Sustainability, Resilience, and Society

Sustainability, Resilience, and Society, offered by the University of Washington, is an undergraduate course that introduces the concepts of sustainability and resilience and examines their relevance to environmental and social systems in the Anthropocene. The course explores how societies interact with natural resources, how resilience can be built, and how different approaches to stewardship and resource management shape long-term sustainability outcomes.

Core Content

The curriculum covers ecological footprints, lessons from small-scale societies, case studies in resource management, common property regimes, environmental stewardship, and the implications of climate change. Learners examine how communities organise around shared resources, why some management systems succeed or fail, and how sustainability and resilience can be understood across different social and ecological contexts.

Key Skills

Participants will develop the ability to analyse sustainability and resilience through social, ecological, and resource-management perspectives. The course helps learners understand common property theory, assess different approaches to environmental stewardship, interpret ecological footprints, and evaluate how climate change affects both communities and resource systems.

Target Learners

This course is designed for undergraduate students and other learners interested in sustainability, anthropology, environmental studies, resource management, and society-environment relationships. No prerequisites are required, making it accessible to students who are new to sustainability and resilience concepts.

Learning Format

The course is offered through the University of Washington’s Department of Anthropology as ANTH 378 and carries 5 academic credits. It is a university course rather than a self-paced MOOC, with learning focused on academic study, case analysis, and discussion of sustainability, resilience, resource governance, and climate-related issues. The University of Washington currently lists no prerequisites for enrollment.

Additional Benefits

The course provides a strong interdisciplinary foundation for learners who want to understand sustainability through both environmental and social perspectives. Its combination of anthropology, resource governance, stewardship, and climate change gives students a broader view of why resilience depends on institutions, communities, and ecological systems working together.

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