This course aims at providing an integrated systems perspective on current sustainable development issues. Students are being introduced to the major threats and to the main scientific concepts and methods needed to understand and respond to them. The emphasis is on seeing the larger picture.

The course starts by elaborating the interactions between human societies and their environment from a historical perspective, Next, we discuss the concept of SD and its diverse definitions. We move on to an introduction of the scientific worldview and the role of values and worldviews in the interpretation and operationalisation of SD. Is SD primarily an objective topic of scientific enquiry, with facts and models, or a subjective aspiration, with an ethical component. It is both. With this in mind, the contribution of relevant scientific disciplines such as ecology, demography, energy and environmental science, agro-ecology, economy and social and political science is outlined.

Throughout the course, the sustainability problem is approached from a wide perspective by looking more in-depth at cultural theory and worldviews. It will be shown that the perception of both problems and solutions depend on one’s point of view and the frame of reference. That is why dealing with sustainability problems is a matter of combining scientific data about the world with value orientations and institutional realities.