At the beginning of the new spring semester in 2014, Lex Brown, professor in the School of Environment, Griffith University, Australia, visit Tongji and gave lectures at IESD. It was held as a four-day workshop on Environment Impact Assessment (EIA/EA) for the course of Environmental System and Sustainable Development.

This course is one of the core courses for IESD students. “This workshop is very closely with that title. In order to move toward to environmental management and sustainable development, you need tools to operate. So this workshop has focused on the tools, which are very much in practical. ” Prof. Brown said.

Three parts of EA were discussed in the workshop: What are the techniques of EA, required by law? How to help EA get used in planning and management so that would make a change in decision making? How to improve EA as time goes on?

The sStudents were very keen to learn about this topic and the interaction in the class is very acitve. “The knowledge was presented very clear, logical and acceptable. That helps a lot for me to understand the EA.” a student in IESD said. “That would be better if we have more time to make warm up and to have intensive discussion.” Prof. Brown mentioned.