Sustainability Governance & Leadership (SGL) is one of two core subjects for the Master of Environment course, and is designed to develop the knowledge and skills you will need to succeed as a sustainability leader in a world of complex challenges and global change. This subject provides you with a strong foundation in interdisciplinary understanding of critical concepts and issues, and how they relate to policy, management, leadership, and governance in a range of contexts and across different scales and sectors. You will learn to anticipate and envision environmental change, and design and implement strategic plans to manage impacts or create positive pathways.

Exploring the broad agenda of sustainable development, SGL considers concepts and principles fundamental to the understanding of interdependent human-nature systems, including ecology and biodiversity, social justice and equity, technology, and issues of global change. SGL covers:

• Different perspectives on sustainability;
• Global and local environmental challenges, including for water, energy, food, and human communities in relation their natural and built environments;
• Vulnerability and resilience in complex social-ecological systems;
• The processes of policy design and implementation in these areas;
• The economics of sustainability, and the role of business and innovation in building a sustainable future; and
• Recurring management, governance, and leadership issues for achieving environmental sustainability.

SGL includes extensive use of scenario-based learning and simulation activities.

Employers in the environmental sector seek graduates who are able to integrate knowledge across disciplines, collaborate effectively in cross-disciplinary teams, and translate information for different audiences. New areas of environmental specialisation are emerging that require synthesis of knowledge from historically distinct fields, for example combining a knowledge of environmental sustainability with business entrepreneurship, or drawing on knowledge of public health to improve landscape planning processes, or practices that require advanced knowledge of both energy systems and environmental law.

The tailored specialisation is designed to support students to develop skills for integration, collaboration and translation while gaining depth of knowledge in one or more fields of inquiry. The flexible structure enables student to tailor subject selection to meet personal learning objectives, developed in consultation with an academic advisor.

Graduates will work in roles that require translation of knowledge across different specialisations or in emerging ‘boundary crossing’ specialist roles.