Central Idea
Practices labelled as sustainable or preservative are not neutral solutions but outcomes of contested choices shaped by ideology, access, historical power, and responsibility, producing unequal consequences across human and environmental systems.
Venue
Pondicherry (Puducherry)
Auroville
Dakshina Chitra
(Coastal Ecosystems | Intentional Communities | Colonial Urban Landscapes | Curated Living Heritage Spaces)
“Contested Futures: Sustainability, Heritage, and Authority in a Globalised Landscape” is a Diploma Programme experiential learning journey that uses Pondicherry and its surrounding cultural and environmental systems as sites of inquiry into how sustainability and heritage are defined, governed, and lived with. Rather than presenting sustainability, global citizenship, or cultural preservation as inherently positive or consensual, the programme positions students within spaces where ideals, authority, and lived realities frequently collide.
Students engage with coastal ecosystems, intentional communities, colonial urban spaces, and curated heritage environments to examine who holds the power to decide what is protected, transformed, or promoted in the name of sustainability or cultural value. Across these contexts, students analyse how global ideals intersect with local livelihoods, how historical legacies continue to shape present-day authority, and how decisions framed as ethical or progressive often distribute benefits and burdens unevenly.
Through structured inquiry, sustained place-based observation, system tracking, and critical reflection, students confront tensions between ideology and access, preservation and change, intention and consequence. Experiences are designed to complicate assumptions rather than resolve them, requiring students to hold competing interpretations and recognise the limits of certainty when evaluating sustainability and heritage as lived systems.
Aligned with IB Diploma Programme philosophy, the programme integrates conceptual inquiry with direct engagement, ensuring learning remains ethically complex, systems-oriented, and intellectually demanding. Students are not guided toward closure but toward a more precise understanding of responsibility, constraint, and consequence within real-world contexts.
Individuals and Societies
Students examine sustainability governance, tourism economies, intentional communities, colonial legacies, and heritage management as social systems structured by power, authority, and historical context.
Environmental Systems and Societies
Engagement with coastal ecosystems and sustainability practices supports analysis of human–environment interaction, trade-offs, and the political dimensions of environmental decision-making.
The Arts
Exposure to craft, music, architecture, and heritage spaces enables analysis of cultural expression as both lived practice and curated representation shaped by institutional choice.
Language and Literature
Students interpret narratives of sustainability, unity, and heritage through reflective and analytical language practices, examining how meaning is constructed through place, story, and discourse.
Theory of Knowledge (TOK)
The programme generates real-life situations involving authority, representation, ethical judgment, and competing knowledge claims. Students encounter uncertainty around who defines sustainability or heritage, whose knowledge is legitimised, and where confident conclusions break down.
Inquiry-driven • Concept-based • Experiential • Analytical • Reflective • Interdisciplinary • Systems-focused
IB Learner Profile Focus
Inquirer • Thinker • Open-Minded • Knowledgeable • Reflective • Balanced
Learning Intent
This programme is designed to move students beyond affirmation of sustainability and heritage toward critical examination of how such practices are authorised, implemented, and experienced. Students are expected to tolerate ambiguity, interrogate power, and recognise responsibilities they may be unable or unwilling to act upon, preserving intellectual tension rather than resolving it.
Includes
Pre-Tour • On-Tour • Post-Tour Learning Engagements
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