Problems that the earth has faced with such as the depletion of natural resources, contamination of water, air and land, extension of species, and the global warming have brought up the sustainable development to the agenda. This state of affairs has elicited the undeniable role of industrial design activity on the sustainable development / sustainability has become an important concern of industrial design education. The purpose of this study is to determine the state of sustainable design education in the undergraduate industrial design programs in Turkey &ndash / especially in the Department of Industrial Design at Middle East Technical University (METU) &ndash / by exploring the relation between industrial design education and the concept of sustainability with regard to the examples from all around the world. With reference to the arguments collected by the literature review study and findings of the field study about the opinions of industrial design students and educators, suggestions will be made on how sustainability can be integrated in the curricula of the undergraduate industrial design programs in Turkey.

Since the industrial revolution, technological developments and increased population have caused environmental damages such as lavish use of sources, pollution increased waste areas, poisoned wastes, harmless gasses, decreased green areas, global warming and climate change, harming of the ozone layer, decreased forests areas and natural sources. Appearance of the term of Global Warming makes the humanity to revise their facilities in all fields. To protect the nature and architectural environment, firstly, green architecture, ecological architecture and then sustainability occurred. This term has been proposed not to be a new term but a response to environmental disturbances caused by human activities and it is re-conceptualization of architecture. Sustainable architecture or sustainability is lot more extensive than ecological and green architecture. It contains the imbalance between environmental problems which is natural environment and consumption that occurred all around the world. An important part of sustainability debate focused on urban planning and design for more sustainable forms and patterns. In particular it is discussed that planning and design of urban areas have a major effect on transport and therefore can help reduce car usage, emissions, global warming and climate change. There are many planning and design approaches and movement that introduce certain criteria and strategies to prevent car dependency and encourage people to use public transportation and walking. To achieve sustainable transport, there should be design for walkable and easy accessible areas. Planning movements, such as New Urbanism and Transit Oriented Development, particularly came to the forefront of planning and influenced planning approaches. However, when review the literature, it is seen that planning movements, such as New Urbanism and Transit Oriented Development originated and were implemented mostly in West Europeean and North American Cities. The purpose of this study is to find out whether all those criteria, principles and strategies are also relevant planning approaches for more non-western cities like Baku which has a very different planning background and therefore possibly different urban form and tranmsport issues. In order to answer the abovementioned question, planning and design approaches in the literatureand and in these recent planning movements were studied and a check list was formed which indicate planning and design approaches that can help attain a more sustainable transport outcome. The checklist was then applied to the case of Baku.

Principle of sustainability, as in all areas, is becoming a major issue in urban transportation planning all around the world. Urban transportation political and legal documents are statutory basis of urban transportation plans and projects and developed countries have established urban transportation political and legal documents to ensure that local governments implement plans and projects in line with the sustainability principle. In this thesis, it is intended to analyze the sufficiency of central government&rsquo / s political and legal documents on urban transportation in Turkey in realizing the sustainability of urban transportation plans and projects. For this aim, political and main legal documents of sustainable urban transportation in United States of America (USA) and United Kingdom (UK), which is accepted as one of the leaders in the world about sustainable transportation, are analyzed. Based on this analysis a checklist has been produced, highlighting headings for sustainable urban transportation that should be present in a country&rsquo / s political and legal documents in order to guide and perhaps enforce local governments. Then this checklist has been applied to Turkey to determine strengths and weaknesses of political documents and legislations in Turkey with regards to sustainable urban transportation. A comparative analysis has also been carried out with Turkey, USA and UK under three main headings which are policy documents / guidance papers for local governments, acts and laws / and nation-wide studies. As a result, strengths and weaknesses about political and legal basis of sustainable urban transportation in Turkey have been illustrated and recommendations were made for Turkey to adopt guidance papers and legislations.

Increasingly, universities are being tasked with leading the way to a sustainable future. Yet little is known about how Canadian university presidents conceptualize sustainable development and the role of the university in this endeavor. With studies demonstrating that it is important for university stakeholders to share common understandings of sustainability, and that administrators are especially instrumental in the pursuit of a sustainable university, these stakeholders’ perspectives and values around the concept of sustainability in higher education are significant. This study, which included in-depth interviews with 26 Canadian university presidents, revealed that presidents have substantially high levels of eco-literacy surrounding the concept of sustainable development and understand sustainability in higher education in measures relevant to their jurisdiction. Barriers were primarily financial, although cost-savings through energy reduction was also noted as a benefit, along with it being “the right thing to do” and worthwhile because of its perceived significance to students. The piece ends with recommendations for practitioners of sustainability, policy makers, researchers and university administrators.

