Academic Program

Sustainability Science Academic Program Launches in October of 2007

Conducted by Research Institute for Sustainability Science (RISS)

Osaka University

RISS Sustainability Science Academic Program

In October of 2007, RISS launches “Sustainability Science Academic Program” (advanced minor program) by offering two core courses for this fall semester. Professors from various schools will join us to teach and lead our program, and more importantly, we are taking in students from all the schools and departments.

Integrated Research System for Sustainability Science (IR3S) and RISS are also making an effort to establish a credit transfer system within the IR3S universities , including the University of Tokyo and Kyoto University, which is to become the first ever existed network system for sustainability education in Asian region.

Sustainability Science is a new academic discipline that seeks to understand the interactions within and between global, social, and human systems, the complex mechanisms that lead to degradation of these systems, and concomitant risks to human well-being and security, and then to propose visions and methods for protecting and/or restoring these systems and linkages (IR3S).

Therefore, RISS academic program will share and disseminate lessons and knowledge from sustainability science and education to achieve sustainable development particularly in Asia.

Through this program, students will learn the way of maximizing the effectiveness of their practical knowledge and skills development needed to contribute to global society, being able to collaborate with researchers from other disciplines, in order to solve a sustainability issue.

It is extremely crucial to make sustainability for real in peoples’ hands of Asia where 60% of world population lives and rapid economic growth and industrialization are still to go on and on. Under this kind of critical condition, international society takes the initiative to propose some strategy and tools to solve this global agenda.

In 2008, Japan will host a Group of Eight(G-8) summit with the main agenda of global environment issues.”Sustainability” has become the one of the foremost concept in terms of any discussions of science, technology , and economics in the 21st century called as “The Century of the Environment .”

Join our academic program and be part of the driving power for enforcing the idea of sustainability and for changing the world for better society!

Two Core Courses (Offered in fall 2007)

Global issues and sustainability
This course analyzes global issues in sustainability from economic, social, and environmental perspectives. Not only does it look into each issue, but also examine the interactive mechanisms of sustainability issues.

Valuation methods and technical aspects in sustainability
This course overviews the theories and methods in sustainability. In particular, students learn 1) the limitations as well as the usefulness of existing theories and methods, and 2) how to select and integrate methods and techniques in solving an issue in sustainability.

Core Course (Two Courses)

Inter-field Course (Two Courses)

Associate Course (Four Courses)

Four associate courses that will start in 2008.