CLIMATE AND SUSTAINABILITY

COURSES

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
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STU 1406

Canary in the Mine

Focused on wildfire-prone Mediterranean climates, the Canary in the Mine initiative at the Harvard Graduate School of Design prepares students to design in—and for—extreme conditions. It positions design as a critical force in advancing Restorative Adaptation: an approach that integrates ecological recovery with cultural restitution, community stewardship, and multi-species well-being. The studio explores, therefore emerging frameworks that align: (1) Ecological symbiosis with cultural practices; (2) Community stewardship with metabolic flows and nutrient cycles; (3) Productive disturbance engaging with “wild diplomacies,” traditional knowledge, and bioengineering.Students will develop design scenarios in which the Dangermond Preserve becomes an Analog Landscape—a living model for fire-adapted design strategies that can be applied across similarly flammable regions in California and the broader Mediterranean type of landscapes.
Fall 2025 Graduate Not Available Design & Architecture Courses
Tue, Sep 2, 2025
NUT 209

Seminars in Food Science, Technology, and Sustainability

The nutritional health of the public begins with food. There are two goals of this course: (1) To learn the basics of food science and technology, including food composition, chemistry, processing, and engineering; and (2) to understand how the broader food environment, including agricultural practices, food policy, and food trade, affects food availability and consumption. Through lectures, discussions, and group projects, students will be challenged to think critically about how the food supply impacts public health.
Fall 2024 Graduate Available Public Health & Medicine Courses
Tue, Sep 3, 2024
GENED 1103

Living in an Urban Planet

How did our planet become so urban, and how can our cities be more vital, livable, and sustainable?
Fall 2024 Graduate Undergraduate Available Arts & Humanities Courses
Sun, Sep 3, 2023
SCI 6381

Power||Energy: Mapping the Thickened Ground of Labor

The seminar reckons with the immediate need to upgrade and expand the US electrical power grid system to meet the demands of growing urban communities and recognizes the obligation to engage with the climate crisis.
Fall 2025 Graduate Undergraduate Available Design & Architecture Physical Sciences Courses
Tue, Sep 2, 2025
OEB 10

Foundations of Biological Diversity

An integrated approach to the diversity of life, emphasizing how chemical, physical, genetic, ecological and geologic processes contribute to the origin and maintenance of biological diversity.
Fall 2024 Graduate Undergraduate Available Life Sciences Physical Sciences Courses
Tue, Sep 3, 2024
HDS 3168

Environmental Ethics

What does it mean to be in ethical relationship with the earth? Should we extend our sense of moral community to include land? Should natural objects have moral standing? What is our moral obligation to animals? Should moral standing be extended to all living beings? Who is responsible for our environmental and climate crisis? How has religion constructed how we imagine earth?
Fall 2024 Graduate Undergraduate Available Arts & Humanities Courses
Tue, Sep 3, 2024
E-PSCI 208

Physics of Climate

Overview of the basic features of the climate system (global energy balance, atmospheric general circulation, ocean circulation, and climate variability) and the underlying physical processes.
Fall 2025 Graduate Undergraduate Available Physical Sciences Courses
Tue, Sep 3, 2024
API 205

Politics and Policies: What Is the Impact of Data and AI?

Data and artificial intelligence (AI) are changing our world.. Intended for leaders, this course introduces statistics and machine learning and what they can tell us about global challenges. Using case studies on justice and policing, elections and polling, behavioral economics, development, climate change, education, and health, we analyze research design, regression, and project evaluation, and compare the perspective of ethics.
Fall 2025 Graduate Undergraduate Available Business Engineering Law & Policy Courses
Thu, Sep 4, 2025
SES 5437

Transportation Economics and Finance

We can define transportation infrastructure to comprise all the physical objects that provide mobility: including everything from trains, highways, and ports to sneakers, trails, and scooters. The amount and type of available infrastructure that is available to urban travelers depends very much on who is willing to pay for it and how.
Fall 2025 Graduate Undergraduate Available Design & Architecture Courses
Tue, Sep 2, 2025
E-PSCI 53

Marine Geochemistry

The ocean is central to how our planet will respond to anthropogenic climate change, and understanding its chemistry unlocks a deeper look into that response.  This course is an introduction to that conversation, drawing from real world examples (marine CO2 uptake, coastal eutrophication, marine deoxygenation, the effects of mining, warming of the arctic, etc) and employs a variety of avenues for engagement. The class will include lectures, asynchronous video content, student-led modules, group work and discussions, all supported by a weekly section to dig deeper into key concepts.  Along the way, the class will cover basic chemical principles (thermodynamics, solubility, saturation, redox, etc.) and the cycling of key biogeochemical elements (carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, nitrogen, sulfur, and phosphorus) in and around the ocean.
Fall 2024 Graduate Undergraduate Available Physical Sciences Courses
Tue, Sep 3, 2024
HIST 1936, HLS 3248

The Rights of Nature

Can law save the planet? This course, offered jointly at HLS and FAS/GSAS, investigates a legal movement known as the Rights of Nature. Beginning from the premise that existing environmental law is inadequate to the problems of climate change, mass extinction, and habitat loss, this movement proposes strategies that include granting rights to nature through legal personhood and assigning property rights to wildlife.
Fall 2025 Graduate Undergraduate Not Available Arts & Humanities Law & Policy Courses
Tue, Sep 2, 2025
PRO 7453

Designers of Mountain and Water: Alternative Landscapes for a Changing Climate

This seminar explores contemporary landscape architecture in Northeast and Southeast Asia to envision the future of sustainable design in the face of climate change. Students will meet world-leading practitioners and scholars, learn about their practices and research, and participate in a workshop and symposium, “Designers of Mountain and Water: Alternative Landscapes for a Changing Climate,” on February 5-6, 2026. At this event, students will share their coursework with the designers they have studied, and selected class work will be exhibited at Druker Gallery.
Fall 2025 Graduate Available Design & Architecture Courses
Tue, Sep 2, 2025