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- Course
This course is an introduction to how sustainability issues (ESG: Economic, environmental, social & governance) have become financially material to the global equity, credit, underwriting, insurance, risk management, venture capital, and asset management capital markets. These issues have a direct impact on risk exposure and the quality of
public, private and government debt/equity investments. The course will devote a significant of time covering the fundamental principles of finance including valuation, financial statements, time-value of money, capital markets, and asset management. Students will develop the knowledge and skills necessary to effectively communicate
sustainability/ ESG issues to a financial professional.
Students will be exposed to global sources of environmental/sustainability corporate performance information, and
how environmental performance is quantified and translated into financial performance. The course focuses on “best-in-class” environmental investment and how it relates/differs from socially responsible investing (SRI), and Impact Investing. This course gives students a foundation in how sustainability issues affect the various sectors of finance and an understanding of how integrating sustainability principles and practices into finance can be used to make a business become more efficient, effective, reduce risks, create opportunities and provide competitive advantage, for both
companies and financial firms alike. Students will gain the tools to evaluate, quantify and assess environmental, social and governance (ESG) metrics of companies as a way of differentiating investment choices. The ethics of sustainability issues and their impact on management & finance will also be addressed. This course satisfies the
M.S. in Sustainability Management program’s general and financial management curriculum area requirement.
- Topics on: Finance, Impact, Investing
- Course
We need to transition toward a more environmentally-sustainable society given both pollution and its health effects, and the impacts of extreme weather and climate change. The production and consumption of energy is the largest contributor to these concerns, and so the transition to a clean energy economy is essential. The increasing energy needs of the world’s growing population make this an ongoing challenge. At the same time, energy security and affordability,
and social and economic inequities, must also be considered. New technologies and effective policies are needed to help drive increased deployment of renewable energy and energy efficiency. Finance is also a key lever to drive the implementation of clean energy. The availability and cost of capital is a key determinant in scaling renewable energy
and energy efficiency technologies.
This course focuses on the finance and market aspects of the clean energy economy, and integrates technology, policy, and finance to evaluate both the opportunities and challenges. There is a focus on renewable energy generation, as mass electrification using cleaner generation sources is necessary to sustain our energy-dependent lives and economies. The course also looks at energy efficiency, including specific end-uses of energy that are responsible for the majority of
emissions (e.g., personal vehicles, buildings). Throughout the course, finance will be analyzed as a barrier to, or enabler of, greater adoption of clean energy, particularly as we think about the allocation of capital.
- Topics on: Finance, Investing
- Course
Environmental, social, and governance (ESG) issues are moving to center stage for corporate boards and executive teams. This course complements management and operations courses by focusing on the perspective and roles of the Board and C-suite of corporations, financial institutions, and professional firms in addressing ESG risks as well as promoting and overseeing governance aligned with ESG principles.
This course is designed for those who hold or will hold positions in organizations with responsibilities for mapping and managing ESG issues for an organization. These responsibilities can vary and may include: setting and tracking against sustainability goals, communicating progress towards targets, and engaging with
stakeholders, including civil society organizations, suppliers, customers, and investors.
- Topics on: Business, ESG
- Course
This course provides an overview of the way sustainability (environmental, social and governance) factors are analyzed in private markets. It focuses on preparing students to implement their understanding of the financial andsocietal risks and opportunities within the investment making process. In private markets, limited partners (pension funds, endowments, high net-worth individuals) have pushed the sustainability imperative and social consciousness
of private equity funds and asset managers by seeking greater clarity around how their money is invested in both a responsible and financially meaningful way. Alongside this trend, an evolving regulatory environment globally has propelled the need to systemize evaluation frameworks for stakeholders within investment functions and advisors
who support them. Unlike public markets, sustainability information is harder to glean in private markets and requires a skilled extraction and evaluation process. During this course, we examine a traditional ESG due diligence process embedded within the wider investment lifecycle (sourcing, diligence, hold and exit) through the lens of changing geographic regulatory landscape in financial investing and the market leading frameworks that quantify ESG factors for evaluation. The course culminates with a deal due diligence process that mimics an investment
committee (IC) comprised of private equity leaders that understand the commercial and purpose-driven viability of an investment.
