These are the four themes of Sustainability World:

Sustainability

 

Fundamentals of Sustainbablity

Why Sustainability & Well-Being

– What’s ‘Sustainability’

What’s sustainable development

 

– The Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs)

– Well-Being

 

People & Human Needs

Human needs

Agriculture

  • How agriculture has evolved
  • How to ‘feed the world’
  • Intensive crop production
  • Meat & dairy production
    • ‘Industrial’ meat & dairy
    • ‘Traditional’ meat & dairy
    • Pastoral
  • Agro-ecology
    • Permaculture
  • Water use in agriculture
  • Energy use in agriculture
  • Pollution caused by agriculture
  • Underlying issues

Economics & commerce

  • What type of economy?
    • ‘Classical’ (linear) economy
    • ‘Circular’ economy
    • ‘Collaborative’ economy
    • ‘Green’ economy
    • ‘Positive’ economy
  • What drives business?
  • Marketing
  • Measures of progress

Education

  • Why education is important – What’s its purpose?

– Energy

  • Energy use & waste (domestic, industrial, agriculture, transport)
  • Energy production & distribution
    • Non-renewable
      • fossil
      • nuclear
    • Renewable
      • biomass
      • geothermal
      • hydro (large & small)
      • solar
      • wind

Food

  • Global food supply
  • Food waste
  • meat & dairy
  • nutrition

Health

  • Prevention or cure?
  • Different approaches to treatment
  • Current health issues
    • mental health
    • anti-biotic resistance
    • ‘new’ diseases
    • pharmaceuticals
    • obesity
    • cholesterol?

Health (continued)

  • Current health issues
    • mental health
    • anti-biotic resistance
    • ‘new’ diseases
    • pharmaceuticals
    • obesity
    • cholesterol?

Information

  • Why access to information is important
  • How information is – can be – shared
  • How information can be manipulated (‘information is power’)
  • Censorship?
  • Internet & social media
  • Benefits and downsides
    • Nothing’s free…
    • How reliable is what you find on the Internet? Fake news
    • Data theft
    • Energy (and environmental) costs of Internet use and how to reduce them

Livelihoods and poverty

– Rights

  • How human rights came to be recognized
  • UN Human Rights instruments
    • The Universal Declaration of Human Rights, 1948
    • International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, 1966
    • International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, 1966
    • Other covenants related to human rights
  • How ‘universal’ are human rights?
  • Other instruments and ‘Bills of Rights’
    • The proposed ‘Global Bill of Rights’
  • How ‘human rights’ are respected and protected
  • How ‘human rights’ are denied and violated
    • Slavery
  • Rights…and duties?
  • Rights of corporations?
  • Rights of nature?
    • Does nature have rights?
    • Ecocide
  • The SDGs and Human Right
  • Justice
  • Housing & physical infrastructure
  • Culture; Recreation and tourism
  • Dignity; Participation & social relations
  • Empathy; Values; Beliefs
  • Underlying issues

Peace and security

– Population & migration

Planetary & ecosystem needs

Climate change / Global warming

  • What’s the evidence?
  • What’s driving climate change?
    • Greenhouse gases (CO2 and other)
  • What are the effects of climate change?
  • Who is affected ?
  • What’s being done ?
    • Reduction of GHG emissions
    • CO2 sequestration
    • Adaptation to climate change
  • The SDGs and climate change
  • The UN Convention on Climate Change (UNCC)
  • What we, as individuals and communities, can do about climate change
  • What businesses do about climate change?

Biodiversity

  • What is biodiversity? Why is it important?
  • What are the threats to biodiversity
  • The Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD)
  • Underlying issues

– Forests

  • How forests have been exploited, and have declined
  • The importance of forests
  • Deforestation – current causes and effects
  • What is REDD? Is it good or not?
  • What we’re learning about trees
  • Underlying issues

– Mountains

  • The importance of mountain ecosystems
  • Mountain livelihoods under threat

 

 – Oceans

  • The importance of oceans
  • Fishing & fish stocks
  • Acidification
  • Pollution
    • Plastic
    • Chemicals – coastal dead zones
    • Shipping (noise & waste)

– Planetary boundaries

  • How the boundaries were defined
  • Which boundaries have already been exceeded

Pollution

  • Air
    • Domestic emissions (gases & particulates)
    • Industrial emissions
    • Transport emissions
  • Land
    • Domestic waste
    • Industrial waste
    • Agro-chemicals
  • Rivers, lakes & groundwater (freshwater)
    • Domestic waste
    • Industrial waste
    • Agro-chemicals
    • River transport
  • The costs of pollution
    • Economic costs and who pays
    • Environmental costs

– Wetlands

  • The importance of wetlands
  • The Ramses Convention

Critical underlying issues:

– Accountability

  • Personal and political accountability
  • Corporate accountability

– Beliefs

– Consumerism / Citizenship

– Inequality

  • Inequalities in wealth
    • The extent of wealth inequalities
    • The effects of wealth inequalities
  • Inequalities in income
    • The extent of income inequalities
    • The effects of income inequalities
  • Rural vs urban
  • Gender inequalities

– Justice & governance

Money & Finance…

  • Where does money come from?
  • How funds are allocated
  • Impact investing

– Political decision making

  • democracy ?

– Relationship with nature

– Resource use

– What counts (is counted)

  • Private profits, public costs…
  • Corporate social responsibility
  • Natural resource accounting
  • Environmental and social …
  • Gross domestic product (GDP)
  • Measures of happiness
  • The human development index
  • Other measures of ‘progress’…

– Values & Ethics

  • Personal values
  • Shared, collective values
  • Respect
  • Individualism

– Complexity ?

 

 

The Sustainability.World site is being developed now.  We aim to have it grow with contributions by interested people of the community.

We particularly need Volunteers to help with themes and topics listed on this page :

  • Participate in organizing / editing / formatting information and content we already have
  • Give feedback on the Sustainability.World site
  • Create children’s pages for the themes and topics (people interested or knowledgeable in how children learn and what captures their attention)
  • Create / collect / list interesting facts, quizzes, images, videos …
  • Create content (posts and core content) to be uploaded to the site (writers & researchers)
  • Develop the site’s functionalities and form (web-developers, web-designers and UX-designers).

 

You can see some contributions to posts here; you can upload your contributions here; or just get in touch here.

The Sustainability.World site is being developed now.  We aim to have it grow with contributions by interested people of the community - register here.

We particularly need Volunteers to help with themes and topics listed on this page:
(click here to download the list)

  • Participate in organizing / editing / formatting information and content we already have
  • Give feedback on the Sustainability.World site
  • Create children's pages for the themes and topics (people interested or knowledgeable in how children learn and what captures their attention)
  • Create / collect / list interesting facts, quizzes, images, videos
  • Create content for posts and core information, to be uploaded to the site (writers & researchers)
  • Develop the site's functionalities (web-developers, web-designers and UX-design).

You can see some contributions to posts here; you can upload your contributions here, or just get in touch here.