Department of Geography and Resource Management

GRMD 2301 Sustainable Development Department of Geography and Resource Management The Chinese University of Hong Kong Shatin, N.T., Hong Kong First term, 2010-2011 https://moodle.cuhk.edu.hk

GRMD 2301 - Sustainable Development

Instructors: Dr. Lawal Marafa (Rm. 229, Wong Foo Yuan Bldg, Tel: 2609-6471, E-mail: [email protected]) Prof. Xu Yuan (Rm. 206, Wong Foo Yuan Bldg, Tel: 2609 6647, E-mail: [email protected]) Tutor: Mr. Fan Xiaopeng (Rm. 234, Wong Foo Yuan Bldg, Ext: 6541, E-mail: [email protected])

Lecture Time: Monday 4:30pm – 6:15pm Location: ERB407

Course Description

Sustainable development is based on three criteria: environmental protection, social progress and economic development. Production and consumption methods must respect the human and natural environment to enable all the earth’s inhabitants to satisfy their basic needs (food, shelter, clothing, education, work, and live in a healthy environment). Yet, in a world with over 6 billion people, this is more easily said than done, hence the problems of environmental degradation, social disintegration related to these problems. and economic stagnation in many parts of the world. This is a topical course on various issues related to the reasons why the present path of development is unsustainable, and the solutions put forward to make the world a more sustainable place. Case studies from around the world will be used to illustrate the problems and solutions.

Course Objectives

 To broaden students’ understanding of the historical, geographical, political, economic, social and cultural factors that can explain the unsustainable development pattern that we find ourselves in.  Through a discussion of various case studies and current issues from around the world, to enable students to understand the difficulties we face when attempting to move to a more sustainable course.

Expected Learning Outcomes

After successfully completing this course, the students will be able to:

 Understand the conflicting views on the reasons for the lack of a more sustainable development.  Recognize where the solutions may lay, but the economic, social and environmental constraints to the adoption of these solutions.  Enhance the skills necessary to interpret the policies of governments and international organisations.

1 Teaching and Learning Activities

 Lecture series: two hours a week. These will provide the basic concepts and theoretical basis for the analysis of specific issues.  The course is supported by moodle (https://moodle.cuhk.edu.hk), which provides a forum for discussions, exchanges, and updates of information covered in the course.  Field site visits will help students familiarise themselves with the problems faced by Hong Kong, and the solution brought forward locally to make the development of Hong Kong more sustainable.

Course outline

Date Topic Speaker 06.09.10 Introduction to Sustainable Development: Origin and Lawal Marafa Week 1 Evolution 13.09.10 Institutional set-up for sustainable development Lawal Marafa Week 2 20.09.10 The sustainability debate: Class Forum (Video) Lawal Marafa Week 3 27.09.10 Is transgenic agriculture sustainable agriculture? (A) Lawal Marafa Week 4 04.10.1 Is transgenic agriculture sustainable agriculture? Lawal Marafa 0 (B: Video) Week 5 11.10.10 Natural resource use and development Lawal Marafa Week 6 18.10.1 Sustainability and Urban living space (A) Lawal Marafa 0 Week 7 25.10.10 Sustainability and Urban living space (B: Video) Lawal Marafa Week 8 01.11.1 Development choices (Environmental Kuznets Yuan Xu 0 Curves, Solow’s arguments) Week 9 08.11.1 Limits to growth (population) Yuan Xu 0 Week10 15.11.1 The impacts of the rich and the poor on the Yuan Xu 0 environment Week11 22.11.1 Resource management and sustainable development Yuan Xu 0 (fishery, forestry, and oil) Week12 29.11.10 Uncertainty and sustainable development (energy Yuan Xu Week13 and climate change)

2 Assessment

Type of Assessment % of total grade Class Tasks & Participation 20% Term Paper 40% Final exam 40% - Short questions (20%) - MC questions (20%)

Term Paper Requirement

Each student is required to write an individual term paper between 1,300 and 1500 words long (5% will be deducted from the grade for every 100 words more than 1,500 or less than 1,300). The paper should include an introduction, main body of text, conclusion and references. The titles of the essay will be given to the student by Monday 27 September 2010. The final paper should be submitted to the tutor by 29 November 2010, at 5.30 PM (5% will be deducted for every 24 hours [or fraction of 24 hours] of delay). Submission by E-mail is acceptable through MOODLE. No references from Wikipedia are allowed. Those who use Wikipedia references will lose 5% of their grade.

*Additional guidance for the term paper will be given in the class.

Academic Honesty Guidelines

Attention is drawn to University policy and regulations on honesty in academic work, and to the disciplinary guidelines and procedures applicable to breaches of such policy and regulations. All work you submit for this course must be entirely your own creation. Any text, image, or idea taken from another source must be properly cited using the parenthetical citation method in your papers and presentations. Details may be found at http://www.cuhk.edu.hk/policy/academichonesty/. It is your responsibility to learn how to cite sources correctly. If you have any questions, please ask the tutors. Plagiarism will result in failure for the assignment. With each assignment, students are required to submit a statement that they are aware of these policies, regulations, guidelines and procedures.

3 4 GRMD 2301 - Sustainable Development

Required Readings Dailey, Bonnie, F. and Su-Chung Huang (2001) Achieving sustainability through attention to human resource factors in environmental management: International Journal of Production and Operations Management. Vol. 21 No. 12, pp. 1539 - 1552.

