Module
1: Goals and objectives of rural sustainable
development
Objectives
Students
will be able to understand the notions of sustainable development and their
origin.
Students
will understand how the characteristics of rural communities.
Students will
begin to think about the relevance of the concepts of sustainable development
to rural communities.
Background
We
begin the course by reviewing definitions of sustainable development and rural
and to consider how the ideas of sustainable development may be applied to the
issues that rural communities face. Sustainable development has become
the dominant idea shaping policy towards the environment. We start to analyze this
idea by reviewing the document generally credited with popularizing sustainable
development: Our Common Future (WCED,
1987). We next shift our attention to develop an understanding of the meaning
of “rural.” By
way of introducing the current issues faced by rural communities in one of the
North American countries, the United States, we learn how policy makers define
this geographic term and we assess the results of a survey on the experiences
and attitudes of inhabitants in rural communities in the United States. We finally attempt to place this
detailed perspective of rural communities alongside of the more abstract notion
of sustainable development.
Lecture
Following
are video and slide presentations for each part of the lecture. The videos are
in MPEG-4 (.mp4) files format, which can be viewed with a variety of video
viewers, such as Quicktime and RealPlayer. The slides
are available as pdf files.
Part
1: Introduction to the course (pdf file of
Powerpoint presentation)
Part 2: Global Efforts for Sustainable Development (pdf file of Powerpoint presentation)
Part 3: Definitions, terms
and concepts related to rural areas and populations
Video (33:30 minutes, 25.6 MB)
Slides (pdf file of Powerpoint
presentation)
Readings
Other Resources
Jamieson, D. (1998) “Sustainability and
beyond,” Ecological Economics,
24:183–192.
John, Patricia La Caille, Rural
Information Center (U.S.), “What is Rural?”
Beltsville, MD : USDA, National Agricultural Library,
Rural Information Center, [2008] http://www.nal.usda.gov/ric/ricpubs/what_is_rural.shtml
Kusmin, L., Rural America at a Glance,
2009 Edition, US Department of Agriculture, Economic Research Service,
Washington, DC http://www.ers.usda.gov/publications/eib40/
Discussion
Questions
1.
Are the definitions and
notions of sustainable development useful?
2.
What is different about rural
areas when compared to urban areas?
3.
What is the role
of rural areas in sustainable development and vice versa?
4.
Who do you
consider are the main actors of change in sustainable rural development and
why?
Evaluation
Students
will write a three-page reflection paper on the discussion questions.
Vocabulary
sustainability
sustainable development
rural
Faculty contact(s) for
Questions of Clarification
Alex
Mayer (asmayer@mtu.edu)