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
Spanish 11 is the second course in the Beginning Spanish sequence (SPAN 10-SPAN 11). In this course, students explore a host of social, cultural, and environmental sustainability issues that have historically impacted the lives and livelihoods of local and foreign Spanish-speaking communities.
This course will explore (i) the legal framework in which climate change action occurs in the United States, (ii) policy tools available to regulators, (iii) impacts on regulated entities and individuals and (iv) opportunities for private stakeholders to participate in and influence climate change decisions.
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.
This course offers a historical exploration of the concept of moral economy and illuminates the enduring tensions around economic justice, mutual aid, and social responsibility. From regulation of commerce and credit to debates around slavery, colonialism, and environmental risks, this course will investigate the ethical frameworks that have shaped economic life for centuries.
This course will consider filmmaking as a means to investigate and advance social justice. Bringing their own passions and perspectives, students will learn how to create films that inventively explore topics such as human rights, climate justice, public health, and racial and economic equity.
In his famous treatise, The Spirit of the Laws (1748) the French philosophe, Montesquieu, stated that ‘the empire of the climate is the first, the most powerful of all empires.’ The impact of climate on the human condition, past, present, and future, is one of the great issues of our time.
This class invites you to practice a new kind of plant-consciousness. Our guides will be contemporary artists and thinkers who are encouraging new relationships between human and vegetal life, or recalling very old ones.
This course will focus on distress migration, including refugee flight and other forms of forced displacement, evaluated through the lens of human rights. It will address the multifaceted drivers of the phenomenon, including the enduring legacies of colonization, armed conflict, environmental stress and climate change, global inequality, demographic pressures and increasing globalization.
Aqua Incognita aims to decipher an array of design-visions capable of advancing extreme climate resilience in the water-stressed region of Valencia, SP. Spain’s original breadbasket, but growing unsustainably, this metropolis of 1.57 million is threatened by critically unbalanced water regimes.
In an effort to draw general lessons for those interested in making change, we will assess a range of political and legal approaches; examine mass movements and the leadership by organizations, governments, and individuals; and attempt to gauge outcomes.