Applied Ethics and Sustainability

Assignment 3 Ethics and sustainability analysis

Due: May 25, 2018 11.00 PM

Length: 2,000 words max.

Weighting: 40%

Submission: You must follow the same instructions as for assignment 1. Remember that an assignment which has a Turnitin Originality Report which shows a text match of more than 10% is not considered submitted and will not be accepted.

Assessment tasks

1. Select one important sustainability issue of global significance and express this issue in no more than one short sentence (2 marks). Note: you cannot select ‘climate change’ (or global warming) as your sustainability issue as this is the issue chosen for the demonstration example provided in the online discussion.

2. Describe the main environmental elements of your chosen global sustainability issue (5 marks).

3. Describe the critical social elements of this global sustainability issue

(5 marks).

4. Describe the key economic elements of this global sustainability issue

(5 marks).

5. Identify two major ethical problems which are strongly connected withyour chosen global sustainability issue (2 marks).

6. Discuss the two ethical problems identified in part 5 drawing on relevant ethical theory (8 marks).

7. Your chosen global sustainability issue presents both significant threats and opportunities for business. Discuss these majorbusiness threats and opportunities. (5 marks).

8. Your chosen global sustainability issue will contain multiple causes of unsustainability and will cause actions which are considered unethical. You are required to propose an ethical and sustainable solution to the problems which underpin this global sustainability issue. This proposed solution should address causes of unsustainability, as well as financial, technological and behavioural barriers to removing these causes of unsustainability

(8 marks).

Assignment 1, 2 and 3 submission instructions

Assignments1, 2 and 3 are submitted using Turnitin via the Assessment functionon the MySCU site for this unit.For more information on Turnitin, see http://study.scu.edu.au/turnitin/ .

Your assignments must be submitted as Word documents.

As part of a University initiative to support the development of academic integrity, assessments may be checked for plagiarism, including through an electronic system, either internally or by a plagiarism checking service, and be held for future checking and matching purposes.

Where a Unit Assessor requires further information to confirm the authenticity of any assignment submission they may contact the student to discuss the process followed to prepare the assignment and/or the content of the assignment.

You must follow the following instructions precisely for submission of assignments 1, 2 & 3 –.

1. Do NOT attach an SCU assignment cover sheet.

2. Create your own front page with only the following information –

a. Your name and student number;

b. Unit code;

c. Assignment number (1, 2 or 3).

3. All text that you copy (or quote) from other sources must be formatted exactly like this –

“…quoted text here” (author, year, page number). NOTE – you must use double quotation marks and provide an in-text reference in the prescribed format i.e.(author, year, page number).

4. Do NOT rewrite the questions in your assignment. Answer each question under a sub heading consisting of only the question number or letter.

5. Provide a list of references at the end of your assignment on a new page under the subheading ‘Bibliography’. No other introductions or summaries are required.

6. An assignment which has a Turnitin Originality Report which shows a text match of more than 10% is not considered submitted and will not be accepted.

7. A required objective of this unit is that you learn how to use Turnitin to improve your referencing and academic writing to the required academic standard. Your assignment will not be accepted until you have reduced the text match to 10% or less by the due date (refer to point 10 below). Note that the first Turnitin Originality Report is generated within 5 minutes, however subsequent reports take 24 hours to produce.

8. It is your responsibility to review the Turnitin Originality Report and remove text matches so that your assignment conforms to the required academic writing standard by the due date. You remove text matches by strictly following the instructions above (especially instruction 3); and where required, paraphrasing and/or restating text matches in your own original words. You will find useful resources on referencing, paraphrasing and quoting here http://scu.edu.au/teachinglearning/index.php/6 .

9. Do NOT recycle an assignment used previously in this or any other unit.

10. At your discretion you are able to take advantage of an extra three days beyond the due date to complete assignments 1, 2 or 3, as this extra time may be required to revise your assignment in response to the Turnitin Originality report. This extra time can be ‘self-approved’ and you do not need to notify teaching staff of your intention.

Assignment 3 Report Writing

Following is a brief outline of how I would respond to the Assignment 3 tasks assuming the global sustainability issue is ‘climate change’. Note that you are not able to select climate change or a predominantly climate change related issue for your assignment 3.

 

1. Select one important sustainability issue of global significance and express this issue in no more than one short sentence                      (2 marks).

         Climate change is a major sustainability issue which has significant global impacts.

  

1. Describe the main environmental elements of your chosen global sustainability issue   (5 marks).

    Here you need to identify and describe 3 or 4 environmental conditions which climate change has a major impact on.

   Climate change impacts global weather and climate and is evidenced by the rise in average global temperatures as well as increased incidence of extreme weather events.

         Climate change also impacts biodiversity, ecosystem health…

 

1. Describe the critical social elements of this global sustainability issue         (5 marks). Climate change impacts – a. human health  b. the long term suitability of Earth’s climate for human survival c. social discord during extreme weather events, specifically in cities and amongst elderly and vulnerable communities.

