Human-Environment system project report

Project Report

• My topic is about the traditional fossil fuels and renewable energy. The project will be showen in the attachments. (The roport need to be 2000-2500 words)

Report Instructions

The goal of this report is to think about how you can address a human-environment or sustainability issue within a policy recommendation.

A policy recommendation is just that — a recommendation. Imagine that some group with the authority to make and enact decisions (local/state/national government, the United Nations, a corporate board, an environmental organization) has asked you, as a sustainability expert, to recommend what policy they should adopt in order to address the topic or issue at hand. Your job is to give them advice (recommend a policy) based on your expert knowledge (the research that you do!)

Part of your job, then, is to demonstrate that you have thought through the issue from multiple angles, and use appropriate references to show that your research is reliable and sound. Your final report should expand on the ideas that you introduced in your proposal. You must draw on course concepts throughout the report.

Your report should be organized in the following way:

Your report should include each of the six sections below. You do not have to address every question within each section. You may pick and choose the ones that are most appropriate to your topic. However, you MUST include ALL six sections!

• Section 1: Begin by introducing the topic or issue. Explain why it is a “human-environment” issue–what are the human aspects of it and what are the environmental aspects? You may want to describe or diagram the coupled human-environment system that your topic falls within or represents.
• Section 2: Explain why this topic or issue is important. What is at stake? Who or what would benefit or be harmed, depending on how this topic or issue is addressed? You may draw on your proposal, but your explanation of the importance here should be MUCH more thorough.
• Section 3: Explain why this topic or issue is contentious or hard to solve. What are the different opinions or positions that different stakeholders have? What role do power, politics, economics, etc. play in making a solution hard to come by? Are there already policies in place – why don’t they work or what needs to be improved? Again, you may draw on your proposal, but your explanation here should be MUCH more thorough.
• Section 4: Examine how ethics and justice are tied to your issue. Draw on course concepts to do this (for example, distributive and procedural justice, virtue/means/ends ethics, or others!) This section may link back to who potentially benefits or is harmed by the topic/issue. What ethics/justice aspects need to be considered when attempting to address the issue in a policy?
• Section 5: Introduce and describe your policy recommendation. Be specific! What do you think needs to be done, and by who? At what scale, geographically and temporally? For example, should the local, state, or national government undertake your policy? When–tomorrow, next month, in ten years? Does your policy involve ongoing action, or is it a one-time activity? What cost and effort is needed to undertake your policy? How will your policy take into account the ethics and justice aspects that you describe above?  Also feel free to draw on course concepts (e.g., scale, governance, sustainability, etc.) or other resources you’d like in your effort to demonstrate your idea and develop your policy recommendation.  
• Section 6: Describe the outcome that will result if your policy is adopted. For example: what will the positive outcomes be? Will there be any drawbacks or negative “side effects”? Who (or what) will benefit and who (or what) will not? Will the outcome last for a long time, or is it only a temporary fix? What are the potential risks.

Formatting Guidlines

Your final report should:

• be double-spaced,
• have 1-inch margins,
• be written in Times New Roman 12 point font,
• include at least ten references/sources
  • use the Chicago Manual of Style: http://www.chicagomanualofstyle.org/tools_citationguide.html
  • include both in-text citations and references page: for every brief in-text citations (author’s last name, date of publication) there should be a full citation in a list of references at the end of your paper
• be 2000 – 2500 words long, not counting the reference list.