How sustainable is Australia’s pattern of energy supply and use? What are the major factors explaining Australia’s sustainable energy performance relative to other countries? This thesis explores energy supply and use in Australia during the 1990s and 2000s and examines major drivers such as policy decisions, economic structure and trade profile. Performance and drivers in Australia are compared with other OECD countries. / To address the questions posed above, it is first necessary to explore the concepts of ‘sustainable development’ and ‘sustainable energy’ and consider how best to measure sustainable energy performance. Alternative sustainability frameworks and models are examined, with the ‘strong sustainability’ model adopted for this thesis being distinguished from other models in three principal ways: i) it places biophysical constraints on economic activity; ii) it regards certain critical natural capital is being non-substitutable; and iii) it places roughly equal emphasis on intra- and intergenerational equity. The strong sustainability model is operationalised into a series of principles and objectives for energy sustainability, which in turn are used as a basis for systematically developing a suite of sustainable energy indicators. This approach is preferred over other approaches to assessing sustainable energy performance given the study’s focus on measurable objectives and outcomes. / The second part of the thesis is devoted to measuring the sustainable energy performance of Australia and other OECD countries against twelve indicators. Some of the indicators selected are ‘standard’, being quite commonly used in other contexts. A number of the indicators though, are unique or have unique features that increase their validity as measures of strong sustainability. Initial results of the performance assessment suggest that Australia is amongst the weakest performing OECD countries, ranking last of all OECD countries against two of the twelve sustainable energy indicators and in the lower quartile of OECD countries against a further six indicators. Further analysis, combining and weighting indicator scores and country rankings across the 12 indicators confirms Australia’s poor performance. Australia ranks 28th of 30 OECD countries by two different ranking methods and 15th of 16 OECD countries by another two methods. Only the USA ranks consistently lower than Australia. Denmark consistently ranks highest of all countries by all methods. / The third and final part of the thesis examines drivers of sustainable energy performance by Australia and a subset of four OECD countries: Denmark, Germany, the Netherlands and Sweden (OECD 4). The primary basis for OECD 4 selection was strong performance against the sustainable energy indicators, although other criteria including economic structure, trade and demography were also considered. A range of techniques, including factorisation, ‘what if’ analysis and linear regression are used to diagnose the underlying factors driving the performance of Australia and the OECD 4 against the sustainable energy indicators. The analysis is extended to include a qualitative assessment of policy drivers including strategic and institutional settings, energy pricing, electricity market policies, R & D and regulation. / A major conclusion of the thesis based on the analysis is that Australia’s weak sustainable energy performance since 1990, relative to other OECD countries, has been substantially shaped by domestic policy decisions, decisions that were not inevitable given Australia’s economic structure, trade profile, demography, and geography.

The thesis is focused on the construction of cartographic systems not only as a tool for environmental representation, but also for shaping practices, values, technologies, and cultural narratives around sustainable development of human landscapes in non- Western contexts. Cartographic theory is employed to question existing mapping techniques, especially in relation to documenting sustainable development. The thesis investigates the merging of technology, science and art in the process of making maps and explores the possibility to represent several spheres of reality in cartographic elements. Representation concepts and methodologies were tested around the Mexican settlement of Ciudad Obregon, within the bioregion of the Gulf of California. Parts of the agendas for sustainable development revised stimulate the collection of dreams, images, and fantasies about non-Western human agglomerations and their ecosystems, critically informing sustainable narratives framed in other contexts. The works reviewed reveal an absence of complex cartographic and visual systems, portraying instead emerging landscapes in growing economies as exotic, mysterious, folkloric, chaotic, less developed, and in need of corrective study and supervision from a Western viewpoint. Interpretive, visual, and technological instrumentations were utilized with the aim of constructing a cartographic system that exposes dynamics of sustainable development in emerging settlements. The methodological scheme considers a series of associations between quantitative and qualitative approaches, employing eighteen dialectical negotiations in the representation of six ecologies. The outcome was a hybrid system of representation concerning bi-dimensional maps, photography, and chronicles from local newspapers. Two fieldtrips to Mexico were completed in 2012 and 2013, visiting and studying eighteen human agglomerations in total. The outcomes (measured and gathered data, perceptions, bibliography, photographs, and cartographic evidences) of both fieldtrips were linked to the hypothesis previously outlined in the literature review. The methodological structure was influenced by the cartographic representation interpretation of the biosphere of Ciudad Obregon and its natural ecosystems. On the other hand, the cartographic representation-interpretation of different networks resulted in the study of polymorphous infrastructures that facilitate the flow of goods, capital and people throughout the same territory. The correlation of the research interrogates the paradigmatic challenges of the ‘network society’ in developing contexts. It questions the notion that human settlements develop sophisticated infrastructure networks, selectively connecting together the most favoured users and places, linking valuable segments and discarding irrelevant habitats, locales and people. As the cartographic and visual evidences gathered by this research suggest, these commodity landscapes allow terrestrial and aerial flow of physical and knowledge resources (food, water, gasoline, telecommunications, transport, information, services, waste) in granulated and disseminated environments of buildings and networks, materializing a palimpsest of infrastructures. The research finds that the assessment of social, cultural, and environmental sustainability in emerging and dispersed landscapes requires an adjacent design of cartographic and visual frameworks that represent the complexity found in developing locations.

