About the Course
Planetary Boundaries and Human Opportunities: The Quest for Safe and Just Development on a Resilient Planet helps students to explore and apply a range of emerging concepts within sustainability science. These concepts include: the Anthropocene, planetary boundaries, the social-ecological systems approach and resilience thinking. Such concepts are at the core of contemporary research and debates in the arena of global sustainability.
They are key to frame and understand rapidly changing trends in global environmental change caused by humans, and to assess responses that aim at addressing the consequences and impacts of these changes. They are also helpful in exploring pathways for ensuring safe and just human development for present and future generations.
This course aims at expanding and updating participant’s ‘conceptual toolbox’ in matters of global sustainability. Upon successful completion, a participant will be able to demonstrate a clear understanding of key concepts on global environmental change and their theoretical underpinning, as well as an up-to-date understanding of current debates in the global sustainability arena and emerging examples of approaches and solutions currently being developed.
The success of this course depends on an active student base representing a diversity of experiences, cultures, and perspectives. So get involved, and be part of this critical conversation!
Course Structure and Requirements
Planetary Boundaries is a self-paced course. The course is available in its entirety when you enroll and will close on August 31, 2020. This means that all lecture videos, quizzes, and readings have been uploaded to the platform and are available to you at once.
This course is structured around a series of pre-recorded lectures, readings, quizzes, and homework activities. Each course component can be completed at a time that is convenient for the student.
Students who successfully complete the course on the Verified Certificate track will receive a digital certificate of completion signed by Professor Rockström. If enroll as an auditor but wish to purchase a Verified Certificate at a later time, you can do so at any point until the course closes. While no academic credit is granted, we encourage students to work with their own institutions to explore the option of granting credit for their online coursework.
Prerequisites
None. There are no pre-requisites for this course.
Course Engagement
While we encourage students to use the Discussion Forum, the discussions will not be managed by course staff for this course. We hope students will pose questions and thoughts to each other in this format!
Please be sure to direct any technical questions to edX. Questions about course content should be addressed to courses@sdgacademy.org, using the subject line "PB course question."
Course Materials Provided
The lecture materials provided will be:
1) Course lectures: Video lectures are posted for each module and will remain available.
2) Assigned reading: Each module has assigned reading materials, most of which will be free links. Please check the Course Literature tab for more information.
Quizzes and homework exercise
There are quizzes that correspond to each lecture. All quiz questions are posted under each lecture video. After you submit your answers, you can view your grade under the "Progress" tab from the main menu.
In addition to quizzes for each lecture, there will also be a homework exercise. Homework exercises are similar in format to the quizzes but require engagement with the core readings, news articles and external webpages to reflect more deeply and engage with the debate on global sustainability outside of this course. You will be able to drop your lowest homework assignment score (ie. it will not be included in your final grade).