BESTs will be formulated according to student interests during the first week of classes. BESTs will be teams of 3-4 persons working on a final report on a topic of their choice chosen from the table below.

Resource System   &  Threats to Environmental Sustainability	The "Americas"	Africa	Asia-Pacific
Subregions	North America, Central America, South America	North Africa, Subsaharan Africa, Middle East	East Asia, Southeast Asia, South Asia, Melanesia, Oceania
Rivers, Water & Urbanization/Agriculture	The Colorado River	The Nile River	The Citarum River, Indonesia  Costa-Pierce (1998)
Forests, Terrestrial Biodiversity & Terrestrial Food Production	The Amazon River Basin	Zimbabwe; Botswana	Indonesia; Solomon Islands
Oceans, Aquatic Biodiversity & Aquatic Food Production	Puget Sound to British Columbia	The Benguela Current (Namibia)	The Indonesian Ocean; The Bohai/Yellow Sea, China
Hydropower, Solar Energy & Energy Needs	Los Angeles, California	Lagos, Nigeria	Beijing, China
Some Useful Links  The World Bank  The Reality of Aid 1997/98  Land Tenure Center  UNEP GRID	Inter-American Foundation	Habitat in Developing Countries	Asian Development Bank

    Each week, each BEST will have a rotating facilitator who is responsible for (1) conducting discussions on aspects of the topic with team members who are bringing new materials to the group each week, and (2) for reviewing progress on the final report outline the BEST has formulated for its final report (the generalized report outline is shown below).

    Each student is responsible for (1) researching with the help of the instructor (and other students) the materials for the report, and bringing new ideas and materials to each discussion class, and (2) joining in a weekly chat session over the WWW on the project.

    The goals of the projects are to use the WWW and the science literature to develop a more effective educational experience for students that is both individualized and global, but maintains the rigor and high scientific standards of the University of California. Students will also develop team building, facilitation, and interaction skills in the course since they will serve as a team leader/facilitator, team member, and, hopefully become, a new, and valued colleague.

    Each BEST final report will be posted on the WWW pages in the Program in Global Sustainability after being edited by students and lastly by the course instructor. Students will work with the instructor to post their work on the web. Student reports can serve as the basis of future publications in newspapers, as fodder for legislation, and as scientific contributions.
 
 

Report Structure
 

1. Title and Outline.
2. Introduction: The setting. The overall issues and study objectives.
3. Social Aspects. The social capital (Goodland and Daly [1996]). Demographics.
4. Technical Aspects. The natural capital (ecosystems and ecosystems services, Goodland and Daly [1996]).
5. Problems. Social, political, economic, technical constraints to sustainability.
6. Opportunities. The "basket of options" available to overcome problems and constraints.
7. Recommendations. Ranked in order of important but comprehensive.
8. References. Complete resource documentation of literature and WWW resources.

COURSE NOTE BOARD FOR WEEKLY DISCUSSION SESSIONS

Submission of Report Sections as Assignments

    There are six (6) sections of the final report you are to submit as individual assignments in this course. Each student will work in teams of 3-6 persons on their class project but will submit individual assignments, draft, and final reports on the schedule detailed below.

    For the assignments, each one must be submitted in hard copy and ON DISK.

Grading
 

WebGlimpse	Search Options
Search: The neighborhood of this page The full archive