For Instructors
"Blue Planet Prize Story" contains three supplementary units on environmental issues: "Guide to Understanding the Story, " "Reference Information, " and "For Instructors. "
This contains useful information that instructors can use to help students understand the content.
Please use these during classes and for self-learning by students.
[Target Audience: Teachers, parents, and others who are engaged in education]
Summary of the Story
Professor Partha Dasgupta possesses a wealth of knowledge and is interested in a wide range of academic fields. He has also advanced the field of research ahead of others, most notably in the prioritization of natural resources as essential for human beings, a concept that has enabled him to focus on finding ways to maintain wealth for future generations.
Professor Dasgupta placed increased importance on the value of natural resources in economics, verified their contribution to human welfare (quality of life), and placed natural resources at the center of economics as his lifework. His studies also focused on farming villages in poor developing countries rather than on cases in rich advanced countries. As a result, he found that natural resources have been significantly damaged in poor countries and that this worsened poverty.
His research found a strong correlation between poverty and the depletion of natural resources in the region. This led to the integration of environmental and resource economics, and poverty and development economics.
In addition, Professor Dasgupta conducted research on intergenerational equity at an early stage, which led to the concept of sustainable development.
He then developed the inclusive wealth index (IWI), which he presented at the United Nations Conference on Sustainable Development (Rio+20). The IWI is designed to measure increases and decreases in the productive base, which consists of systems and economic stock, including natural resources, as an index to quantitatively evaluate sustainable economic development. This index was highly regarded by world leaders and many researchers have continued working on developing further applications.
Teaching Examples
Useful information for teaching
Group Work
Students will work together to create and give a 5-10 minute presentation, which includes the concepts developed by Professor Dasgupta, in class. This will provide students the opportunity to better understand the current state of society and discuss what a desirable society for the future would be.
1. Divide students into small groups of 2 to 5 students and ask them to work together.
2. Show keywords to students and give them some time to gather information related to them.
Keywords are chosen in advance by the instructor from Professor Dasgupta's work.
e.g.) natural resources, inclusive wealth, sustainable development, poverty, etc.
*Students may collect information at the library or on the Internet. Therefore, it is appropriate to give them 1 or 2 weeks.
3. Use a large sheet of paper for each keyword, and have the students write down what they discovered while they were gathering information.
4. Provide students 5 to 8 large sheets of paper and ask them to think about the presentation. Students can create their presentation in any style of a presentation such as an informative or persuasive speech, debate, storytelling and so forth.
*While the students are creating their presentations, providing some hints from different or opposite viewpoints may help them find the right direction for the discussion.
e.g.) Developing countries - Advanced countries
Disorganized development - Sustainable development
GDP - Inclusive Wealth
Artificial capital - Natural capital
5. Students write details of the presentation on the paper.
6. Students write their conclusions at the end of the presentation.
7. Each group of students presents their results, and the class compares them.
Important points!
Please examine the presentation from the top to determine if it diverges significantly from the concepts developed by Professor Dasgupta.
Even if a presentation does diverge significantly from the concepts developed by Professor Dasgupta, please do not refer to it as a mistake. Instead, help students to learn that people and countries have different ways of thinking; and then, ask them to imagine what would happen if actual society faced these differences in thinking. (It is ideal that students choose the most rational way of thinking on their own.)
If the students' conclusions are all similar, please provide them with different concepts or viewpoints to give them a chance to consider how they would handle the different opinions. (Professor Dasgupta also points out that there is a possibility of opinions that represent extreme opposites such as "The global environment has not deteriorated at all," and "The global environment has significantly deteriorated.")
In the next step, it would be fun to expand the topic of discussion. For example, ask the students what wealth means to them, and ask them to present their ideas as a way to expand the discussion.