AP/SOSC 3802 3.00

Policy Making in Context: Development and Sustainability

This course explores the close relationship between sustainability and policy processes through the examination of policy debates around key development issues. Linking environmental sustainability with poverty reduction and social justice, and making science and technology work for the poor, have become central practical, political and moral challenges for development. Yet, despite growing international attention and investment policy attempts often fail. Why is this the case and what can be done about it? Students explore possible answers by examining different pathways, approaches, tools and methods of moving forward with sustainability.

Following an introductory section where central concepts and frameworks are developed, the course moves on to explore real-life and real livelihood experiences for policy debates. Examples include debates surrounding agri-food system governance, watershed management, and energy policy processes. The focus is on understanding the dynamic interrelationships between local context and wider national and international policy processes. Through a discussion on the values-based aims of sustainability, students learn why some approaches are dominant, even when they do not produce the desired results. This knowledge serves as the basis to identify alternative ‘pathways’ to respond more effectively to the challenges of sustainability.

Students will apply the knowledge and skills acquired to respond to a concrete sustainability challenge. Small teams of ‘consultants’ are assigned an urgent sustainability policy issues in development to investigate. Each team conducts desk-based research and prepares a short report, complete with technical findings and policy recommendations, which they will defend before a panel of ‘expert decision makers’ (the class).