Beyond the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs): Addressing Sustainability and Development

Meeting the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) or Global Goals is proving very challenging, as countries around the world deal with biodiversity loss, climate change, poverty and inequality, and ecosystem degradation.

This four-week course from the University of Michigan explains how societies can tackle and even go beyond the SDGs, by looking at sustainability and development as two equally important ideas rather than a single concept. The result is an in-depth exploration of how all the factors related to Global Goals influence each other.

Over the duration of this course, you’ll get the chance to look at how investigation and action into climate change, biodiversity loss, and other key issues can build bridges between different fields.

As you compare the impact SDG solutions have on natural, social, and applied sciences, as well as humanities, you’ll gain insights into the synergies and tradeoffs between these areas.

Once you’ve seen how the Sustainable Development Goals are connected to different fields, you’ll start on the ultimate goal of this course; to understand and address sustainability and development as equally important, coexisting issues.

Through in-depth analysis of each SDG, how it is being achieved, and how it relates to the world’s most pressing problems, you’ll learn how to best develop and apply solutions to global concerns.

The University of Michigan is one of the best places to learn not only about the current state of the Sustainable Development Goals, but also about how to go beyond them. With such a wealth of experience and learner support, the insightful ideas in this course are easy to grasp.