SST 502 Understanding Issues in Environmental Sustainability
This course includes relevant topics, concepts, key issues, and debates in sustainability in the focus area of the course. In the final design and delivery of this course, the contents listed here will be structured according to an agreed set of three SDG case studies, taken up over the course of the semester, which interlink the entire semester curriculum. One of the three case studies will form the basis for the joint capstone project.
This course introduces students to a natural sciences understanding of key environmental issues, especially the climate and biodiversity crises as well as the planetary limits to growth. After an overview of the science behind climate change, in the first part of the course, students will look at the functioning of and at current issues that affect the atmosphere, the hydrosphere, the cryosphere, the biosphere, and the pedosphere. In the second part of the course, through the analysis of current environmental issues, students will see how the Earth spheres are interconnected to each other and how we as humans are not only affected by the changes in the world surrounding us but can also drive them, for better or for worse.
Offered
Fall