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
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.
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.
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.
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.
Purpose: This course is the second of a two-module sequence in building technology (6121, 6122) and constitutes part of the core curriculum in architecture.
This course examines the economics of place. We study cities in their role as engines of modern economies. In part two of the course, we consider policies to address affordable housing, urban sprawl, traffic congestion, regional economic divides, persistent joblessness, climate change, and informal settlements.
Through the lens of the rapidly changing Arctic region, this module will give students an overarching understanding of these local and global challenges, as well as tools and experience in developing their own policy and social innovations to address complex issues in a sustainable way.