- Topics on: Business, Finance, Investing
- Course
Publicly traded companies are increasingly challenged to contribute to sustainable development and improve quality of life for everyone. The years ahead will reveal the negative side effects and blind spots of conventional strategy tools, which often focus on short-termism, profit maximization, and share price. Historically, social expectations of
businesses have been limited to the creation of wealth for owners and shareholders as well as the creation of jobs and economic development for the communities in which they operate. This limited set of expectations has allowed managers to focus on profit maximization as their primary objective and source of value creation.
Transformative business models, however, will become increasingly important as businesses face the challenges of climate change, resource scarcity and social inequity that dominate today’s competitive business landscape. Acquiring the skills to help navigate these conditions will be essential to businesses that seek to thrive and foster a more sustainable world and create shared stakeholder value.
This course will explore the fundamental role of business in contributing to a more sustainable and just world and the emerging strategies companies are using to align business value creation with social and environmental impacts. How corporations successfully balance the expectations and interests of stakeholders with profit maximization will be explored. This course will also identify the impacts, risks, and opportunities that leadership must assess and
develop strategies to address. The course will explore the benefits of ESG/Sustainability in business, how for-profit businesses can thrive in a competitive setting while still creating long-term stakeholder value, and how companies have embedded ESG strategies, plans and programs to address their related challenges and opportunities. In addition, the course will consider business drivers and macro forces that inform ESG strategy and key concepts and tools that are essential to developing value generating ESG strategies that are good for people, planet, and enterprise profitability.
Course readings include case studies, thought leadership pieces, news articles and readings from relevant books authored by leading strategy and sustainability practitioners and students are expected to come to class ready to reflect upon their meaning relevant to the topics addressed in that class session. Students will be expected to
actively participate in-class and to apply their critical and strategic thinking toward homework assignments. Toward the beginning of the course, students will be asked to select one publicly traded company, from any sector, for which s/he will assess aspects of their ESG strategy and approach. The course will be in-person and will include guest
lecturers from the business sector and discussion designed to engage students in-class.
This course aims to assist students in developing the knowledge, skills, and perspective they need to understand ESG-related challenges that modern enterprises face and how to develop strategies that can reduce negative environmental impacts, mitigate risk, drive growth and innovation while creating stakeholder value. This course is
an elective and will be open, space permitting, to all interested Sustainability Management students who have completed their Sustainability Management required course. This class is intended for graduate students and professionals who have a good understanding of sustainability management principles and would like to explore
how ESG and sustainability can create long-term business and stakeholder value.
- Topics on: Business, ESG
- Course
Fashion’s consistent involvement amongst global polluters has become a decades old fact struggling to gain a proportionate response amongst the brand startup and sourcing community. With industry revenues set to exceed $1 trillion, there is an opportunity to critically address existing
revenue models predicated on traditional metrics, such as constant growth, and singular bottom lines. “Sustaining” this defunct persona of a fashion business implies a contradictory strategy for an organization envisioning ethical and social relevance with the 21
st -century consumer.
This environment demands a systems-change approach to thoroughly investigate recent initiatives and pioneer business models that promise shared value amongst planet, people and profit. An ethnographic review of hierarchical relationships within fashion’s sourcing
matrixes are required to evolve an exploitative foundation with a regenerative consequence.
The course attempts to create a nexus between the fashion entrepreneur and systems thinker to explore strategic solutions that address sustainability through an environmental, social and
economic lens. It focuses on dismantling a one-dimensional notion of success, scale or pragmatism with initiatives that thrive and sustain their impact within micro-communities. We aim to
foster a mindful, yet critical discourse on fashion industry initiatives, past and present, as we practice various tools that help transition existing organizations and incubate new startups towards
sustainable outcomes.
- Topics on: Business, Entrepreneurship
- Course
This course will provide students with a detailed, practice-oriented understanding of global climate policy, regulation and litigation, as these are developing at the international level and in a number of jurisdictions around the world – with a particular focus on the United States, the European Union and China.
