The Age and Challenges of Sustainable Development
A Flipped Class Blended with the SDG Academy MOOC by Prof. Jeffrey Sachs
Class 96942 EST499/599 Research in Technology and Society on Sustainable Development
SUNY Korea, Fall Semester 2017, Aug. 28~Dec. 20
Instructor: Dr. Soogil Young (), Leading Professor
Teaching Assistant: Saebom Jin()
Schedule: 10:30~11:50am Tuesday & Thursday (except on Sept.12 and 21)
Office Hours at Rm. A619: 13:30~14:30pm Tuesday & Thursday, or by appointment
Overview & Syllabus
(August 21, 2017)
Background and Purpose of the Course
The era of sustainable development has opened with the launching of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development at the UN Summit on September 25, 2015, with 17Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) as its core. The SDGs commitnations around the world to coordinate efforts to restructure and transform the global in order for their economies and the global economy, and to shift to paths of economic development that are socially and environmentally sustainable by 2030. The SDGs will bring today’s generation of students exciting opportunities to lead the way forward with creativity and entrepreneurship in their respective future walks of life, be they businesses, academia, engineering, officialdom, diplomacy, civil society or philanthropy, in contribution to their implementation.
The purpose of this course is to provide students from around the world with a comprehensive understanding aboutthese opportunities, drawing on the most recent developments in the social, physical and policy sciences, and to inspire the requisite willingness, entrepreneurship and leadership in them as part of their preparation for their post-graduate professional development. It will be targeted at an upper undergraduate or lower graduate level. It will familiarize the student with the multi-dimensional aspects of sustainable development, focusing on the tools, metrics, and practical pathways the worldand nations need to achieve theSDGs, in a unique format for flipped learning. For this purpose, students will (1) get enrolled in an online MOOC about them administered by the SDG Academy and offered by Prof. Jeffrey Sachs of Columbia University, one of the world’s leading authorities on the subject matter, (2) participate in in-class discussions one another on the issues raised by the MOOC against the realities their own home countries face, led by Prof. Young, the instructor, who has contributed to Korea’s miraculous development breakthrough over various sustainability challenges toward a Newly Industrialized Country during the 1980s and the 1990s as an influential development economist, and (3) write a term paper about how their own countries measure up against the SDGs and what would be the priority action agenda for their own governments.
There will be no mid-term or final exam, only the online weekly quizzeswithin the MOOC. Successful completion of the MOOC will entitle the student to Certificate of Achievement co-branded by the SUNY Korea and the SDG Academy.
The students who complete this course will be encouraged to move on to get enrolled in the next Semester course on “Harnessing Technologies for Green and Inclusive Growth”, another unique opportunity at SUNY Korea, to be offered by Prof. Young who has contributed to Korea’s launch of the Green Growth as its key national strategy for sustainable development as Chairman of the Presidential Committee on Green Growth (2010~2012),
University Partnership Program with the SDG Academy of the UN SDSN
SUNY Korea is preparing to participate in the global endeavor for sustainable development as an international research and education center on sustainable development in Northeast Asia. Department of Technology and Society has been renewing its focus on the role of technologies, in particular, the information and communication technology, as the principal enabler of sustainable development. SUNY Korea has launchedthe Institute of Sustainable Development (ISD) for the purpose of promoting and coordinating research and education on technology-based solutions for SDGs among its faculties in collaboration with their colleagues at Stony Brook. It has also joined the UN Sustainable Development Solutions Network (SDSN) ( Launched in 2012 by the then UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, SDSN mobilizes global scientific and technological expertise to promote practical solutions for sustainable development, including the implementation of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and the Paris Climate Agreement. Under the leadership of Prof. Jeffrey Sachs, Special Advisor to UN Secretary-General on MDGs/SDGs, the SDSN has rapidly evolved into an influential global network of universities and other knowledge institutions to advance the knowledge frontier for S&T-based solutions for the global goals, to advise the UN as well as national and local governmentson those solutions, and to educate young people, the leaders of the future world, on the challenges of sustainable development. Prof. Young serves on the Leadership Council of the SDSN and is also the founding Director of the SDSN Korea (
A new educational initiative in this vein, the present course is SUNY Korea’s first undertaking under the new University Partnership Program of the SDG Academy ( a subsidiary of the UN SDSN, which offers a virtual platform that provides high-quality, mass online education in the field of sustainable development. Beginning in this Fall Semester, this Program offers its partners a privileged access to the SDG Academy course materials to tailor and use in a blended capacity in accordance with their own educational and student needs. SUNY Korea is one of the first 10 partner universities for the Program.