Describe each of these major social impacts.

1. Describe the key economic elements of this global sustainability issue   (5 marks). Describe each of these major economic impacts of climate change. Climate change threatens business assets located in coastal or low-lying areas.

Climate change impacts agriculture viability & productivity. Climate change requires an understanding of threats to existing industries and products and the need to transition to the low carbon economy, which globally will cost 10s of trillions of USDs.

1. Identify two major ethical problems which are strongly connected with your chosen global sustainability issue        (2 marks). Two major ethical problems connected to climate change which could be discussed here are:  1. who pays for the transition to the low carbon economy?  2. Do those communities impacted negatively by rising sea levels have a moral claim against the industrialised countries that are the major long term users of fossil fuels? 

2. Discuss the two ethical problems identified in part 5 drawing on relevant ethical theory                      (8 marks).

In this section you cannot perform an ethical analysis as you did in Assignments 1 & 2. Rather you need to build the theories into your discussion of the ethical problems.

a. Discuss the beneficiary pays principle here ie those countries who have benefited from industrialisation and have high GDP from long term use of fossil fuels should pay the major proportion of the cost of building a low carbon global economy. Discuss the utilitarian benefits of wealthier Western societies allocating some of their wealth to building low carbon infrastructure projects.

b. Discuss the polluter pays principle ie invoking this principle requires a global fund to relocate and compensate displaced communities.

1. Your chosen global sustainability issue presents both significant threats and opportunities for business. Discuss these major threats and opportunities.            (5 marks). Discuss climate risk and the threats it poses to business assets and to business infrastructure which is threatened by extreme weather events. Discuss the potential for consumers to boycott products which have high embedded carbon content, and the impact of climate change on industrial life cycles. Discuss opportunities for new products and the brand/reputation benefits of being a leader in the new low carbon economy.

2. Your chosen global sustainability issue will contain multiple causes of unsustainability and will cause actions which are considered unethical. You are required to propose an ethical and sustainable solution to the problems which underpin this global sustainability issue. This proposed solution should address causes of unsustainability, as well as financial, technological and behavioural barriers to removing these causes of unsustainability  (8 marks).

You need to address the primary cause of anthropogenic climate change ie GHG emissions from industrial activity.

Discuss energy – conversion to renewables; transport – conversion to zero emission vehicles; and maybe agriculture – sustainable agricultural systems. Here you can discuss technological barriers to renewable energy storage systems; the cost of electric vehicles and building the battery recharge station infrastructure.

To address the unethical aspects identified in 5 & 6 discuss funding solutions and compensation claims to those most effected by climate change impacts. Discuss behavioural problems of greed which create barriers to the reallocation of wealth from developed to developing countries.

Marking criteria

The following marking criteria are used to assess Assignments 1, 2 and 3 in this unit.

Grade/ Criteria	Fail	Pass	Credit	Distinction	High distinction
Depth of research.	Heavy reliance on unit text & study guide; & low quality websites. Journal articles selected – insufficient, poor quality or irrelevant.	Inadequate range or irrelevant academic references. Heavy reliance on unit text & study guide.	Reasonable range of quality and relevant academic references selected.	Good range of quality and relevant books &journal articles selected. Reliable websites used where necessary.	Extensive range of relevant, high quality journal articles& books selected. Only high quality & reputable websites used.
Application of theory.	Fail to use relevant theories in performing assessment task.	Identify & apply minimal theory to assessment task.	Select some relevant theories & demonstrate understanding of its application to the assessment task.	Successfully apply relevant theories to assessment task.	Identify most relevant theories & successfully apply to assessment task.
Analysis & interpretation of information.	No constructive analysis of information. Discussion is disjointed. Inappropriate subheadings.	Demonstrate comprehension of information collected applying basic analysis which lacks depth.	Good analysis and interpretation of information with logical conclusions drawn.	Logical structure using relevant subheadings providing a coherent response to the assessment task.	Logical structure linking rational & coherent argument, demonstrating depth of knowledge.
Synthesis, problem solving & creativity.	Unable to connect information to solve the problem.	Elementary connection of relevant theory & practice. No genuine solution provided.	Information drawn together to produce obvious conclusions with cursory link to assessment problem.	Logical solution created from synthesis of information presented.	Relevant information drawn together to provide insightful solution to assessment problem.
Clarity of expression & grammar; accurate referencing.	Extensive spelling and/or grammatical errors.Quotedmaterial presented incorrectly. Incorrect & inaccurate referencing. Disjointed & fragmented flow of expression.	Expression flows well,but is disjointed in someplaces. Some spelling and/or grammatical errors. Referencing not entirely correct.	Few spelling and/orgrammatical errors. Paraphrasing correctlyportrays ideas in ownwords. Expression flows well.	Clear flow of expression with accurate referencing and few grammatical or spelling errors.	Excellent expression using appropriate academic language. Precise referencing. Very few grammatical or spelling errors.