The Department of Environment and Resource Studies has a Master of Environmental Studies (MES) program and a Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) program in Social and Ecological Sustainability. Both are devoted to understanding and pursuing sustainability in a dynamic and complex world, considering and integrating understanding across disciplines and scales from the organism to the planet.
Three broad conceptual themes guide much of the teaching, learning, and scholarly enquiry fostered through the ERS graduate programs:
- assessing the philosophical, ethical and theoretical foundations and practical implications of progress towards sustainable societies, and application of this analysis as a broad context for specific work in particular situations;
- understanding socio-ecological interrelations as dynamic complex systems vulnerable to being over-stressed by human activities; and
- examining conventional and alternative social arrangements, including institutions and governance, as means of improving human wellbeing and environmental responsibility.
Within this general orientation, faculty and student research can be focused on quite specific topics but always with attention to the larger context of social and ecological systems and to the normative sustainability objectives within which the research is embedded. Students pursue topics of particular interest to them, with guidance from faculty members and other people with appropriate experience.
Fields of Study
The ERS programs are transdisciplinary, integrating perspectives and insights from the natural and social sciences and the humanities. ERS does not divide itself into distinct specializations. Our teaching and research does, however, emphasize work in three overlapping fields:
- Resource Analysis and Stewardship. This field concerns an analysis of existing resource systems as well as creative and innovative ways of utilizing the earth’s resources in a sustainable fashion.
- Socio-Ecosystem Function and Renewal. This field concerns ways to apply our knowledge of ecological systems towards renewing human relationships with the broader environment.
- Sustainability Policy and Governance. This field concerns existing and new forms of governance and policy with respect to sustaining healthy and resilient human communities and biophysical systems.
While the ERS graduate programs help to develop specialist understanding of particular considerations in the social and physical sciences within the three fields outlined above, the students will also be encouraged to think more deeply about why they are conducting specific research and how it fits in the broader realm of human life and decision making. Each of the fields includes a normative element that demands attention to purposes and underlying positions on how we ought to live on this planet.