MGLO 4004 Sustainability Issues in Latin America
"Latin America is an exceptional case to analyse the challenges of sustainable development. On one hand, poverty rates throughout the region have declined steadily during the last decades. Endowed with one of the largest stocks of available land for agricultural expansion, the region is also one of the most urbanised in the developing world. On the other, the region hosts many of the global ‘biodiversity hotspots’ where critical biomes (e.g. tropical rainforest, grass savanna, alpine tundra) are severely threatened by deforestation, habitat loss, and pollution from extractive industries. Moreover, most countries in Latin America still rank high as some of the most unequal in terms of income and land distribution. Understanding these contrasting and often contradictory realities admits no simplistic approaches.
This course introduces some of the main environmental and social justice issues that define naturesociety interactions in the region and invites students to explore some provoking questions: what is distinctive —if anything— about the main issues and challenges of sustainability in Latin America? Is it possible for the region to turn those challenges into a source of widespread prosperity? If so, how? From an initial historical analysis about how space and territory were configured right after Spanish conquest, the course moves on to address the political economy of contemporary sustainability challenges in the region. It concludes with a critical reflection on future possibilities.
Founded on participant-centred methods whereby the pedagogical focus shifts to students as active contributors to knowledge generation, the course expects all participants to engage thoroughly with reading materials, cases and discussions as a necessary condition for individual and collective learning. At the end, participants will develop a deeper and more acute understanding of the nature, complexity and opportunities underlying sustainable development in the region in the hope that this will inspire them to help bring about profound, scalable change."
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