and Skills

i. Demonstrate knowledge to integrate and analyze, assess and deal with
scenarios, and issues
ii. To enhance critical thinking skills and evaluation of information sources
iii. Be able to discuss the conflicts which are involved in the SD
concept on the local, national as well as on the global scale.
iv. To be able to identify different stakeholders in a challenge to
sustainability, and analyze the political and economic structures that
connect them.
v. Ability to assess the sustainable practices of any community based on
metrics
vi. Become critical and proactive thinkers and, with this, successful leaders
in the field
○ Judgement and Approach

i. Demonstrate judging capability of the impact of any decision on the
sustainable development metric of a community
ii. Approaches for assessing and judging the impact of processes, and
activities of sustainable development and community resilience of a
community
3. Syllabus
Introduction to Sustainable Development: Glimpse into History and Current practices -
Broad introduction to SD - its importance, need, impact and implications; definition coined;
evolution of SD perspectives (MDGs AND SDGs) over the years; recent debates; 1987
Brundtland Commission and outcome; later UN summits (Rio summit, etc.) and outcome.
Ecosystem & Sustainability: Fundamentals of ecology - types of ecosystems &

interrelationships, factors influencing sustainability of ecosystems, ecosystem restoration -
developmental needs. Introduction to sustainability & its factors, requirements for sustainability:
food security and agriculture, renewable resources - water and energy, non-renewable resources,
factors and trade-offs, sustainability conflicts, a conceptual framework for linking sustainability
and sustainable development.
Dimensions to Sustainable Development - society, environment, culture and economy; current
challenges - natural, political, socio-economic imbalance; sustainable development initiatives and
policies of various countries : global, regional, national, local; needs of present and future
generation - political, economic, environmental.
Gauging Sustainable Development - Sustainability and development indicators and SDGs,

UN’s outlook of sustainable development and efforts, UN SDGs - structure, governance and
partnerships; communities / society: ensuring resilience and primary needs in society; biosphere:
development within planetary boundaries; strengthening institutions for sustainability; shaping a
sustainable economy.
Frameworks of Sustainability - Analytical frameworks in sustainability studies, sustainability

metrics: criteria and indicators; the significance of quantitative and qualitative assessments of
sustainability; current metrics and limitations; metrics for mapping and measuring sustainable
development; application of the metrics in real scenarios
Critical Perspectives on Sustainable Development: Resource management and

implications on sustainable development - implications for valuation, risk assessment;
integrated decision-making processes: requirements of information, information flow, data
analytics, learning from historical data, multicriteria decisions, multi level decisions, participatory
decisions ; translating impact chains to information flows - impact of governance and policies
Case Studies & Projects on Rural Sustainable Development (Indian village perspectives) -
Village resources (broad perspectives); current challenges and thematic areas; village social
hierarchy; village economy; needs of present and future generation; conflicts - sustainability and
rural culture & tradition; road to achieving sustainable development goals - bridging conflicts and
way forward
4. Text Books/Reference Material

○ Franco, I.B. and Tracey, J. (2019), "Community capacity-building for sustainable
development: Effectively striving towards achieving local community sustainability
targets", International Journal of Sustainability in Higher Education, Vol. 20 No. 4, pp.
691-725
○ Our Common Journey: A Transition Toward Sustainability. National Academy Press,
Washington D.C. Soubbotina, T. P. 2004.
○ Elliott, Jennifer. 2012. An Introduction to Sustainable Development. 4th Ed. Routledge,
London.
○ Rogers, Peter P., Kazi F. Jalal, and John A. Boyd. "An introduction to sustainable
development." (2012).
○ Sachs, J. D. 2015. The Age of Sustainable Development. Columbia University Press,
New York.
○ Soubbotina, Tatyana P. 2004. Beyond Economic Growth: An Introduction to Sustainable
Development. WBI learning resources series. Washington DC ; World Bank.
○ Kerr, Julie. Introduction to energy and climate: Developing a sustainable environment.
CRC Press, 2017.
○ Saito, Osamu. Sharing Ecosystem Services. Springer Singapore, 2020.
○ Nhamo, Godwell, and Vuyo Mjimba. Sustainable Development Goals and institutions of
higher education. Springer, 2020.
○ Bell, Simon, and Stephen Morse. Sustainability indicators: measuring the
immeasurable?. Routledge, 2012.
○ Sørensen, Bent. Energy, Resources and Welfare: Exploration of Social Frameworks for
Sustainable Development. Academic Press, 2016.
○ Dent, David, Olivier Dubois, and Barry Dalal-Clayton. Rural planning in developing
countries: supporting natural resource management and sustainable livelihoods.
Routledge, 2013.
○ Sala, Serenella, Biagio Ciuffo, and Peter Nijkamp. "A systemic framework for
sustainability assessment." Ecological Economics 119 (2015): 314-325.
○ Gasparatos, Alexandros, and Anna Scolobig. "Choosing the most appropriate
sustainability assessment tool." Ecological Economics 80, no. 0 (2012): 1-7.
○ Stafford-Smith, Mark, David Griggs, Owen Gaffney, Farooq Ullah, Belinda Reyers,
Norichika Kanie, Bjorn Stigson, Paul Shrivastava, Melissa Leach, and Deborah
O’Connell. "Integration: the key to implementing the Sustainable Development Goals."
Sustainability science 12, no. 6 (2017): 911-919.
○ Streimikis, Justas, and Tomas Baležentis. "Agricultural sustainability assessment
framework integrating sustainable development goals and interlinked priorities of
environmental, climate and agriculture policies." Sustainable Development 28, no. 6
(2020): 1702-1712.

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ID811 CONCEPTUAL FOUNDATIONS & PERSPECTIVES OF SUSTAINABLE

The purpose of this course is two-fold.

1. Course Learning Outcome:

○ Knowledge and Understanding

○ Competence and Skills

○ Judgement and Approach

Ecosystem & Sustainability: Fundamentals of ecology - types of ecosystems &

Gauging Sustainable Development - Sustainability and development indicators and SDGs,

Frameworks of Sustainability - Analytical frameworks in sustainability studies, sustainability

Critical Perspectives on Sustainable Development: Resource management and

4. Text Books/Reference Material

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