School of Public Policy 690STK - Local to Global Sustainability

The Anthropocene is a new geological epoch with humans as the dominant force driving change across our Earth systems. Our social, ecological and technological systems are changing rapidly and characterized by increasing complexity and uncertainty. This presents a fundamental challenge to our ability to develop policy solutions to critical social and environmental problems from the local to the global scale. This course will explore these policy challenges and how our communities and institutions can develop new policy approaches to complex, wicked sustainability problems. Students will engage in interdisciplinary science and scholarship to examine the ethical, political, technological, and scientific challenges to creating sustainability solutions at multiple scales. Students will learn how to work across disciplines to understand complexity, how to translate that to a solutions-oriented context, and how to connect pragmatic action to long-term sustainability transitions.