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
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?
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.
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.
With the deepening of political divisions on societal challenges, policymakers must navigate increasingly tense environments to engage in constructive dialogues across political fault lines. They must be equipped with relevant personal competences interpersonal abilities to maintain productive relationships with difficult counterparts as they search for realistic compromises on programmatic options.
This lecture course surveys models of sustainable design, tracing each back to its historical and philosophical roots and forward to its implications in practice and the collective outcomes of urban architecture.
In this course, students explore an alternative theory of justice that places greater emphasis on democracy, and look at concrete examples of the application of this alternative policy-making framework to concrete domains like housing, good jobs and the economy, education, and climate.
As enterprise-level activities are increasingly scrutinized for their role in ecological degradation, social inequities, and economic disruptions, organizations must navigate a landscape where accountability extends well beyond financial performance. Students will examine how businesses can address material risks – from climate shocks and regulatory pressures to stakeholder expectations – while identifying opportunities to build resilience and competitive advantage through sustainability.
In the face of crises spanning pandemics, political turmoil, and the rapid degradation of the planet’s natural systems—all within a backdrop of myriad inequalities—the power of plants in shaping human experience has been proven. Erosive pressures associated with changes to climate have placed global ecologies and plant communities under assault, yet abundant and resilient life still adapts and flourishes in most places. This course will encourage students to observe these patterns and to learn from context so that we can place the healing and restorative qualities of plants, essential to sustaining life on this planet, in the foreground of our work as landscape architects.
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.
