Introduction to Sustainable Development and Climate Change
What you'll learn
- You will understand basic concepts, challenges and opportunities that relate to the concept of sustainable development
- You will understand how different paradigms of thought cause people to take differing views on sustainability issues
- You will be able to identify feedback loops in complex systems and describe their course of events using words and expressions from system dynamics
- You will be able to define, explain and use sustainability vocabulary and associated facts
- You will understand how Earth’s climate works and be able to explain challenges and scenarios of climate change
- You will be able to state the main components and a number of feedback mechanisms in the Earth's climate system
Requirements
- No previous experience needed. We will help you every step of the way to build or increase your knowledge of sustainable development
- No equipment needed other than laptop or mobile device
Description
Sustainable development is a hot topic and one that is crucial for long term survival of our civilization. Still, views differ on what actions that are most efficient or even which that is the right course of action. Public debate on sustainability issues may be hard sometimes to follow as ideological perspectives are intertwined with systems understanding and strategies for concrete action.
In this course you will learn how to wrap your head around sustainability. Regardless of whether you are a sustainability champion that want to become a change agent in your organization, or you just want to comprehend what is happening in the world, this course will help you understand. We will discuss what people mean with ‘sustainable development’ and why some people think differently about this. We will also learn about systems and how everything in the world is governed by feedback loops. This will lead us to a deeper understanding of the challenges we face – whether they are environmental, social or economic. And finally, we will dig deeper into understanding Earth’s climate and climate change.
Understanding sustainability is really about taking a holistic approach on understanding the world, our society, and our place within. Join me on this tour through a truly engaging, important and potentially worldview-changing theme!
Who this course is for:
- This course is for anyone that is curious about Sustainable Development and that wants to better understand the public debate on sustainability issues
- You may want to develop or expand your knowledge of what lies behind the UN's Sustainable Development Goals
- You may work in a small, medium or large sized organization and have been tasked to improve your organization’s sustainability profile – or you are just curious on a personal level
- This course is suitable for marketing, communications and human resource professionals as well as for sustainability champions that want to understand the world in order to make a positive impact
Instructor
- 4.1 Instructor Rating
- 163 Reviews
- 464 Students
- 1 Course
Jon-Erik Dahlin holds a PhD in fusion plasma physics and has devoted his professional life to Education for Sustainable Development (ESD). He has taken a leading role in the integration of sustainability across programs as a university lecturer at the Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm (KTH), and is now working internationally with faculty training and in an advisory capacity.
Dr. Dahlin has been appointed a program director for several education programs including the development of several completely new engineering programs. At KTH, he was co-responsible for developing and delivering the faculty training course Learning for Sustainable Development (LH215V) in 2013. In 2016, he founded Snowflake Education, with the objective to assist educators and leaders in education worldwide with integrating sustainable development into education.