Climate change is an urgent and multifaceted challenge facing all of society.
Harvard faculty teach an expanding array of courses examining the many dimensions of this shared challenge. Explore courses in climate and sustainability ranging from economics and English to public health and climate science.
HARVARD UNIVERSITY
THE SALATA INSTITUTE FOR CLIMATE AND SUSTAINABILITY
The complexity of governing cities continues to escalate as more of the world’s population will be living in urban areas by 2050. The problems of delivering basic services, while addressing climate and equity compound the challenge. This course seeks to equip students who wish to use digital tools to innovate with the knowledge and skills necessary to imagine and implement innovative solutions to public problems
The MBA course on "Risks, Opportunities, and Investments in an Era of Climate Change" offers a unique and comprehensive curriculum aimed at preparing the next generation of entrepreneurs, leaders, and investors to succeed in a rapidly changing economic landscape. This course is ideal for students who aspire to become entrepreneurs by starting their own company or joining a start-up that is driving innovation and solving challenges posed by climate change. Additionally, the course will benefit those who wish to lead or advise firms on transitioning their operations and business models to become more sustainable and innovative. Finally, the course will be beneficial to students seeking to understand the full spectrum of climate opportunities pursuing a career in venture capital, private equity, or public markets investing.
What does it mean to be alive and to be human right now? To what should we devote our lives?
The world is on fire. War, faltering growth, huge investments in artificial intelligence, increasing political polarization, accelerating inequality and a global move towards populist authoritarianism are undermining economies and political systems across the planet. Meanwhile ecosystems are collapsing and global temperatures continue to increase, driving floods, droughts and fires, and threatening to make a significant fraction of the earth’s surface uninhabitable.
How did we get here? How can we bear the feelings of grief, rage and powerlessness that opening ourselves up to what is happening often entail? Are we looking at collapse, or could this moment be laying the foundation for opening towards something new?
This course takes a range of themes to interpret contemporary China’s actions in the world, and understand how China’s history can explain important aspects of contemporary policy and decision-making. The course takes key themes and examines them in both contemporary and historical context.
Meeting the ambitious greenhouse gas emissions reduction targets that will be required to reduce, prevent, or delay catastrophic changes to the global climate will require a dramatic shift from motorized to active modes of transportation for urban travel. The purpose of this course is to prepare students to plan transportation infrastructure for a sustainable future by creating streets that are safe and comfortable for pedestrians and cyclists.
At a time when urgent action is needed to avert the climate crisis, it is very difficult to take an idealistic approach when considering key materials in building construction. Designers can play an important role in the race to de-carbonize the built environment and this course will touch on how we got to where we are and how we can move forward in practice with the lessons that we have learned. Through a series of conversations and presentations, including from external experts, we will engage in inversing the design process by utilizing newly available tools. We will demystify regulations, terminology, and popular language, and examine how the predominant materials for construction, which are unlikely to go away soon, can be improved and implemented in design and construction to promote a low carbon economy.
Africa is the world’s most youthful continent and by the end of this century its 54 countries will be home to one in three people on Earth. This course examines contemporary African policy trends – challenges and opportunities – through the prism of national, sub-regional and international politics.
In this perilous moment in human history, the world desperately needs leaders with the courage, drive and hardball political skills to fight climate change and help restore the natural world. Environmental leaders must also recognize how marginalized communities suffer disproportionately from pollution and climate change. Leadership is difficult in any enterprise, but it is especially difficult for environmental leaders who face opponents with vastly more power and money.
This course explores the intersection of real estate and the critical environmental and social challenges shaping cities and markets today. As the world rapidly urbanizes and climate pressures mount, real estate has become a frontline sector in the pursuit of sustainability. This course enables students to understand and evaluate the role of the built environment in promoting (or hindering) sustainable outcomes.