- Topics on: Decarbonization, Finance, Law, Policy
- Course
This course will provide students with an understanding of the ways and extent to which climate change law and policy is relevant to businesses, as well as the role of sustainability professionals in practical implementation. The course is divided into several core topics, including: (i) an overview of international and U.S. climate change policy and law, including the Paris Agreement, the Inflation Reduction Act and energy transition policy support; (ii) the rise of sustainable finance and climate impact investing; (iii) market-led, voluntary initiatives such as the Task Force on Climate-related Financial Disclosures (TCFD), and related developments including the mainstreaming of sustainable/ESG investing and the proliferation of corporate net zero goals; (iv) corporate governance, shareholder activism, and the emergence of mandatory regulation on climate disclosures, such as the E.U.’s Taxonomy Regulation, California’s climate disclosure legislation, and the U.S. Securities & Exchange Commission’s proposed climate disclosure rule; (iii) carbon pricing, carbon markets, carbon board adjustment mechanisms, and
related regulations; (iv) greenhouse gas emissions accounting and “Scope 4” avoided emissions; (v) climate-related litigation and enforcement actions against corporations and financial
institutions in the U.S. and other key markets, including “greenwashing” litigation and “anti-energy company boycott” measures by several U.S. states; (vi) the way in which technology and AI are increasingly intersecting with climate change investing and management;
(vii) human rights and the just transition, and (viii) nature and biodiversity.
- Topics on: Business, Law, Policy
- Course
International Environmental Law is a fascinating field that allows students to consider some of the most important
questions of the 21 st century – questions that have profound ramifications for the quality of life for our generation as
well as future generations. Global environmental problems are real and urgent. Their resolution requires creative and
responsible thought and action from many different disciplines.
Sustainability practitioners must understand global environmental issues and their effects on what they are charged
to do. At one level, this course will consider the massive challenge of the 21 st century: how to alleviate poverty on a global scale and maintain a high quality of life while staying within the bounds of an ecologically limited and fragile biosphere — the essence of sustainable development. From a more practical perspective, the course will provide students with an understanding of international environmental policy design and the resulting body of law in order to strengthen their ability to understand, interpret and react to future developments in the sustainability management arena.
After grounding in the history and foundational concepts of international environmental law and governance, students will explore competing policy shapers and the relevant law in the areas of stratospheric ozone protection, climate change, chemicals and waste management, and biodiversity. The course satisfies the public policy course requirement for the M.S. in Sustainability Management program.
The course is a full semester course to be held in person. The number of students is limited to twenty-five (25). Cross-registration is permitted for SIPA and other graduate students, space permitting.
- Topics on: Law
- Course
The fashion industry is an ideal case study of how governments, communities, citizens, and international institutions attempt to improve the social and physical sustainability impacts of major industries. Apparel is one of the largest consumer sectors in the world and is said to have the most globalized supply chain, meaning its impacts and
importance touch nearly every corner of our planet.
Historically, apparel, footwear, and textiles have been at the center of some of the most consequential government actions as we strive for liberal Western democracy, including the abolition of slavery and the passage of the first workplace safety, labor, and environmental laws in the United States. In recent years, fashion has returned to the
center of dynamic policy debates within the sustainability and social impact space, from issues of greenwashing and
climate change to forced labor.
Today, the $2.5 trillion global fashion industry’s social and environmental impacts often evade regulation. Majorbrands leverage long and opaque supply chains for raw materials and cheap manufacturing costs with little accountability. Private regulation and voluntary commitments have policed global supply chains for the better part of four decades, an approach, as this class explores, that arguably has ended in failures to protect human and environmental rights. The fashion industry’s lack of accountability has cost lives, including the notorious Rana Plaza building collapse in 2013, where 1,132 garment makers died, and has led the industry to contribute to a sizable
percentage of annual climate change. Profits have been pushed to the top of the supply chain, while garment makers consistently toil for poverty wages, and the pollution and environmental degradation of fashion is a burden almost exclusively carried by low-income nations and communities of color that manufacture clothing and produce raw
materials.