Development and land use change diminish the quantity of natural habitat, impacting negatively on the number of animal and plant species – biodiversity. Concern about the consequences of these losses has led to calls for mechanisms which allow development to proceed only when no net loss of biodiversity can be assured, such as biodiversity offsets. Markets for biodiversity offsets are being tried as mechanisms for achieving this societal objective in the most efficient manner possible. Theoretically, this thesis develops a framework connecting the Polanyi-inspired notion of the economy as an instituted process, and concepts developed by Callon and colleagues in the Social Studies of Finance literature. This framework is used to analyse the emergence, development and expansion of markets for biodiversity offsets. Using qualitative methodologies, the research examines in detail three existent biodiversity offset markets: Species Banking (United States), Impact Mitigation Regulations (Germany) and Biodiversity Offsets (England). The emergence of markets for biodiversity offsets is shown to be the result of performativity of economics. Changing representations of biodiversity, anchored on economic sciences, lead to policies which create economic experiments, such as markets for biodiversity offsets. Because these markets are historical and geographically contingent, the economic experiments emerge in the context of preexisting regulations and traditions, resulting in variety of forms of organising biodiversityoffset markets. To bring biodiversity to the market involves measuring and quantifying externalities. This requires the creation and development of market agencements – assemblages of agents and market devices – to commodify biodiversity. These agencements constitute the technical infrastructures upon which the markets are built, but they too are contingent of pre-market practice. This creates tensions between the role of agents and the role of devices inside the market infrastructure. Biodiversity offsets are shown to not maintain their commodity status beyond certain geographical and geopolitical boundaries. The result is the creation of mutually exclusive market nodes, between which no trade takes place. Despite common origins and infrastructures, the local markets do not exchange between themselves. This thesis contributes a framework for the analysis of market emergence, in which two literatures are used to complement each other’s limitations. As a result, the thesis is able to conceptualise how a common generative mechanism results in variety of economic organisation. It also demonstrates that it is possible for markets to share a regulatory and technical infrastructure, but not exchange between themselves and expand.

Studien syftar till att undersöka erfarna projektledares upplevelse av och arbete med hållbarhetsfrågor inom projekt i evenemangsbranschen. För att besvara detta har följande frågeställningar upprättats Hur upplever erfarna projektledare arbetet med hållbarhet inom projekt i evenemangsbranschen? och Vilka aspekter av hållbarhetsarbete diskuteras av erfarna projektledare inom projekt i evenemangsbranschen?. För att genomföra studien har en kvalitativ metod med en induktiv ansats valts. Intervjuerna genomfördes på ett semi-strukturerat vis och mynnade ut i ett resultat med tre centrala teman: När viljan och utfallet inte korrelerar, En bransch i förändring och Ett miljömässigt blad eller ett begrepp med flera grenar. Utifrån dessa teman tas läsaren med i en diskussion som sedermera mynnade ut i slutsatserna att en stor förändring pågår inom branschen i riktning mot mer hållbarhetsarbete, där den moderna projektledarens roll är central med vetskapen om en problematisk väg för att nå målet i att vara hållbara. / The study aims to investigate experienced project managers' experience of and work with sustainability issues within projects in the event industry. To answer this, the following questions have been raised. How do experienced project managers experience the work with sustainability in projects in the event industry? and What aspects of sustainability work are discussed by experienced project managers in projects in the event industry?. To carry out the study, a qualitative method with an inductive approach has been chosen. The interviews were conducted in a semi-structured way and resulted in three central themes: When will and outcome do not correlate, An industry in change and an environmental leaf or a concept with several branches. Based on these themes, discussions were held which later led to the conclusions that a major change is taking place in the industry towards more sustainability work, the project manager's role in sustainability work is central and project managers feel that sustainability work is important but not entirely unproblematic.

