Engineering students are introduced to dealing with dynamic, sudden changes to the Earth system and its (planetary) boundaries; they learn to reflect on the associated risks and to understand the contradictions and intractable problems of sustainable development as an engineering challenge. The dilemmas, contradictions, conflicting objectives and disputes arising from the technical question of maximising utilisation in a dynamic environment are examined. Taking technical solutions to individual United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) as a starting point, the resulting conflicts will form the focus of the learning process.
Examples of this might include the topics of energy and water, which are thematically linked but can also be contradictory.
