Skip to 0 minutes and 17 seconds Nature, decisions, policy, fairness. It’s about the fairness in making decisions about nature, the natural environment, and how policies are derived from those decisions.
Skip to 0 minutes and 36 seconds The course is designed for the participants to learn about the basic principles and to teach people how to apply those principles to, first of all, classic case studies and then to case studies that are drawn from our own research. And when we draw in the case studies from our own research, then we’re doing that in a debate format. The case studies that we’re choosing from our own research are ones that deal with the natural environment and particularly in relation to fairness in decision-making and natural environmental policy. So for example, in the first research led case study, we have a group of people from Nepal coming together and debating issues surrounding agriculture, irrigation, and forestry.
Skip to 1 minute and 26 seconds In the second case study, we have some researchers from University of Leeds who are looking specifically at ecosystem services and the conflicts that surround the application of policy to that area. In the course, what we’re trying to do is to start off with some basic principles and then use those principles in examples to see how we can act with integrity in making decisions. It’s the application of these principles to the case studies that really is what the MOOC is about. And what we want to do is for the students who participate in the course to learn how to do that so that in 10 years’ time, they’ll be able to do it themselves.
Skip to 2 minutes and 6 seconds I think the kind of person that would be really interested in this course is somebody at a university in either a developed or developing country, somebody who’s interested in natural resource management, perhaps, actually applying the kind of things we’re talking about in a real-life context, or high school students who would be interested to see this sort of thing that we teach here at the University of Leeds.
Skip to 2 minutes and 32 seconds The University of Leeds is a very exciting place to work and study. We’ve specialised in interdisciplinary work. What we’re doing here is bringing together the different disciplines to tackle the hard questions, things like climate change, genetically modified organisms, the dreadful effect of Chernobyl. We’ve enjoyed making this course. And we hope it sounds exciting and stimulating for you. If so, please join me on a journey which will help you to make difficult decisions with integrity when worlds collide.
