Environment & Sustainability

Familiarizes students with the history of the concept of sustainable development and its core principles. Discusses innovations happening on the ground in Canadian communities. Grounded in systems thinking, emphasis will be placed on new models of collaboration, integrated decision-making and planning, and climate change adaptation and mitigation. Examines key issues to provide a deep understanding of the complexities of solving and implementing such ‘messy, wicked’ problems. Emphasis will be placed on ‘making a difference through research’, learning and using modern research dissemination tools including social media channels.  

Explores how personal environmental identities, values, beliefs, feelings and attitudes are formed. Considers how environmental education and communication programs approach building a sense of place and wonder; offer direct experience in the environment; help develop responsible environmental behaviours; and build the capacity to implement meaningful environmental actions that resolve environmental problems and issues. Students examine the historic evolution of environmental education and communications, and various theories of environmental learning and literacy.

Explores the intersection of communication and the environment in various mediated and unmediated forms. Introduces a range of significant interpersonal, group/organizational and mass communication theories to environmental communication. Examines those theories from the context of their practical contributions to environmental communications and our understanding of how we form notions about the environment. Highlights the essential role communication has played in getting us to our current environmental situation and the role communication might play in helping us to change course.

Explores the value and implications of engaging in systems thinking for environmental education and communication. Investigates what systems thinking means, and what systems thinking entails through reviewing, engaging with, and applying key concepts and common approaches that are used in systems work. Considers the source and nature of various perspectives on systems, and reveals how different approaches lead to different understanding and thus different action. Distinguishes the opportunities and constraints of acting responsibly in a complex systems world. 

Cultivates increasingly sophisticated understanding of learning processes. The search for meaning through the active elaboration of our meaning system – one possible definition of learning – seems to be at the core of being human. As a result of this course, educators will be better able to design effective programs and products. Instructional design will be seen as an intentional process to create learning environments that support effective and efficient learning and instruction appropriate to particular bodies of skill and content and in specific contexts. With support and critique from classmates, students will design or re-design an instructional module they use or plan to use in their environmental education work.

Examines the range of philosophical and ethical stances at work today as expressed in contemporary environmental education and communications. Investigates environmental ethics as they are tested against real-world environmental problems.  

Explores the ecological principles governing the dynamic structures and processes of ecosystems and sustainability and how they can be applied to better understand responses to anthropogenic stress.

Explores the applicability of environmental sustainability concepts and principles in developing a sustainable society. Highlights the tensions that exist between our various value systems and how underlying root metaphors influence attitudes towards the environment. Investigates how environmental sustainability concepts and principles inform the development of a sustainable society from the perspectives of community, business, governance, and leadership as well as how they influence the measurement of performance and outcomes will establish the overall philosophical orientation of the program, and helps each student better define for him or herself what sustainable development means, and why it is such an important concept today. 

Explores how urban and regional food systems can be transformed through planning, policy, and participatory engagement. Learners examine the components of sustainable food systems, as shaped by multiple governance and knowledge traditions (Indigenous, non-Western, agroecological, diasporic, relational), and apply planning tools to real-world challenges such as land access, food security and sovereignty, and climate resilience. Through case studies and scenario design, students critically evaluate governance frameworks and design collaborative strategies to advance equity, decolonization, and regenerative futures.

Examines basic ecological principles and concepts as they apply to different scales of focus, from individual species to landscapes, and introduces basic tools of environmental management. Demonstrates how ecological principles and managerial tools can be applied to deal with commonly encountered challenges of ecosystem management. 

Introduces the latest scientific research of our changing natural earth “system” to create the basis for thinking about and understanding the complex issues created by global climate change and global biodiversity. Addresses challenges with respect to biodiversity, climate change, adaptations and governance from both international and Canadian perspectives. Provides an opportunity to learn and practice debating and scientific conference presentation skills. 

Introduces theories, concepts and facts about competing economic paradigms, and develops skills needed to integrate economic and environmental decisions. Examines selected economic instruments from member countries of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), and reviews leading practices in the application of these instruments, considering their effectiveness, efficiency, and public acceptability. 

Takes students beyond theory to the difficulty of the practice of sustainable development. Introduces the topic historically, and addresses the current debates over the meaning of sustainable development. Explains the longstanding discussions concerning economic growth and common resource allocation and introduces the difficult task of measuring human impacts. Applies theoretical concerns to the issue of climate change in Canada. Gives students the opportunity to reflect on their own lives, and on the practices of sustainable development in their own communities.  

Examines environmental accounting and reporting methods to improve business decisions and performance, including: identifying internal environmental costs (both direct and indirect), identifying external environmental costs (especially those costs which the firm may be accountable for in the future), applying activity based costing (total cost assessment, life cycle assessment, and full cost accounting to business operations), developing environmental performance measures and indicators, and reporting on environmental performance.

Provides an overview of current environmental law and policy, including the role of the common law, legislation, regulation and policy and how it evolves over time. Explains how the constitutional division of powers is relevant to environmental management in Canada and examines the role of federal, provincial and local governments, and First Nations in regulating environmental protection. Examines the development and implementation of international environmental legal instruments and explores the use of environmental assessment as a tool to prevent unwanted impacts.

Focuses on assessment and remediation of contaminants. Addresses anthropogenic activities which may introduce physical and chemical contaminants into the surrounding air, water or land. Discusses principles of environmental sampling and the application of physical and chemical analytical methodologies to assess the concentration of contaminants in soil, water and sediments. Examines quality assurance and quality control practices as well as strategies for the management of environmental contaminants including pollution prevention and remediation. Explores remedial approaches including physical, chemical, thermal and biological technologies. 

Synthesizes the cumulative learning throughout the program of study by enabling the capacity of learners. Develops personal leadership and action plans on the major challenges discussed in the previous residencies and online course work; to see and act sustainably and ethically in a complex multicultural world. 

Provides a critical overview and framework for working with environmental and sustainability management systems and tools. Examines various systems of environmental management and tools such as Environmental Impact Assessment and related processes, Environmental Performance Evaluation, and Sustainability Assessment and Risk Assessment. Emphasis will be on the “how-to,” and students are expected to familiarize themselves with the appropriate techniques and methods.

This course is a foundational introductory, interdisciplinary course about the nature, causes, and impacts of climate change. Resources will include the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and Canadian and BC government reports as well as significant current journal articles and publications. Impacts covered will include warming, sea level rise, melting of permafrost, and altered distribution and migration patterns as well as impacts on livelihoods and cultures. It will combine perspectives from geology, biology, sociology, and modelling.

This course reviews and evaluates existing policy instruments and governance institutions designed to address climate change (both adaptation and mitigation) now and in the future: e.g. COP process including COP 21- the Paris Agreement, UNFCCC, local, regional and national policies in Canada and elsewhere. It will include human dimensions of such policies and governance such as gender, equity, indigenous rights, communication and others. 

This experiential course enables students to work with their own or other organizations addressing climate change. It represents the transdisciplinary part of the course as it promotes working with and incorporating other ways of knowing and non-academic organizations. Students will arrange placements with First Nations, Government Departments at any level, Business and Industry and Civil Society, or NGOs. They will work with a supervisor in that organization as well as an academic advisor to enable them to wrest meaning from the experience and add value to the organization.