But the tide is turning. Governments are once again being asked to step in and regulate the fashion industry and other consequential consumer industries. Can effective policies police international supply chains and achieve their intended aims? How can they be designed to address root causes and systemic injustices, and how can the policy process be inclusive and representative? Can policies be designed to avoid unintended consequences, or is the democratic policy process doomed to compromise and thus flaws? This course is a survey of the fast-evolving space of modern environmental and labor policy as it intersects with the fashion industry and seeks to incentivize more responsible business behavior in the realm of social, environmental, and governance impacts. The class will use recently passed and proposed fashion social and sustainability policies as our case studies, mostly in the US and the
EU, such as the New York State Fashion Sustainability and Social Accountability Act (the Fashion Act); the EU Corporate Sustainability Due Diligence Draft Directive (EU CSDDD); the US federal FABRIC Act; the EU’s Waste Framework Directive, to name a few. In this course, we also critically explore the history, practicalities, limitations, and power dynamics of policy-making as a tool for problem-solving social and environmental problems through the lens of fashion with an emphasis on US and EU policy, looking at (1) the history and modern evolution of fashion policy in the environmental, civil rights, labor, and human rights space using both historical and current case studies, (2) the contested role of government in society, and the class, race, and gender politics of government engagement, and efforts to democratize the policy-making process, (3) the shift from private to public regulation and the varied approaches to regulating fashion, from soft to hard law, and (4) the industry opportunities and responses to and impacts from
policy, including preparing for compliance and lobbying government.
This class will focus on developing the skills to critically understand and react to the fashion policy landscape and to analyze the government’s power and limitations and the industry’s role in shaping social change in fashion through the lens of social, environmental, racial, and economic justice for the full fashion supply chain.
- Topics on: Business, Policy
- Course
Public policy shapes how our environment, both natural and built, is managed and regulated. Policy not only creates the infrastructure and regulatory frameworks needed to support sustainability goals, but is also critical in establishing an equitable foundation that supports individual and collective change in pursuit of those goals.
This course will serve as an introduction to equity in sustainability policy: We will survey federal, state, and local policies and proposals to understand how we use policy to enhance urban resilience, mitigate environmental impacts, and also promote social and economic justice. Using an interdisciplinary approach that draws from economics, sociology, urban studies, critical theory, and more, students will develop their capacities to read and interpret policy, enhance their understanding of current policy frameworks, and strengthen their ability to engage with emerging policy developments.
Building on contemporary efforts in public policy, we will use an equity lens to focus on the human dimension of sustainability. We will explore policy frameworks and dialogues that foster more equitable outcomes, increase engagement of people most impacted, and contribute to sustainability goals. As an entry point, the course will focus on policies related to climate adaptation and urban sustainability transitions, setting the stage for students to explore equity in urban resilience efforts and to examine intersections of race, class, and other social factors with access to resources.
The course will be discussion-based and center participatory activities (e.g., student-led discussions, paired analyses, team exercises) designed to encourage students to consider policy issues from multiple perspectives—including identifying disparities and assessing opportunities for increasing equity in the sustainability policy sector. The course will also invite scholars and practitioners to share expertise and experience from the field. Students are not expected
or required to have any previous experience with policy or law.
- Topics on: Law, Policy
- Course
New York City has positioned itself as a global leader in the fight against climate change, often serving as a model for other jurisdictions to follow. This course explores the development and implementation of environmental legislation and policy in New York City during the past two decades. It includes discussions about historical context, environmental policymaking considerations, political processes, outcomes, and the role of stakeholders such as advocates, business, industry, labor, government actors, and community. Students will gain broad knowledge of key legislation and policies related to sustainability, resiliency, energy, emissions, waste and the circular economy, transportation, water and air quality, and green space. Furthermore, students will consider how environmental justice and equity play a role in the development of legislation and policy, and assess best practices
for providing equitable treatment and engaging all communities. While the focus of the class will be on New York City, students will also learn about environmental policies implemented in other jurisdictions.
Introduction to Environmental Law and Policy in New York City is available to students in the Graduate Program for Sustainability Management. It is designed to provide future sustainability practitioners and others with a fundamental understanding of how legislation and policy is made, what influences this development, and how legislation and policy seek to address climate change in urban environments like New York City. Students will be able to use this knowledge to help government and public and private organizations achieve more sustainable solutions.
This is a semester-long elective class that will be taught on campus. Specific competencies or prerequisites are not required. This course will be interactive and discussion-intensive, engaging students to utilize and reflect critical and analytical thinking about how environmental legislation and policy is developed and how they can create innovative environmental legislation and policy in the future. Students will participate in class discussions, think critically about policy development and assigned readings, write a reaction essay on environmental justice and equity, and present their analysis to classroom colleagues. For the final project, students will write a research report and present their report to the class, focusing on a particular environmental policy topic, identifying areas where policymaking can be improved upon and/or expanded, and developing their own recommendations for
New York City to address climate change. In addition to substantive policy initiatives, the research report and presentation will include strategies for engaging stakeholders, addressing environmental justice and equity considerations, identifying challenges, navigating political processes, and achieving implementation.