O processo de agravamento dos problemas socioambientais induz a sociedade em geral a repensar em como agir a respeito das questões ambientais e a buscar um desenvolvimento mais sustentável. O setor público possui um papel elementar na construção de um mundo que apresente ações mais sustentáveis. No Brasil, o tema sustentabilidade ganha destaque, ainda que de forma incipiente, com o advento da Constituição Federal de 1988. Mais tarde, surge a Agenda Ambiental na Administração Pública – A3P, classificada como um programa fundamental no compromisso de fortalecer a responsabilidade socioambiental nas atividades da gestão pública. As compras realizadas pelas instituições públicas são responsáveis pela movimentação de um grande volume de bens e, portanto, representam um impacto significativo nas questões ambientais. Por este motivo, o eixo das licitações sustentáveis da A3P é considerado por alguns autores como sendo o mais importante. Diversas ações têm sido implementadas por órgãos da administração pública, a partir da inclusão de critérios considerados sustentáveis em seus editais de licitação. Assim, surge a questão: a Universidade Federal de Alfenas tem adotado critérios sustentáveis em suas licitações, contribuindo assim com o avanço da sustentabilidade? Para responder ao questionamento, este trabalho se propôs a analisar as licitações da universidade com o intuito de verificar se estão sendo incluídos critérios sustentáveis nos editais para aquisição de bens e contratação de serviços, no período de 2015 a setembro de 2016, a partir de um roteiro metodológico - com base em outras pesquisas já realizadas sobre o tema. Após a análise de seus editais, pôde-se constatar que a Universidade Federal de Alfenas - MG apresenta práticas sustentáveis por meio de suas compras e contratações. Embora, de modo geral, a universidade tenha sido capaz de apresentar vários critérios sustentáveis em seus editais, pondera-se, ao final desta pesquisa, algumas críticas e sugestões, como a proposta de que a universidade expanda as práticas já realizadas para um número maior de itens, mantendo um padrão de inclusão dos critérios sustentáveis em suas licitações. Após a comprovação da possibilidade de realização de licitações nos modelos sustentáveis, sugeriu-se ainda que a universidade incorpore em suas licitações as práticas adotadas por outras instituições públicas, uma vez que realiza licitações para itens de mesma categoria. / The aggravation process of social environmental problems induce general society to rethink how to act about environmental issues and to search for a more sustainable development. The public sector has a fundamental role on building a world that features more sustainable actions. In Brazil, the sustainability subject became highlighted, although incipiently, with the advent of the Federal Constitution of 1988. Later, the Public Administration Environmental Agenda – A3P was born, classified as a key program in the commitment to strengthen social environmental responsibility in public management activities. The purchases made by public institutions are responsible for the circulation of a great volume of goods and therefore represent a significant impact on environmental issues. For this reason, the sustainable bidding axis of A3P is considered by some authors as the most important. Several actions have been implemented by public administration agencies from the inclusion of criteria considered to be sustainable in their bidding edictals. Thus, the question arises: the Alfenas Federal University has adopted sustainable criteria in its bids, thus contributing to the advancement of sustainability? To answer the question, this work intends to analyze the biddings of the university with the purpose of verifying that sustainable criteria are being included in the bidding documents for the acquisition of goods and contracting services, in the period from 2015 to September 2016, from a methodological roadmap - based on other researches about the subject. After the analysis of its edictals, it was found that the Alfenas Federal University – Minas Gerais features sustainable practices on its purchases and hiring process. Although generally the university has been capable to feature several sustainable criteria on its edictals, at the end of this research some comments and suggestions are pondered, such as the proposal that the university expands the already made practices to a greater number of items, maintaining a sustainable criteria inclusion pattern on its biddings. After the verification of the possibility to make biddings according to sustainable models, it was also suggested that the university could incorporate to its biddings the practices adopted by other public institutions, as it performs biddings for items of the same category.

The literature focusing on the resource-curse commonly characterize oil-rich economies as weak and fragile. These literatures encourage diversification 'away' from oil in order to develop the economies, however, they often overlook the path for development. In contrast to this broad aim, this research bids to develop the economy 'based on' oil using Saudi Arabia as case study that can be valuable to similar resource-rich economies. The research seeks to understand how public policymaking can be used as a path to sustainable economy. It employs concepts of economic theory to design an optimal oil depletion policy framework that normatively geared towards achieving sustainable economic outcome. Sustainable economy is that simply beyond what often gauged by the GDP, an economy that is focused on long-term value creation that can shield the country against market upsets. The policy framework is grounded on economic sustainability, political economy, and the role of institutions and policymaking in managing resource-rich economies. As a result, the methodology under Normative Policy Analysis Framework was devised to outline the oil depletion policy model which will also be practically useful to propose, develop, and analyze other normative policies. The methodology also helped in identifying the specific parameters influencing the oil depletion policy in Saudi Arabia and conceivably in other oil-rich economies. As the sustainable economic welfare is, by definition, at the heart of policymaking, government intervention through effective policymaking and strong institutions plays an active role in managing market distortions, promote socioeconomic welfare, and achieve sustainability. Saudi Arabia should employ the optimal oil depletion policy to steer the economy through the sustainable path by leveraging on its national comparative advantage underpinned by resource endowment. The research also revealed that, Saudi Arabia should optimally balance between endogenous and exogenous variables in crafting its oil policy. This should lead the path to economic diversification and enable the country to wean itself from oil-dependence, disengage from in rent-seeking activities, and shift to long-term sustainable development objectives implied by development-led depletion model.