【Course description】

Sustainable Development” is an imperative topic for global citizens. It is defined as balancing economic growth, society, and the environment, not only for ourselves but for future generations. But is such a thing possible in the first place? What is the historical background of this concept, which encompasses conflicts of interest, what actors are involved, is it possible to achieve a win-win-win situation, and what kind of innovative thinking is needed to accomplish this? With creativity and critical thinking skills, you all need to redefine this concept for yourselves and implement your ideas.

To get clues to these questions, we need to know the historical and political background of the “development” concept, its contextual assumptions, and its environmental carrying capacity as a limit to our perception of what we really need.

This lecture will provide an opportunity to reflect on what we want future development to be and how to pursue our shared future goal of “sustainable development.”