- Topics on: Law, Policy
- Course
Water is widely recognized as the most essential natural resource for both society and Earth’s ecosystems. Yet the relationship between society and water is complex. While water is critical for livelihoods, it is also frequently a hazard. Floods, droughts, and contaminated water are formidable threats to human well-being. To deal with this
dual nature of water, people have long modified the water cycle through engineering schemes like dams, reservoirs, irrigation systems, and interbasin transfer systems as well as through land use and land-cover change.
We need more than just technical solutions. Society needs a clear and robust plan to manage and govern water given its intertwined relationship with this critical resource. In “Water Governance”, we will explore the political, social, economic, and administrative systems that affect the use, development, and management of water resources. You will be introduced to current themes that influence water governance including sustainable development, integrated water resource management, water rights and pricing, corruption, and equity for
marginal groups. These themes will be explored at the local, national, and international levels to provide you with a broad understanding of water governance issues.
- Topics on: Business, Economics, Policy, Water
- Course
This course is designed to furnish students with a conceptual framework for understanding climate tech innovation and an overview of practical ways to professionally engage in it. We focus on climate tech because the current global rate of decarbonization is not sufficient to limit warming to 1.5°C. To accelerate the rate of change and stabilize our planet’s climate, innovative technology development and diffusion is required. Beyond the moral imperative, rapid decarbonization represents an unprecedented economic opportunity. To realize the promise of a
low-carbon economy, new practitioners must join the innovation ecosystem and drive it forward. This course will prepare students to do so. The course starts by framing what climate tech means (i.e., all technologies focused on mitigating greenhouse gas emissions and addressing the impacts of climate change) and how climate tech innovation will occur (i.e., as a complex process including co-evolution of technology, regulations, infrastructure, and consumer behavior). It then provides an overview of the innovation value chain including various stakeholders and avenues for professional involvement. It concludes with a survey of sectoral innovation opportunities. Considerations of equity and just transition are covered throughout.
It is a full-semester on-campus elective course open to any SUMA student, or student across CU academic programs who is interested in climate entrepreneurship, investing, and technology innovation. The course includes 14 two-hour interactive lectures, with regular guest practitioners representing various career paths in the innovation
economy. Students are assumed to have had little previous exposure to the startup venture building ecosystem or
decarbonization innovation pathways.
- Topics on: Innovation
- Course
This course takes a dual-pronged approach to the importance of sustainability reporting: examining both the corporate perspective on preparing sustainability disclosures and the investor perspective. At a time when the sustainability reporting landscape—both voluntary and mandatory—is rapidly evolving, focusing on the investor needs provides clarity. This approach helps students anchor their learning in what matters most for capital markets, enabling them to organize and lead sustainability reporting processes within their own organizations.In the first half of the course, students will explore the evolving landscape of sustainability frameworks and regulations. Key regulatory regimes—such as California’s SB 253 and SB 261, the EU’s CSRD, and the CSDDD and GRI, Sustainability Reports, ISSB —will serve as anchors for case discussions. These discussions will play a crucial role in helping students understand how to design, manage, and implement the internal processes required to respond to mandatory and evolving ESG disclosure expectations.
The second half of the course will adopt the lens of the investor on how these disclosures are used to inform capital allocation, risk assessment, and stewardship decisions, exploring how ESG disclosures are integrated into decision-making across three asset classes: public equity, private equity/alternatives, and fixed income. Students will
engage in structured modules for each asset class, assuming the role of institutional investors tasked with interpreting disclosures, engaging with companies, and making recommendations. Each module will feature live engagements with real-world investors, offering students direct insight into market practices and expectations. This two-sided lens aims to equip students with the skills to deliver decision-useful, transparent, and consistent sustainability information that aligns with the demands of today’s regulatory and investment environments. This
course is designed for students aiming to lead or advise on climate and ESG disclosures in complex, regulated environments. It is especially relevant for those in corporate sustainability, investor relations, finance, or ESG advisory roles who must translate regulatory mandates into credible, actionable, and investor-relevant disclosures.
