Core Modules

Aim: to provide module participants with a general understanding of the challenge of food production and rural development in a context characterised by rapid growth in demand (due to population expansion), the dysfunctionality of many Green Revolution prescriptions, the impact of genetic engineering technologies (driven by large multinational companies), and the rise of the organic farming movement.  Course participants will be required to describe, analyse and critically evaluate the different options for ensuring food security from a sustainable development perspective. Central themes will include:
 

• review of the strengths and weaknesses of industrial agriculture
• the health and environmental impact of chemical fertilizers and pesticides
• long-distance trade, the rise of agribusiness and the decline of rural economies
• the emergence of genetically modified organisms (GMOs), biotechnology and free trade
• ecological agriculture as alternative to industrial agriculture and GMOs
• biodiversity as the key to ecological agriculture (organic farming, permaculture, biodynamic farming)
• rebuilding local rural economies via local trade and localised inputs
• case studies

The course will consider the practical and commercial application of the various technologies for biomass conversion into bio-energy.  The production of first and second generation bio-fuels as well as other forms of renewable energy, such as electricity, will be covered, with an emphasis on the critical issues of thermal efficiency, sustainability and commercial feasibility.  The following technologies for biomass conversion will be included:

• Bio-ethanol production, including substrate preparation, microbial conversion and separations
• Thermo-chemical conversions, including combustion, gasification and pyrolysis, and the use of these for green electricity production
• Biogas production, both from landfill sites, animal dung and waste water treatment
• Biodiesel production, including process basics, product purification and waste treatment
• the selection of the most appropriate technology from the demand side perspective will be a central thread through the course

Aim: to provide students with a general introduction to a theoretical field that has emerged in recent decades from the natural sciences and which has since penetrated both the management sciences and more recently certain sections of the social sciences. As the new paradigm for rethinking the connection between natural and social systems within the wider context of sustainability, it is essential that course participants have mastered the basic concepts of this approach. Central themes will include:

• history of systems thinking, with special reference to the emergence of conceptions of complexity, chaos and dynamic self-organising systems
• complexity, post-structuralism and the rethinking of science
• the organising principles of all life forms
• complexity and post-modernism
• implications of complexity theory for an understanding of the relationship between natural and human systems
• applications within the management and social sciences
• complexity and sustainability

This course would cover:

• The four main conventional energy sources (coal, oil, gas & nuclear)
• The usage of these energies in South Africa and the world
• Environmental impact and cost of each energy source
• The heat to electricity conversions cycle including:
  • different types of cycles
  • basic thermodynamics of these cycles
  • cycle efficiencies
  • cycle operating parameters

For students with a non-technical background, Renewable Energy Systems is strongly recommended before this course is taken

Aim: to provide module participants with an understanding of the mounting pressures on businesses to define their investment returns in terms that include social and environmental criteria, and how different businesses have responded to this challenge in different parts of the world. Course participants will be expected to be able to recognise and critically evaluate the approaches to corporate citizenship and apply the key principles and tools in different contexts and cases. Central themes will include:

• why sustainable development is an issue for businesses
• how businesses have responded to the social and environmental context since the 1970s
• review of the different management systems (Compliance controls, TQEM, EMS, Environmental Cost Accounting, Integrated Management Systems, Design for Sustainability)
• key initiatives: Natural Step, Koffi Annan’s Global Forum, Business for Social Responsibility, Commonwealth Corporate Governance initiative, the Prince Charles group, etc.
• building the civil corporation via integration of financial, social and environmental performance management
• the role of business in promoting and implementing sustainable development
• case studies and key lessons

Aim: this module will provide participants with an understanding of planning and environmental techniques and analysis, including situation analysis for integrated development plans incorporating demography, socio-economic conditions, poverty and inequality, regional and urban dynamics, and characteristics of the physical and natural environment. Techniques such as strategic environmental assessment (SEA), environmental impact analysis (EIA), sustainability assessments, cost-benefit studies, simulation models and terrain analysis will be addressed. The main themes are:

• socio-economic analysis and profiling of communities for integrated development planning
• analysing the physical environment within which people live
• sustainability and ecological indicators, including the ecological footprint of a city
• “pre-design” environmental analysis, “post-design” environmental impact assessment (EIA) and strategic environmental analysis (SEA)
• social and poverty impact analysis, including participatory analysis
• introduction to extracting, processing and presenting data on these aspects, using SuperCROSS, Excel and MSWord

