Assignment 5

Assignment 5: Human Development Report

You will be addressing a specific case study of a transformation happening in a given country. This should be the same one you addressed in Assignment 1 with your creative expression. This assignment will have two parts. The first will be a more traditional type of report and the second will integrate your creative expression to present the material in an alternative format.

For your research, you will primarily be using internet searching. However, we highly encourage you try to contact someone from the country and do an interview with them. Feel free to email me if you need help connecting with someone from your country. The power of social science is to gather richer data that numerical data may overlook. Please look over this basic interview guide if you choose to do so.

PART 1:

Your submission will be roughly structured as a Human Development Report. See examples here.

However, while Human Development Reports rely heavily on the Human Development Index, you will go beyond this index to discuss and incorporate less conservative indexes and indicators. Your mini-report should be based on 2 or 3 indexes or indicators. At least one of the indicators covered in the report has to be geocentric (take into account the “interests” of the planet).

You can choose similar or contrasting indicators that support your argument. Reflect on what the index or indicator means, why it is important for the country, how they have been used in the past (look at how this country ranks over time) and the different perspectives each indicators offer for the country. Use the recently adopted Sustainable Development Goals to support your choice of index or indicator to contextualize how it related to desired sustainability transformations.

Some examples of indexes and indicators:

· Conservative: GDP, GNP, HDI (you cannot use these, only to help contextualize/frame)

· Alternatives: Gross National Happiness, Happy Planet Index, National Well-being, Genuine Progress Index, Gini Index, Planetary Boundaries, & many others (consider: spiritual well-being, sense of place, justice and fairness, inequality...).

· You can even come up with your own indicator or index! If you do, explain where you could get the data from.

Finally, you will write recommendations for actions in the country over the next 35 years based on the indexes and indicators analyzed. You will speculate how these actions are going to influence the future trends of the indexes and indicators. You will also have to use the Sustainable Development Goals to support your discussion and proposals for actions.

Structure of Report:

· Look at existing human development reports to guide you as a starting point. You should browse and use the Human Development Report Toolkit: http://hdr.undp.org/en/country-reports .

· BUT!!! We are all about transformations- your report should go beyond these in terms of the types of issues they address. We want you to look at novel indexes and indicators and explore how they transform the types of recommendations that can be proposed.

· Determine the target audience of your report. This will be the “traditional” audiences such as the national government of the country, decision makers, representatives in the international arena.

1. Select a title of your country report. This will be based on the theme from Assignment 1

Look at: http://hdr.undp.org/en/select-a-theme

Note: Titles are extremely important in UNDP reports! They capture the essence of the report. Think carefully about your title

2. Introduction

· Provide brief description of the country

· Which are the main sustainability trends and challenges for the country?

· State a definition of development that you will be using (can make up your own or cite existing one.

· Name the indexes and indicators you chose & why, and mention the recommendations you are making

3. Brief history of past & current development

· Provide a short description of the history of sustainable development in the country

· Take a critical lens into looking at the ideologies and power dynamics at play in the relevant case study

4. Indexes and Indicators ( pick at least 3 alternative indicators)

· Each index or indicator will be discussed, See description above. What does this show you about the current state of the country and where you see the trend going? How does this relate to the process of transformation?

· Remember to refer to the Sustainable Development Goals and how it relates to desired transformations

5. Reflections & Recommendations - based on the indexes and indicators you have selected .

· Get creative! Think beyond the current system. Use your imagination

Provide a summary of:

· What lessons can we learn from this country? What are they doing well?

· What lessons can this country learn? Where is there room for growth?

Give a few recommendations and argue them thoroughly

· What is each recommendation? Why are you making it?

· PLEASE be careful not to fall into the trap of oversimplified recommendations like “more education.” If you want to recommend education- get specific! What kind? For who? Who teaches? How do they teach? What do the schools look like? What’s the curriculum? Why is it different? Why is it needed?

· What effect do you expect to see on the indexes and indicators? (e.g. recommending community-based conservation will make Happy Planet Index increase, but how significantly?

· Provide well-supported arguments to justify your estimate of increase or decrease ( e.g. How community conservation affects the HPI? Do we know the existing area of land under community-based conservation? etc.)

· Address root causes-often poverty is caused by a neocolonial economic control of one country’s economy by another more dominant country. Trying to address poverty without addressing the country’s inability to have soveignity due to another country’s interference is addressing a symptom without addressing the root cause.

PART 2. Alternative Means of Communicating Material

This time, your audience is going to be different.

· Who is a target group involved in your country and the process of transformation you chose? For example it could be school teachers, community activists, professionals, working class citizens…

· Communcate the material discussed in the report but in an alternative way. This can come in the form of a lesson plan, motivational speech, website, social media campaign, etc…

· You can draw from your work in Assignment 1, but it should be more thorough this time. For example, if you wrote a spoken word piece for Assignment 1, you could add more sections and re-record it.

· Be sure your chosen format is appropriate for your audience. For example, if you want it directed at children, you could come up with a children’s story. However, the key is that you still address the major themes that you discussed in the report.

· The technical content can be simplified depending on your audience. Get creative! How can you communicate the important aspects of the report in a new way that is more accessible and will inspire your audience to move forward with the transformations needed toward sustainability?