- Topics on: Business, ESG, Innovation, Investing
- Course
Water stress, a growing threat to human development under a changing climate, made TIME’s top 10 global risks of 2023. This has spurred public and private institutions to develop innovative solutions, tackling the rising challenge of water scarcity through various “water lenses” across the world. Water resources security hinges on the complex
interplay between the hydrologic cycle, climate system, land use, and human society. As the global population surpasses 9 billion in 2050, with over 70% residing in urban areas, and a future characterized by an increasingly variable and extreme climate looms, understanding the interconnectedness of climate, water, and society becomes
paramount for sustainably managing water resources and assessing future risks across all water- and climate-linked systems. The distribution of global water resources depends on both climate change and socioeconomic inequity issues. Some countries will be more affected than others unless appropriate strategies and technological resources
are available to cope with new scenarios. This course provides the necessary context for everyone in the program and/or those pursuing a water track to understand how environmental changes connect to both natural and human-caused factors, including environment justice and social equity-related issues, both locally and globally. Drawing on peer-reviewed evidence, project-based learning, and a hands-on training workshop, this course covers: Science needed to understand the interactions between water resources and the climate system; Analysis of water-climate data on online web tools to teach students how to make data-driven decisions; How to read scientific papers and write critical opinions on cutting-edge research; Opportunities for exciting discussions with classmates and instructors about ongoing socio-economic issues around the world related to water and climate. Finally, using their new knowledge and skills, students will choose a real-world issue related to water, climate, and society as a case study. They will propose solutions they care about, supported by reasoning and evidence. The interactions between water and climate play an integral role in the coupling between natural and human systems. Therefore, the
valuable scientific and hands-on training experience gained in this course will be an asset for other courses and the Sustainability Management Program in general.
- Topics on: Water
- Course
This course looks to legal definitions of “low-income” and “disadvantaged community” codified in federal and state
statutes to frame discussions on energy insecurity and resiliency risks. Using these guiding points, a cross-disciplinary approach is followed to explore how the construction of energy efficient and resilient buildings
contribute to their affordability in operations and maintenance. The course primarily focuses on creating sustainable and affordable multifamily housing, a building type unique to urban areas located in the US Northeast. However, in view of recommended strategies to meet carbon reduction goals, such as building electrification, the parameters of the course are expanded to highlight best practices in equitable policy-making around the design of utility rates and rules for low-income electric customers.
The course also aims to address common barriers to developing sustainable and affordable multifamily housing—barriers like poor property conditions, limited access to financial and social capital, and lack of community engagement. To the first barrier, some of the oldest buildings in the country are located in the US Northeast. Building age and the variability of extreme weather in this geographic region presents environmental hazards such as lead, asbestos and mold, which defer critical cost and energy saving projects until remediation takes
place. Second, narrow profit margins from below-market rents in affordable housing and the high cost to borrow money, financially constrain and may discourage owners from making necessary investments toward energy efficiency and resiliency on their properties. Finally, affordable multifamily housing is legally structured in a way
that requires tenant approvals before building improvements are executed. This legality elevates community engagement, including forms of community-based workforce development, into a central role when assessing the feasibility of energy efficiency and resiliency projects in affordable multifamily housing. In view of this, the course
examines practical methods used by affordable housing development and sustainability practitioners that leverage energy incentives, low-cost capital and other resources for energy efficiency and resiliency projects deployed in affordable multifamily housing. The course also uses case studies from the US Northeast, grey literature, professional texts and tools, primary sources, and peer-reviewed journal articles to 1) learn best practices for designing equitable utility rates and rules for low-income electric customers, 2) inform strategies that shape
energy efficiency and resiliency projects in deed-restricted housing, public housing, and naturally-occurring affordable housing (NOAH), and 3) gain a fundamental understanding of how to implement an energy efficiency and resiliency project across all stages of the project lifecycle.
- Topics on: Energy, Infrastructure
- Course
As the world’s population continues to shift towards urban areas, the need for innovative approaches to urban land management and infrastructure redevelopment becomes more pressing than ever before. With over 4.5 billion people living in cities, the transformation of industrial districts into bustling commercial zones and the revitalization of obsolete urban areas are critical to meeting the demands of the 21st century.
However, achieving sustainability goals requires progress not only in meeting environmental targets but also in ensuring equity and resiliency, often through unconventional financial arrangements and partnerships. Despite the numerous challenges involved in bringing sustainability projects to fruition, success is possible through creative
problem-solving and strategic planning. This course explores the most pressing sustainability issues confronting contemporary cities and delves into the challenges of bringing sustainability projects from conception to completion.