Structure of the Course
The course will consist of 14 weeks (28 classes) of flipped learning blended with the SDG Academy’s MOOC on “The Age of Sustainable Development” offered by Prof. Sachs. Students are requested to enroll in this MOOC and complete the course to receive the Certificate of Achievement that will be co-branded by the Academy and SUNY Korea. Enroll in this MOOC via the links:
(for Lecture 14).
For the SDG Academy MOOCs in general, please explore the web link,
Each week, the student will have a pre-class preparation via watching the MOOC-recorded ‘Lecture’ that will take less than an hour when watched continuously. In the list of weekly Lectures below, your week’s assignments are 5so-called “chapters” which are really video lectures about 10 minutes long but called so, because they correspond to the chapters of the textbook listed below. You may watch them with breaks in between, choosing to watch at any time of convenience. Watching the video chapters is the preparation a student does each week for two weekly classes (80 minutes each). Plus, the students individually answer a short online quiz of 10 questions per Lecture (that is, each week) within the online assessment of their performance in the MOOC.
In each class, the MOOC content, 2~3 chapters per class, that the students have watched will be discussed by the instructor and students. The discussion will be led by 2 pre-designated student discussants per chapter theme.
Over the course of the semester, the students will each write a final term paper, of any length, though with a maximum of 15 pages, on page of A4 size,using 11pt font by MS Word, on the topic of “Sustainable Development Challenges and Action Imperatives for My Country(insert your country name here)”, to be submitted by December 11.
Grading Performance
Students will be graded on the basis of class attendance (20%), quality of term paper (30%) and the performance on MOOC (50%). There will be no examination other than the online MOOC Quizzes.
- Grading of Class Attendance: Total maximum of 100 points minus 5 points for each unjustified absence and minus 3 points for insincere attitude per class. If a student provides a written statement explaining his/her absence from a class and in addition submit an essay (3~5 pages) on the issues discussed in the missed class, the student can recover some or all of the penalty points.
- Term paper will be graded byExcellent(100), Good(90), Modest(85), Fair(80), Poor(70), Just Pass (60), and No Submission (0). The numbers within the parentheses show the weights to be given the letter grade. Plagiarism will result in ‘No Submission’.
- The grades earned in the MOOC will be incorporated into your final grade for this course in consultation with the SDG Academy.
The final grade will be one of A, A-, B+, B, C, D & F. The relative evaluation will be the principle and aim at the average of A-/B+.
Course Syllabus
Please see Books for the Course and the Reading List per week, after the Course Schedule below.
Course Schedule
Please note that, following the SDG Academy’s practice, each ‘Lecture’ below refers to a week’ portion of 5 10-minutes video lectures called ‘chapters’. I have re-arranged the sequence for your watching of those videos for the convenience of our in-class discussions.
Lecture 1: What is Sustainable Development?
Class 1 Aug. 29
- Chapter 2: Economic growth and progress
- Chapter 3: Continuing poverty
- Chapter 4: Environmental threats hitting the rich and poor alike
Class 2 Aug.31
- Chapter 1: Introduction to Sustainable development
- Chapter 5: The business as usual path versus the sustainable development path
Lecture 2: Economic Development – How we measure it, how it varies around the world
Class 3 Sept. 5
Chapter 1: Incomes around the World
Chapter 5: Convergence or divergence?
Class 4 Sept. 7
Chapter 2: Urban/rural inequality
Chapter 3: Income inequality within countries
Chapter 4: Measuring wellbeing
Lecture 3: A Short History of Economic Development
Class 5 Sept. 1218:00~17:20 (tbc) (instead of 10:30~11:50)
Chapter 1: Economic development is new, starting around 1750
Chapter 2: The industrial revolution starts in England
Chapter 3: The great waves of technological change
Class 6 Sept. 14
Chapter 4: The diffusion of economic growth
Chapter 5: Economic Development Since World War II: The Making of Globalization
Lecture 4: Why Did Some Countries Advance While Others Remained in Poverty?
Class 7 Sept. 19
Chapter 1: The Idea of Clinical Economics
Chapter 5: Which countries are still stuck in poverty?