Aim: this module will provide participants with an understanding of the constitutional, legislative, policy and procedural dimensions of the South African planning system, linking to what is happening in the rest of Africa and the world. The module will focus on how to promote justice, human rights, equity and sustainability through law. This will include an understanding of the distribution of planning powers and obligations across the different spheres of government, the concept of developmental local government, national and provincial planning, environmental, land use, land reform, rural and regional development legislation and policy. By the end of the course participants will be able to analyse, critique and apply these constitutional, legislative and policy frameworks. Central themes will include:

• planning, development and environmental management systems, both informal and formal systems, and their links to social systems
• making institutions, legislation and policy more responsive to poor people and the application of human rights and other normative approaches, such as environmental justice, the just city, deliberative democracy, and what constitutes citizenship
• the role of a developmental government and local authority and criteria to assess the success of their integrated development planning in promoting sustainability (both the products and the process)
• planning systems for sustainable development and environmental law
• criteria for analysing constitutional, legislative and policy frameworks

Aim: this module provides participants with an introductory overview of sustainable development planning as a study field and how it has replaced older types of planning. This includes an examination of its inter-, meta- and trans-disciplinary focus, the notion of planning as collaborative action, and the changing planning context brought about by the post-modern condition, the need for planning at different levels of government, and the introduction of new planning procedures and tools. The course will also look at the differences between substantive, procedural and normative theoretical models, as well as techniques and tools that are used in the management of development, best practice case studies, and ethical dilemmas in professional practice. The module will focus on substantive theory issues, such as poverty and inequity, the role of spatial planning within an integrated planning process, and regional and rural planning and sustainable human settlements. The main themes will include:

• planning within a globalised world, the role of markets versus planning and the process of planning
• the limits of planning, why planning fails and how it can be improved
• models of planning for dealing with complexity, diversity, uncertainty and rapid change
• planning tools and instruments for dealing with complex problems such as urbanisation and migration, poverty, social exclusion, inequity, inequitable and inefficient urban form and degradation of the built and natural environment

Aim: to enable module participants to describe, analyse, critically evaluate and apply the range of emerging techniques for designing and implementing sustainable communities. Central themes will include:

• overview of different conceptions of ecological design
• implications of global agreements and policies for the design professions
• review of the main international standards (e.g. ISO)
• trends in ecological urban design (“green urbanism”)
• trends towards “green architecture”
• “zero waste” perspectives on sanitation and solid waste management
• sustainable engineering solutions for energy alternatives (solar, wind, hydrogen) and car-dominated transportation systems
• sustainable food and water supplies for local communities, towns and cities
• decision-support systems for analysing and selecting building materials

Aim: given that the built environment is responsible for 50% of all CO2 emissions, and given that the world is no more than 50% urbanized, it follows that cities face huge challenges when it comes to making the transition to renewable energy and becoming more energy efficient. This course provides an overview of these challenges and an analysis of the wide range of interventions that are possible at the household, neighbourhood and city-wide levels. In particular, the following issues will be addressed:

• Energy consumption and urban growth
• Range of different types of energy consumption, including grid electricity, fossil fuels, biomass, and renewable energy sources
• Built environment and embodied energy
• Designing energy efficient buildings
• Energy designs for sustainable neighbourhoods
• Case studies and examples from around the world

Aim: to provide module participants with an understanding of the changing modes of governance at the local, national and international levels within a context characterised by globalised information-based economic dynamics, the rise of civil society and the challenge of sustainable development. The main themes will be:

• changing conceptions of governance over the last century (social democracy, liberal, statist, corporatist and now green)
• review of the institutional structures of global governance
• the rise of local governance and local economies
• the rise of civil society at the local and global levels
• the implications of sustainable development for governance at the global, regional, national and local levels
• case studies of “green states”

Aim: to enable module participants to develop leadership capabilities that are premised on the capacity to recognise, describe, analyse and apply the different ethical models and value systems that underpin social, economic and environmental action. Central themes will include:

• the underlying ethical value systems of different leadership approaches
• philosophical models for conceptualising environmental problems and the related approaches to environmental ethics
• relationship between environmental and social ethics, e.g. economic efficiency, freedom, equality and justice
• models of, and approaches to, leadership within society and human organisations
• the ethics of sustainability and process-oriented leadership
• complexity, ethics and leadership
• creativity, spirituality and personal unfolding
• case studies and exercises