Using a case-study format, this course analyzes redevelopment projects in three key areas: (1) the various policy incentives and approaches to driving sustainable urban renewal, (2) the stakeholders in the planning and implementation process, and (3) the impact on the social fabric of the community. By the end of the course, students will have the skills necessary to analyze urban form from an environmental and social standpoint as well as an understanding of the key components of the redevelopment process. Students will gain familiarity with a variety of
redevelopment partnership arrangements as well as implementation strategies. These skills are applicable across a range of professional contexts including project design and management within municipal departments, private and non-profit organizations, multilateral organizations, and development finance institutions.
- Topics on: Ecology, Infrastructure
- Course
As the energy paradigm slowly shifts from fossil fuels to alternatives, issues of cost and equity on both the supply and demand side become increasingly urgent. Populations impacted on both sides of energy production and consumption can share the benefits of empowerment, including potentials for greater energy independence; and the dangers of disempowerment, from the implications of fracking to the unjust distribution of systems cost. Within these considerations, the built environment is an important object of study. The built environment accounts for approximately 40% of energy consumption worldwide, including heating, cooling, lighting and electrical power; it affects all of humanity across cultural and political boundaries. Buildings represent a middle ground between the enormity of infrastructure and the intimacy of human behavior. They are at the intersection of energy practices and social equity, where economic, health, environmental and cultural factors are most open to examination, with unexpected results. For example, recent studies in the US show an unexpected correlation between building insulation, usually of interest only to the landlord who pays for heat; and the likelihood of tenant disconnection notices for energy bills, usually associated only with consumer-billed electrical energy. Another example, derived from international sustainable development practice, has correlated ambient interior daytime temperature in homes and schools to productivity, education and other human development indicators. This course is not only concerned with the benefits of adequate and equitable energy provision, but also with the implications of energy justice in its current forms and as we transition to sustainable energy sources. It also considers the role of the legacy physical environment, urban and non-urban, in creating opportunities for passive environmental controls that can contribute to other quality of life and community improvement goals. The equitable distribution of access to non-carbon energy and the appropriate placement of new energy infrastructure are also factors at play.
- Topics on: Energy, Infrastructure
- Course
One in three seems to be the indicative number. 30% of earth’s land area is covered by forests (5000 years ago it was 50%); one third of current total CO2 emissions are reabsorbed by forests; one third of humanity cooks with wood every day; agroforestry is the preferred system for these same 2 billion people. Hundreds of millions of indigenous peoples have their native land in forests. The biodiversity score is much higher: more than half of all of earth’s species are found in forests (about 25% are in the oceans); forests are the major system for fresh water conservation; and the traded value of global forest products is about $300 billion. Finally, to be in the forest (especially with your
eyes open) makes life worth living.
Forests are therefore intimately connected with climate, water, biodiversity, food production, global poverty, indigenous people, and human spiritual well-being; not to mention the major global industries based on them. They are best understood when considered holistically, and that is the approach of this course. We will examine all the
issues mentioned above and their connections with forests to develop a comprehensive understanding of them. We will study both forest ecology, economics and business. We will examine indigenous peoples’ vision and view of forests and nature. We will delve deeply into the role of forests in climate change; forests both absorb and produce
CO2 emissions. We will consider temperate, tropical and boreal forests. On Saturday field trips we will learn to measure forest biomass, commercial volume and carbon content. We will learn to financially analyze forest business ventures. Students will produce reports at the end of the course on one of the connections outlined above
or on a country of interest. Mid semester, students will develop analytical work products on measurement andfinancial analysis.
Without an understanding of forests, one’s grasp of all the issues mentioned above is incomplete. Also forests provide a rather straight-forward context for understanding and analyzing many issues that are critical to all areas of sustainability. We will utilize the forest context to better understand, for example, management of water, biodiversity, poverty alleviation, environmental justice, forest industries and the global carbon cycle and climate. In other words, skills acquired here will be useful in other fields of study. The instructor managed forest projects for UNDP in many countries for many years. He also lived and worked in Colombia, Puerto Rico, Italy, Australia, and Argentina for 16 years. We will weave these experiences into our study of principles. I (to switch the pronoun) am also available throughout the semester for any career discussions students may wish to pursue.
- Topics on: Ecology