Transformative Approaches to Sustainability

This course is available for on-campus & remote (online) learning. All students participate in interactive, real-time classes. The need to pursue environmental sustainability, address poverty alleviation and bring about social justice leads to calls for ambitious societal transformations. Few aspects of knowledge for sustainability are more crucial than those concerning the strategies and processes required to drive required change. This course equips students with the skills and expertise to conceptualise and evaluate reform strategies promoting socio-environmental transformations. It introduces students to different conceptualisations of transformation – social-ecological, structural and enabling frameworks – and outlines practical principles for effective research and action towards sustainability. Students learn to connect critical conceptual (theoretical) readings with practical examples, explore how environmental issues arise in different contexts, and consider openings for intervention through cases where these approaches are applied. Students also explore particular environmental problems in small groups and develop an analysis of a specific problem of their choosing, assessing opportunities and constraints facing different strategies to address the issue. In each section of the course, students will consider the advantages and disadvantages of each conceptual approach to transformations, considering how the approaches might be combined to drive socio-environmental transformations.