Hill, Malcolm. R. (2001). Sustainability, greenhouse gas emissions and international operations management. International Journal of Production and Operations Management. Vol. 21 No. 12, pp. 1503 - 1520.

Nelson, Robert . H. (1995). SUSTAINABILITY, EFFICIENCY, AND GOD: Economic Values and the Sustainability Debate. Annu. Rev. Ecol. Syst. 26: 135 - 154. Wilkinson, A. and M. Hills (2001). The Sustainability debate: International Journal of Production and Operations Management. Vol. 21 No. 12, pp. 1492 - 1502.

Jennifer A. Bellamy., Daniel H. Walker, Geoffrey T. McDonald and Geoffrey J. Syme (2001). A systems approach to the evaluation of natural resource management initiatives. Journal of Environmental Management, 63, 407–423.

JIN Bei. (2009). The relationship between resource and environmental regulationand industrial competitiveness. China Economist, No. 21. July – August. Shearman, R. (1990) The meaning and ethics of sustainability. Environmental Management,14:1-8.

David Satterthwaite (1999). Identifying environmental priorities in cities in the South. Ekistics, 394, January/February. 57 62.

Graham Haughton. (1997). Developing sustainable urban development models. Cities, Vol. 14, No. 4, pp. 189-195, Meg Holden. (2006).Urban indicators and the integrative ideals of cities. Cities, Vol. 23, No. 3, p. 170–183.

Recommended readings Clini, C. et al. (2008) Sustainable Development and Environmental Management [electronic resource]: Experiences and Case Studies Dordrecht: Springer [electronic resource in CUHK library]

Danilov-Danil'yan, V.I. et al. (2009) Sustainable Development and the Limitation of Growth: Future Prospects for World Civilization. Heidelberg : Springer [electronic resource in CUHK library]

Heikki J., Majoral R., Cullen B. (2002) Sustainable development and geographical space: issues of population, environment, globalization and education in marginal regions. Aldershot: Ashgate

Mottershead Terri (2004) Sustainable development in Hong Kong. Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press

Wheeler S.M. and Beatley T (2004) The sustainable urban development reader. London; New York : Routledge [electronic resource in CUHK library]

5 World Bank (2003) Sustainable development in a dynamic world: transforming institutions, growth, and quality of life. Washington, D.C.: World Bank [electronic resource in CUHK library]

Barron, W. &Steinbrecher, N. (1999). Heading Towards Sustainability? CUPEM, Hong Kong University, Hong Kong, Chapters 2, 3, 4, & 7.

Cole, K. (1999). Economy-Environment-Development-Knowledge. Routledge.

Lejano, R.P. and & Davos, C.A. (1999) Cooperative Solutions for Sustainable Resource Management. Environmental Management, 24:167-175.

World Commission on Environment and Development. (1987). Our Common Future, Oxford, OUP, Chapters 1, 2, 4, 5, and 10.

Redclift, M. (1987) Sustainable Development-Exploring the Contradictions, London, Routledge.

Solow, R. M. (1991) "Sustainability: An Economist's Perspective"

Dasgupta, S. et al., (2002)"Confronting the Environmental Kuznets Curve," The Journal of Economic Perspectives, vol. 16, pp. 147-168.

Meadows, D. H. et al., (2004) The limits to growth: the 30-year update. White River Junction, Vt: Chelsea Green Publishing Company.

The following two historically important papers are for you to read if interested. 馬寅初, 1957, 新人口論, http://www.people.com.cn/BIG5/shizheng/252/8434/8437/20020613/751940.html Malthus T.R. 1798. An essay on the principle of population, http://www.esp.org/books/malthus/population/malthus.pdf

Chakravarty, S. et al., (2009) "Sharing global CO2 emission reductions among one billion high emitters," Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, vol. 106, pp. 11884-11888, Jul 21.

Lambin, E. F. et al., (2001) "The causes of land-use and land-cover change: moving beyond the myths," Global Environmental Change-Human and Policy Dimensions, vol. 11, pp. 261- 269, Dec.

Pauly, D. et al., (2002) "Towards sustainability in world fisheries," Nature, vol. 418, 689-695.

Deffeyes, K. S., (2001) Hubbert's peak : the impending world oil shortage. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, http://press.princeton.edu/chapters/s8845.pdf (read Chapter 1) FAO, "Global Forest Resources Assessment 2005 - Progress towards sustainable forest management," Rome, Italy, 2006. (Particularly the Executive Summary and Chapter 8. Skim through the major findings in FRA 2010. the main report is forthcoming) http://www.fao.org/forestry/fra/fra2005/en/

Ludwig,D. et al., (1993) "Uncertainty, Resource Exploitation, and Conservation - Lessons from History," Science, vol. 260, pp. 17-&, Apr 2. COMEST, (2005)"The Precautionary Principle," United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization, Paris, France. 6 Stainforth, D. A. et al., (2005)"Uncertainty in predictions of the climate response to rising levels of greenhouse gases," Nature, vol. 433, pp. 403-406, Jan 27 2005. (Please don’t be afraid of the math. You only need to read the abstract. I just want to let you get a sense of the uncertainty problem.)

A movie that may be of interests: Children of Men (2006) (A question to think about: what if there are no future generations?)

Feedback for evaluation

Primarily, feedback information will be collected from student as follows:

 Early Course Evaluation (at the beginning of the teaching semester)  Course questionnaire  Tailored questionnaire  Reflection of teacher  Final course evaluation