For Instructors
Each Blue Planet Prize Story contains three supplementary units: Story Guide; Further Reading and Research; and For Instructors.
These contain useful information that instructors can use to help students understand the content. Please use these during classes and provide to students for their self-learning.
[Target Audience: Teachers, parents, and others involved in education]
Summary of the Story
Prof. Mohan Munasinghe, a development economist, has been working to address inequality and environmental issues, and he proposed a wide range of important concepts, including his Sustainomics, framework for making development more sustainable; Balanced Inclusive Green Growth (BIGG), which calls for each country to take a sustainable development path in accordance with its development stage; and the Millennium Consumption Goals (MCGs), which ask the affluent, who consume most global output, to adopt consumption goals to reduce the burden on the planet. These are significant ideas that are relevant to the current Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).
Many solutions presented by Prof. Munasinghe are viable at a personal level. Teachers should help students explore opportunities leading to a change in behavior and thinking based on the concepts proposed by Prof. Munasinghe.
Teaching Examples
If you have trouble finding teaching material, please see the examples provided below.
Sustainomics workshops
Sustainomics workshops provide students with chances to learn about sustainable development based on four principles, help them consider what they can do as individuals, and encourage them to take action. By following the procedures, they can learn how to act independently and how to maintain that activity on a regular basis.
(1) Harmonizing the sustainable development triangle (economy, environment, society)
Students are asked to write down potential problems to be solved to achieve sustainable development. Instructors should help students understand SDGs and also the Sustainomics triangle from three viewpoints: economic, environmental, social.
Examples: disparity in wealth, gender gap, global warming, shortages of resources, COVID-19, etc.
(2) Empowering individuals to be proactive
Students are asked to set daily targets to solve the problems they think of in (1) above. Each target should be manageable so that they can continue every day.
Example: Bring your own drink bottle for a month.
Please use the examples of things we can do in our daily life that are introduced in Sustainable Development and Climate Change Made Easy by Prof. Munasinghe.
Sustainable Development ways you could contribute | |
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Home | Office |
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Travel | Ohters |
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(3) Breaking down and transcending the barriers in our own minds
Students are asked to write down some problems that may be barriers to achieving the targets they set in (2) above, such as the barrier in our individual minds, the barrier between people, the spatial barrier, and the barrier of time. They are also asked to think of ways to overcome the barriers and about the advantages of doing so.
Example: Bring your own drink bottle for a month.
[Barrier in our minds] | A bottle is heavy and it's a hassle to prepare tea or coffee every day. |
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[Solution] | Use a small bottle. Bring water instead of drinks that need to be prepared. |
[Merit] | You don't need to purchase beverages in disposable containers and so waste is reduced. |
(4) Implementing
Next, just implement, implement, and implement. To involve the students, use a game format to encourage them to put into practice every day what they have chosen, and evaluate their progress periodically.