Theme 1: Ecological Realities
How do Ecological Realities Necessarily Frame Our Planetary Existence?
Living Tensions:
- Common spaces: Ecological footprints, atmospheres, biospheres, eco-spheres
- Shared danger signs: rising sea levels, desertification, soil degradation
- Relations of human and ecological value: static or dynamic
- Biological diversity: its past and prospects
- Universal and variable impacts on environments
Theme 2: Participatory Process
Whose Sustainable Future?
Living Tensions
- Who or what deserves equal concern?
- Can we act locally without thinking globally?
- Living personally without knowing politically?
- Politics of boundaries: natural, public, private resources?
- Women and men; children and the elderly; families and villages
- Wellbeing and quality of life
- Public knowledge: the role of the media and government
Theme 3: Economic, Social and Cultural Context
What are the Pressing Demands of Our Time?
Living Tensions
- Diversity and Meanings: cultural sustainability and sustainable heritage development
- Reconfiguring the economic equation: contesting “financial years” and “instant gratification”
- Changing patterns and cultures of consumption
- Science and technology vs environmental sustainability?
- Free trade and fair trade
- Urbanization and the sustainability of human settlement
- Climate change: impacts and responses
Theme 4: Education, Assessment and Policy
Framing Responsibility to Act?
Living Tensions
- Balancing good governance and responsible citizenship
- Negotiating the hidden hand of personal self-interest
- Biotechnology and its critics
- self-government, self-management, and cultural autonomy.
- Accountability: beyond financial years and bottom lines
- Poverty and its eradication
- Measuring impacts: environmental assessment
- Environmental education in a time of eco-systemic crisis