Minor Environmental Values and Sustainable Transformations

Through a one week introduction, concepts and skills are presented to set up key concepts, challenges, and skills for addressing environmental values and sustainable transformations. 

This unit is about climate justice and climate ethics. Climate change presents complex challenges at the intersection of technological innovations and ethical values. From a technical perspective, addressing climate change requires novel solutions in areas such as renewable energy, sustainable agriculture, and carbon capture technologies. On the other hand, the ethical dimension of climate change revolves around issues of environmental justice, intergenerational equity, and the responsibility of developed nations towards vulnerable populations and future generations. What would be a fair response to mitigate and adapt to climate change, given its global effects and implications for humans, non-humans, and ecosystems? 

This unit is about sustainable consumption and food justice. Where is your food coming from? What is the origin of materials that were used to build your smartphone? Plastics and other forms of waste are implicated in daily practices of food consumption, bodily care and hygiene, and provide a vantage point for critical reflection. Students examine industrial agricultural systems, and alternatives posed by local communities, grassroots movements and social movements. We will discuss agroecology and the potential to restore nature and to decommodify, decolonize and transform our food system. Together, we also examine the ethics of daily habits, carbon footprints, and social responsibility of corporations. 

This unit is about biodiversity, linguistic and cultural diversity conservation, and ecosystem services. How important are nature and other species for the prosperity of human societies? Can the benefits from nature be estimated in monetary terms? What human-nature relationships and practices are relevant for decisions affecting nature? How would the consideration of multiple values with respect to nature affect technological design? What role does language and culture play in our valuing nature?  

• Engaging Learning Methods  
• Environmental Philosophy 
• Critical Social Sciences 
• Creative Workshops  
• Skill Labs 
• Field Trip 

At the end of this course, you will be able to:

1. Understand critical perspectives in environmental ethics, climate justice, decolonialism, and transformative change.
2. Analyse current paradigms and practices of sustainability, including lifestyle change approaches and technological innovation, and identify the role of power dynamics, historical and colonial legacies, and political and economic structures.
3. Evaluate the implications of these paradigms and practices of sustainability for the environment as well as for human and non-humans.
4. Translate critical perspectives from environmental ethics, climate justice, decolonialism, and transformative change into requirements for design, technology, policy, and research.