Science for Sustainable Societies (BSc)
Programme structure
In the Science for Sustainable Societies programme, you will develop the expertise with which you can contribute to a more sustainable world. You will develop a sound knowledge base in the relevant disciplines of natural and social sciences and gain an innovative perspective on environmental and sustainability issues. At the same time, you will acquire the practical and professional skills that will assist you in your further career path, whether this is at a university, in business, or in the public sector.
Some of the courses in short
Introduction to Science for Sustainable Societies
In this course you will discover the benefits of our broad approach towards complex sustainability issues, combining a wide range of disciplines. The course highlights some of today’s most critical challenges and their root causes, drawing on both local and global examples. Questions that you will examine in this course include:
- How do human activities— including deforestation, agriculture, pollution, resource exploitation, and urbanisation—reshape Earth’s environmental systems?
- Why do these swift environmental changes pose threats to the overall well-being of the planet, impacting not only the environment but also our health and long-term survival as a species?
- In what ways is climate change influencing intertwined environmental and human systems, and what predictions can we make about the (near) future?
- How does environmental change affect human well-being, and how does this differ across the globe?
- When it comes to addressing environmental change, what decisions must be made, and how will they shape our lives and the future of our planet?
- Do we, as individuals, bear responsibility for the health of our planet?
Anthropology of Sustainability
This course will introduce you to anthropological perspectives on relationships between economies, societies, and the environment. You will also learn how anthropological research can shed new light on a diversity of possible sustainable societies. Our topics include the uneven distribution of environmental benefits and burdens along lines of gender, race, and class; how political economies shape our relations with more-than-human life; and anthropological ways of understanding climate disasters.
Earth System Science in the Anthropocene
How does human behaviour affect the Earth System? This course will explore planet Earth and its finite resources. These resources are governed by interacting processes that are increasingly affected by human activities. You will learn how and why the Earth is a dynamic system and explore these dynamics in terms of sustainability. In the course you will also examine human impacts such as climate change, environmental degradation, overexploitation, and overall pollution.
Socio-Economic Policy Evaluation
Who bears the costs of environmental action and inaction? This is a central question in this course. You will explore the perspective of different stakeholders, from multinational companies to local people living in regions that are under threat of climate change. Some of the questions you will study are:
- What is socio-economic policy evaluation and how does it influence the stakeholders and issues which are given priority in decision-making for sustainability?
- How are different societal groups, (from local to global) impacted by policies and practices of resource extraction, management and conservation?
- What are the possibilities and limitations of policy and market-based mechanisms (i.e. certification) to make these impacts more equitable?
- Does putting a value on nature serve to protect or further exploit it?
Methods that you will learn to use include environmental footprinting and evaluating the economic values of nature, interviewing and analysing stakeholders.
Field work
During all three years of the programme, you will have the chance to do a fair amount of field work. This will give you the chance to put your theoretical insights into practice and to develop various practical skills. The field work that you will be engaged in is diverse, and includes biodiversity assessments, measuring of nutrients, interviewing stakeholders and conducting surveys.
During the second year, you will go on a field trip to either the Dutch Wadden Islands or Portugal. Part of the third year is devoted to an eight-week team assignment, the Sustainable Science Project where you will be working on real-life sustainability problems put forward by organisations and companies.
Detailed programme
Below you find an overview of the curriculum. For a detailed description of the courses, check the study guide. Please note that this guide applies to the current academic year, the curriculum for next year may differ slightly.
