PROGRAMS


Environic Education

Environic education is inherently inter-disciplinary and is designed to help the individual understand linkages between diverse human and natural resource issues. This is done primarily through the study of, or participation in, actual case studies that demonstrate effective integrated solutions.

Environic education is predicated on the belief that our well-being is ultimately dependent on the health of our natural environment and the well-being of others.


Sustainable Societies

Sustainable Societies is a university level course about the most critical social, economic, and environmental challenges and the kinds of strategies to overcome them.

The purpose of Sustainable Societies is to introduce environment and social and economic development into university curricula in order to empower university graduates to become agents of positive change.

The objectives of the course are to develop social, economic, and environmental sustainability issue literacy and develop students’ ability to design strategies that address sustainability challenges.

Sustainable Societies develops students who share a common sustainability issue vocabulary and knowledge of how they can improve their communities.

The course is designed to be relevant to students regardless of their individual field of study. Students who complete the course will:

• Understand sustainable development issues
• Understand the interdependencies among the issues
• Know strategies which can be used to tackle sustainability issues
• Know how to analyze the practicality of proposed strategies
• Know how to build sustainable strategies themselves

The name of the course comes from the idea it seeks to promote – sustainable societies — where all people live in a healthy environment that is respected and where human rights and human development are enshrined.

Course Structure
Pedagogy
Academic Requirements
Sustainable Societies - Africa


Environing Workshop

The Environing Workshop is designed to assist groups in identifying the issues in their community that should be taken into account in developing plans for making the community more socially, economically and environmentally sustainable. The workshop helps uncover problem issues as well as inter-issue relationships. The workshop also identifies potential reasons for collaboration among groups that may have previously viewed each other as adversaries or rivals. Finally, the workshop aids communities by providing a structure for prioritizing problems and developing strategies to address them while creating a framework for building community consensus.

The workshop can be used to analyze conditions and develop strategies at the local, regional and national levels. The workshop can be used for real communities or as a gaming exercise in an educational setting.