Sustainability, Robustness, and Resilience
From Santa Fe Institute Events Wiki
| 2010 Global Sustainability Summer School |
Lecture 1: What is sustainability? How do we know if we have achieved it?
This lecture will largely be a discussion of the different perspectives on what sustainability is, and how we measure it (in part informed by the earlier lectures in the course). As a class, we will cover definitions of sustainability, our ethical obligations to the future, what implications that has (if any) for our ethical obligations to the present, measures of sustainability, and the role of the scholar in the sustainability movement.
Recommended reading: Partha Dasgupta. Human Well Being and the Natural Environment. Oxford University Press 2001. [the entire book is worth reading, but clearly you do not have to purchase and read prior to class.]
Lecture 2: Ecosystem services and natural capital
As a class, we will explore what ecosystem services are (and aren’t), the role of biodiversity in supplying ecosystem services, the management strategies for ecosystem services, and the relationship of ecosystem services to natural capital.
Recommended reading: The Millennium Assessment Synthesis Report (this can be found at http://www.millenniumassessment.org/en/Index.aspx, click on “overall synthesis” under synthesis reports
Lecture 3: Resilience
In this lecture, I will give an overview of the resilience conceptual framework, explore its relationship to sustainability, and discuss its applications and limitations.
Recommended Reading: Assessing and managing resilience in social-ecological systems: A practitioners workbook (Vol 2). This can be accessed at http://www.resalliance.org/3871.php; scroll to the bottom of the page and click on the SECOND publication (VOL 2). [There is no good and brief overview of resilience, and this is meant to accompany a case-study working book for managers or practitioners to assess resilience in their own systems. But it does give an overview of some of the major concepts in resilience.]