Class 8 Sept. 2518:00~19:20 (tbc)(instead of Sept 21 10:30~11:50)
Chapter 2: The role of physical geography: transport, energy, disease, crops
Chapter 3: The role of culture: demography, education, gender
Chapter 4: The role of politics
Lecture 5: The MDGs and the End of Extreme Poverty
Class 9Sept. 26
Chapter 1: The Reasons to Believe that Extreme Poverty Can Be Ended
Chapter 2: A Strategy to End Extreme Poverty in Africa
Chapter 3: South Asia: The Continuing Challenge of the Food Supply
Class 10 Sept. 28
Chapter 4: A Closer Look at Official Development Assistance
Chapter 5: Designing Practical Interventions: The Case of Millennium Villages
Lecture 6: Growth within Planetary Boundaries
Class11Oct. 10
Chapter 1: The Planetary Boundaries
Chapter 2: Growth Dynamics
Chapter 5: Growth and Planetary Boundaries: The Case of Population
Class 12 Oct. 12
Chapter 3: Growth and Planetary Boundaries: The Case of Energy
Chapter 4: Growth and Planetary Boundaries: The Case of Food
Lecture 7: Human Rights and Gender Equality
Class 13 Oct. 17
Chapter 1: The Ethics of Wealth, Poverty, and Inequality
Chapter 2: Major UN Covenants and Declarations
Chapter 3: Divided societies
Class14 Oct.19
Chapter 4: Forces of Widening Inequalities
Chapter 5: Gender Inequality and Solutions
Lecture 8: Education
Class 15 Oct. 24
Chapter 1: Life-cycle approach to human development
Chapter 2: Early Childhood Development
Chapter 5: The role of higher education in sustainable development
Class 16 Oct. 26
Chapter 3: The rising returns to education and the supply response
Chapter 4: Social mobility
Lecture 9: Universal Health Coverage
Class 17 Oct. 31
Chapter 1: The human right to health
Chapter 2: Poverty and disease
Chapter 3: Designing and Financing a Primary Health System in Low-Income Settings
Class 18 Nov. 2
Chapter 4: Ten Recommended Steps to Health for All in the Poorest Countries
Chapter 5: The Challenges of Health Coverage in High-Income Countries
Lecture 10: Sustainable Food Supply and the End of Hunger
Class 19 Nov. 7
Chapter 1: Malnutrition
Chapter 2: Farm systems, ecology, and food security
Chapter 3: How environmental change threatens the food system
Class 20 Nov. 9
Chapter 4: How the food system threatens the environment
Chapter 5: Towards a sustainable global food supply
Lecture 11: Sustainable Cities
Class 21 Nov. 14
Chapter 1: The patterns of urbanization around the world
Chapter 2: What makes a city sustainable?
Chapter 3: Smart Infrastructure
Class 22 Nov. 16
Chapter 4: Urban Resilience
Chapter 5: Planning for Sustainable Development
Lecture 12: Curbing Climate Change
Class 23 Nov. 21
Chapter 1: The basic science of climate change
Chapter 2: Consequences
Chapter 3: Mitigation
Class 24 Nov. 23
Chapter 4: Mitigation Policies
Chapter 5: Policies and Global Cooperation for Climate Change
Lecture 13: Saving Biodiversity
Class 25 Nov. 28
Chapter 1: What is biodiversity?
Chapter 2: Biodiversity under threat
Chapter 3: Oceans and fisheries
Class 26 Nov. 30
Chapter 4: Deforestation
Chapter 5: International dynamics
Lecture 14 Transforming the World: Achieving the Sustainable Development Goals
*** The MOOC for this Lecture will be a mini-MOOC of the title above by Prof. Jeffrey Sachs also available on the SDG Academy platform
Class 27 Dec. 5
Introduction: The Sustainable Development Goals and the Transformation of Our World
Chapter 1: Getting to Know the Sustainable Development Goals
Chapter 2: Sustainable Development Plans
Chapter 3: Technology, Innovation & the SDGs
Class 28 Dec. 7 (Final)
Chapter 4: Good Governance & the SDGs
Chapter 5: Business & the SDGs
Books for the Course
Text book for required reading (This can be accessed online in the MOOC but its purchase is recommended for permanent keeping.)
Sachs, Jeffrey (2015)The Age of Sustainable Development, Columbia University Press
Text book for recommended reading (Can be accessed online)
Maddison, Angus (2006) The World Economy, OECD Development Centre (
Reading List
(All are recommended reading except the chapters of the text book by Sachs which are required reading. All of the materials are available online, at links below. )
Week 1: What is Sustainable Development?
