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
This research seminar examines the impacts of globalization on attempts to address key social, political, and environmental problems, including climate change, focusing in particular on the roles played by multinational corporations.
Can we build a global economic order that promotes equity, poverty reduction, and climate sustainability, all at once? How do we alleviate the tensions between domestic equality and global equality? Can we restore the middle class in advanced countries while maintaining an open global economy? Can we achieve the climate transition without adverse effects on economic growth and poverty reduction in poor nations? We will explore these questions in the seminar and build towards practical policy solutions.
This foundation course examines how societies and states have responded to a range of disasters around the world, drawing key lessons for communities (and nations) preparing for climate changes.
How can a globalizing world of differing countries – rich and poor, democratic and authoritarian – best promote inclusive growth and human security by meeting the challenges of inequality, climate change, rising populism, and war?The world is profoundly interconnected through technology, commerce, capital markets, and the global challenges of climate change and public health. For decades, the international economic and geopolitical order favored and supported policies to meet the challenges of integration. But today, that order is under significant strain.
This course examines the challenges, successes, and opportunities in harnessing state and non-state efforts to promote international environmental protection
This course analyzes what role the government plays and should play in a market economy. It covers topics such as tax policy, health care policy, retirement policy, environmental protection, and state and local policy. The course emphasizes recent empirical research on policy issues and teaches students how to conduct such studies. Much of the material we will cover relates directly to ongoing policy debates.
Through lectures, discussions, readings, and a written exercise, this course provides students with a working knowledge of land use laws and environmental laws, the institutions that create, implement, and review them, and the issues that swirl around them.
This course examines the nature of climate responsibility from ethical, historical, scientific and policy perspectives and the efficacy of approaches to accelerate responsible climate action by both state and non-state actors.
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.
The built environment has profound effects on both our daily lives as well as the human condition at large. It determines where and how we live, work, play, and dream. The built environment embodies concrete stances on a wide variety of material, spatial, cultural, and generational issues within a society. The quality and availability of affordable housing, for instance, is not merely an economic concern, but also a value judgment about the obligations of a society to its citizens.
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.
