
Increasingly, systems thinking is embraced as a critical framework for approaching sustainability and resilience. Such an approach helps us look beyond an analytical, cause-and-effect mode of doing business that often only yields short-term solutions and unintended consequences.

The Sustainable Development program at the Earth Institute is helping to sponsor a start-up competition for students at Dhaka University in Bangladesh.

“A lot of the challenge is understanding what we as a species should do, because the disasters are getting more prevalent. In the last hundred years, both in human and financial costs, damages are skyrocketing. Most of that is just more people living in dangerous places, but climate change will be more of a factor…

Most of Earth’s rainfall occurs in a tropical zonal band that circles the Earth. Understanding how this band will responds to climate change requires us to combine time scales from hours to millennia.

While the New York metropolitan area has been deemed the most wasteful megacity in the world, New York City is considered one of the world’s greenest. But how much energy does New York City waste and what is it doing about it?

For Sylricka Foster, the MPA in Environmental Science and Policy program is providing a foundation in policy and management skills to complement her background in environmental geology and political science. She hopes to use her degree to create positive social change and to increase awareness about environmental issues.
While it is true that many nations do not enforce their environmental and occupational health and safety rules, a quick study of economic history demonstrates that the trend is toward more enforcement rather than less enforcement. And even when the government ignores noncompliance with the law, NGOs and consumers notice it.

Natural capital—the world’s stocks of natural assets that include soil, air, and water—provides us with a great deal of services essential to human life and, increasingly, to companies’ bottom lines.