Sachs, Jeffrey D. The Age of Sustainable Development, Chapter 1 (See above note)
Draft Framework for Sustainable Development, UN Sustainable Development Solutions Network (22 pages),
Presentation on Realizing the Future We Want for All, UN System Task Team on the Post-2015 Development Agenda,
Part I: Our Common Vision of The Future We Want outcome document of the Rio+20 Conference (3 pages),
Executive Summary of A New Global Partnership: Eradicate Poverty and Transform Economies Through Sustainable Development, The Secretary General’s High Level Panel of Eminent Persons on the Post-2015 Development Agenda (3 pages)
A life of dignity for all: accelerating progress towards the Millennium Development Goals and advancing the United Nations development agenda beyond 2015, Report of the UN Secretary General (19 pages)
Executive Summary of An Action Agenda for Sustainable Development, UN Sustainable Development Solutions Network (3 pages)
Week 2: Economic development – How we measure it, how it varies around the world
Sachs, Jeffrey D. The Age of Sustainable Development, Chapter 2 (See above note)
Global Profile of Extreme Poverty and Hunger, UN Sustainable Development Solutions Network
Optional reading:Helliwell, John, Richard Layard and Jeffrey D. Sachs,World Happiness Report2013.
Week 3: A Short History of Economic Development
Sachs, Jeffrey D. The Age of Sustainable Development, Chapter 3 (See above note)
Maddison, Angus. The World Economy (available on Google Books). Chapter 1: Introduction and Summary and pp. 125-130
Sachs, Jeffrey D. The End of PovertyChapter 2: The Spread of Economic Prosperity
Gallup, John, Andrew Mellinger and Jeffrey D. Sachs, “Climate, Coastal Proximity, and Development,” Oxford Handbook of Economic Geography, edited by Gordon L. Clark, Maryann P. Feldman, and Meric S. Gertler, Oxford University Press, 2000, http://www.earth.columbia.edu/sitefiles/file/about/director/pubs/OxfordHandbook2000.pdf
Week 4: Why Did Some Countries Advance While Others Remained in Poverty?
Sachs, Jeffrey D. The Age of Sustainable Development, Chapter 4 (See above note)
Sachs, Jeffrey D.The End of Poverty.Chapter 3: Why Some Countries Fail to ThriveandChapter 4: Clinical Economics(39 pages)
Sachs, Jeffrey D., et al. Ending Africa’s Poverty Trap pp. 1-22,
Sachs, Jeffrey D., et al. Pathways to Deep Decarbonization 2014 report,
Week 5: The MDGs and the End of Extreme Poverty
Sachs, Jeffrey D. The Age of Sustainable Development, Chapter 5 (See above note)
United Nations Millennium Declaration (9 pages),
Investing in Development Overview Report, UN Millennium Project (65pages)
The Millennium Villages Project: The Next Five Years 2011-2015, (40 pages but with lots of pictures)
Global Development’s Winning Goals, Project Syndicate
Week 6: Growth within Planetary Boundaries
Sachs, Jeffrey D. The Age of Sustainable Development, Chapter 6 (See above note)
Sustainable Development and Planetary Boundaries by Johan Rockstrom et al. (22 pages)
Rockstrom, Johan. A safe operating space for humanity, NaturePDF File
Resilient People, Resilient Planet: A Future Worth Choosing, Report of the Secretary General’s Global Sustainability Panel. Chapter II: Progress Towards Sustainable Development pp. 15-27
Global Environmental Outlook 5: Summary for Policy Makers (20 pages)
Climate Change: Evidence and Causes
Week 7: Human Rights and Gender Equality
Sachs, Jeffrey D. The Age of Sustainable Development, Chapter 7 (See above note)
Universal Declaration of Human Rights
United Nations Millennium Declaration
Overview and Key Messages from the Report on the Inequalities Consultation. The World We Want: 2015
Social Inclusion & Human Rights: Implications for 2030 and Beyond, Background paper for the High-Level Panel of Eminent Persons on the Post-2015 Development Agenda (6 pages)
Taking Action: Achieving Gender Equality and Empowering Women, UN Millennium Project Task Force on Gender Equality. Executive Summary (26 pages)
Addressing inequalities: The heart of the post-2015 agenda and the future we want for all, UN System Task Team on the Post-2015 Development Agenda (15 pages)
Week 8: Education
Sachs, Jeffrey D. The Age of Sustainable Development, Chapter 8 (See above note)
Sachs, Jeffrey D. The Lost Generations, Project Syndicate
Education and skills for inclusive and sustainable development beyond 2015, UN System Task Team on the Post-2015 Development Agenda (16 pages),