DEVT 3007 - Climate Change and Sustainable Development

This course explores sustainable development in the context of climate change. Sustainable development has emerged as the global norm and dominant approach to reconcile the goals of economic development, environmental quality and social equity. It has been enshrined in the post-2015 international development agenda as Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Climate change is one of the SDGs because it is a global challenge and affects the achievements of all other SDGs. The course investigates how climate change and sustainable development are linked, and how both are combined in local, national, regional and international policy-making about environment and development challenges such as poverty, global inequalities, loss of biodiversity, and the deterioration of global ecosystems. The main purpose of the course is to examine the ways in which state, private sector and civil society interact on national and international levels to address climate change and sustainable development issues through better policy making and governance models and frameworks of sustainability. Major issues covered in the course, such as the global governance of climate change, and forest and energy governance, are explored through case studies from Australia and various other regions of the world.