Studying at York
Sustainability II: understanding sustainability as change through time - ARC00096M
Module summary
The twin concepts of sustainability and conservation that are so pivotal within current debates regarding economic development, climate change and biodiversity protection both contain an inherent temporal dimension: both refer to the need to balance short-term gains with long-term resource maintenance. In asking whether a system is sustainable it is thus necessary to also ask: sustainable for how long, sustainable for who and how many, and sustainable under what economic and environmental conditions? This module examines the ways these questions can be addressed, with a focus on the techniques that can study change through time: archaeology, ecology, ecological economics, history, historical ecology, political ecology and palaeoecology.
Professional requirements
None
Module will run
| Occurrence | Teaching period |
|---|---|
| A | Semester 2 2024-25 |
Module aims
This module frames sustainability and resilience as fundamentally a question of change and continuity through time, and explores how we can use an understanding of the recent and distant past to assess the sustainability of a system. In some cases these systems may be small (e.g. community level resource procurement) and of short duration, or they may be very large and of long duration (e.g. societal changes or climate change), or indeed complex interactions of small and fast changes that both influence and are influenced by gradual and expansive processes.
Module learning outcomes
By the end of the module, students should be able to:
- Demonstrate an understanding of how the terms sustainability and resilience have been used within different disciplines and policies
- Demonstrate an understanding of how perceptions of the past shape our perceptions of a system’s sustainability
- Demonstrate an understanding of past changes through a variety of research techniques contributes to sustainability studies and sustainability science.
- Convey complex ideas in an analytical framework through presentations and the production of policy briefs and practice briefs.
- Critically assess the potential and challenges of evidence-informed policy
- Tailor communication styles to audiences, and that different interest groups might take different messages from the same research results.
Module content
The module is largely seminar based teaching, and is discussion and participant led. Uniquely, the course takes a long-term and interdisciplinary perspective drawn from archaeology, anthropology, ecology, economics, history, and human geography to explore the concepts of economic and ecological ‘base-lines’, ‘biodiversity’, ‘environmental justice’, ‘equilibrium’, ‘legacy effects’, ‘poverty traps’, ‘resilience’ and related ideas. We begin by looking at the origins of resilience theory within ecology and the rejection of the idea that ecosystems exist in equilibrium; moving on to critically explore the concept of ecological/historical baselines; then noting parallels and contrasts between resilience theory, supply-side sustainability, and the notion that sustainable development can be achieved by leaning from the ‘indigenous knowledge’ of societies in the past and present. From here we will look at attempts to combine these ecological and human perspectives through the concepts of socio-ecological systems and human ecodynamics, noting the strengths and weaknesses of these highly interdisciplinary approaches. Ultimately the module asks how knowledge of past changes can help us anticipate and plan for future social and environmental change.
Indicative assessment
| Task | % of module mark |
|---|---|
| Essay/coursework | 50 |
| Essay/coursework | 50 |
Special assessment rules
None
Indicative reassessment
| Task | % of module mark |
|---|---|
| Essay/coursework | 50 |
| Essay/coursework | 50 |
Module feedback
Formative: oral feedback from module leaders
Summative: written feedback within the University's turnaround policy
Indicative reading
Ellis, Erle C., Nicolas Gauthier, Kees Klein Goldewijk, Rebecca Bliege Bird, Nicole Boivin, Sandra Díaz, Dorian Q. Fuller, et al. (2021) ‘People Have Shaped Most of Terrestrial Nature for at Least 12,000 Years’. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 118, no. 17 (27 April 2021): e2023483118. https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.2023483118.
Fisher, C. (2019). Archaeology for Sustainable Agriculture. Journal of Archaeological Research 28: 393–441.
Willis K.J. and Birks, H.J.B. (2006). What is natural? The need for a long-term perspective in biodiversity conservation. Science 314 (5803): 1261–1265.