ENS5020 Perspectives on sustainability

This unit, together with ENS5010, sets the context for considering the interactions and interdependence between nature and society and the basic principles of sustainability (social, economic and environmental), as reflected in the Sustainable Development Goals.

This unit explores the values and perspectives of stakeholders alongside existing social structures that inform and affect how global challenges (as taught in unit ENS5010) are perceived and acted upon.

Within society there are varied understandings of the relationships between the social, environmental and economic dimensions of sustainability. How sustainability is viewed and addressed is shaped by a diversity of multi-stakeholder perspectives and value systems along with their capacity to influence economic, regulatory, and policy regimes.

This unit develops your capacity to map and critically analyse:

i) multi-stakeholders and social structures affecting sustainability;

ii) different ideological, cultural, philosophical, psychological and disciplinary perspectives on sustainability; and,

iii) their implications for policy making, development of business cases, disciplinary research, and action.