2013-2014 Academic Catalog

May 04, 2024

2013-2014 Academic Catalog [ARCHIVED CATALOG]

EN 242 - Sustainable Development Assessment and Planning

We confront one of the most pressing issues of our time: How can society transition to more sustainable development? We discuss how 21st century impact assessment needs to evolve into a multi-stakeholder sustainability assessment process, how that can be done, its challenges and barriers. Beginning with the domestic U.S. context in Part 1, we explain the fundamentals of impact studies, and cover impacts on land resources, economy, air quality, water resources, health, historic resources, wetlands, wildlife, as well as social and cultural impacts. An emphasis is placed on which indicators of impact to use for each category, and how to measure them. In Part 2, we switch to an international context. This includes the capacity building needed for integrated environmental assessment and reporting for developing countries. Case studies are used extensively. The course has a major group project dimension: students work in teams to critically review current practice for typical development projects (e.g. wind farms, landfills, mining projects and dams), making arguments for how it should be improved.