The course will give the students a thorough understanding of the basic concepts of energy, power, mechanical work and heat. They will be able to evaluate the practical possibilities and limitations of renewable energies and compare it with conventional carbon based energy systems. The present energy resources and demands of the world will be analysed and renewable energy scenarios that are technologically feasible and economically viable for the future will be investigated. The main themes will include:

• concepts of energy, power, work and heat
• efficient conversions of different forms of energy into other useful forms
• basic principles of thermodynamics and electricity as applied in the use of energy
• resources, technology and viability of renewable energies: Geothermal, Hydro, Waves, Oceanic, Wind and Biomass;
• Solar Energy: solar water heating, principles and technologies of photovoltaic cells (PV) and solar-thermal generation of electricity
• future technologies: hydrogen economy, fuel cells
• energy statistics: resources and demands of energy in the world; future renewable energy scenarios

Aim: to provide module participants with a general and comparative understanding of the combined economic, social and environmental impact of the following three trends: the expansion of the world population to at least 9 billion people over the next 20 years, the transition to a predominantly urban world by 2005, and the negative environmental impact of urban systems that have yet to be re-designed in line with the principles of sustainable development. Given that the majority of the world’s largest cities will be in the developing world, it is these cities that will be the core focus of this course. Course participants will be required to critically evaluate and analyse current trends, and test and apply a range of policy alternatives. Central themes will include:

• comparative history of the city across the developed and developing world
• current urban trends, including urbanisation, urban poverty, urban economic trends and local governance
• the challenge of unsustainable urban systems for food supplies, waste, energy, water and CO2 emissions
• the social dynamics of cities, with special reference to African cities
• globalisation and the changing role of cities in the global economy
• policy prescriptions for urban problems from the main international institutions (World Bank Group, IMF and United Nations)
• case studies of sustainable development in practice

Aim: The course consists of a study of both Photovoltaics (PV) and Solar-thermal technologies for generating electricity from sunlight. The principles, manufacturing technologies, efficiencies, advantages and limitations of various PV cells will be considered. The students should be able do design a manufacturing plant as well as practical installations of various PV components in a cost effective way. The main themes will include:

• principles of operation of PV cells
• manufacturing technologies of crystalline and thin film PV cells
• balance of system (BOS): regulators, inverters and storage
• design of stand alone PV systems
• design of roof mounted grid connected PV systems
• design of large MW PV systems
• concentrators: combined heat and power generation (CHP)

The different solar-thermal systems will be introduced with the basic heat transfer and thermodynamics principles that apply.  Both bulk electricity generation and smaller stand alone systems will be covered. The main themes will include:

• theory of mirror reflection and concentration of sunlight
• absorption of concentrated sunlight: selective absorbers
• generation of electricity: Stirling and Rankine heat cycles
• combined heat and power generation (CHP)
• energy storage: heat and other technologies

(Note that this module is not a Development Planning module and does not deal with urban land use planning)

Participants will learn how to assess land use patterns in order to balance different land use requirements. They will understand how to apply modern landscape assessment techniques for better planning of land use changes with emphasis on African conditions. Content:

• Introduction: Land resources, threats, sustainability, Functions of land resources
• Land use planning techniques (spatial modelling, land use optimization, land suitability modelling)
• Integrated land use planning concepts; land use planning and rural development; key factors in integrated land use planning; problem and stakeholder identification; screening of options; evaluating resources, enforcement and implementation; monitoring and evaluation

Aim: The course gives an in depth understanding of sustainable biomass production systems including agricultural, forestry and agroforestry systems. Students will learn to assess the potential and limitations for energy from biomass from different sources. They will understand basic principles of sustainable biomass production as integrated part of Bio-Energysystems.

Content:

Foundations: Introduction, Definitions

Sources for Biomass, the potential for energy from biomass global productivity, factors limiting production, biomass production in Southern Africa – potential and limitations

Agricultural biomass production systems

• Main crops for energy production
• Farming systems

Forest production systems

• Tree species and woody products for Bio-Energy systems
• Forest plantations, Energy forests
• Natural Forest & Woodlands, multi-purpose forests
• Managing invasive tree species(forests)

Agroforestry systems

• Tree-Livestock (Silvipastoral) Systems
• Tree-Crop (Agrosilvicultural) Systems
• Socio-economic and environmental importance of AF in sustainable livelihoods