Graduate Diploma in Environment

Environmental Sustainability is one of two core subjects for the Master of Environment degree. This subject provides students with a strong foundation in interdisciplinary understanding of critical environmental sustainability issues, and how and why they have emerged, in the context of policy, management, and governance across scales and sectors.

Exploring environmental sustainability through an interdisciplinary lens, this subject considers concepts and principles fundamental for understanding the complex nature of the environmental crises facing humanity and, in turn, for developing solutions. Environmental Sustainability will cover:

• The fundamental earth system processes that provide humanity’s life-support system;
• The conditions that have led to the Anthropocene, and its implications for life as we know it;
• Global and local environmental challenges, including for biodiversity, water, energy, and food, in relation their natural and social environments;
• Complex social-ecological systems and their role in contributing to and solving critical environmental sustainability issues;
• Different perspectives, and the influence of worldview, values and beliefs on sustainability;
• The role of individuals, governments, business and innovation in building a sustainable future; and
• Management, governance, and social-ecological issues for achieving environmental sustainability.

View detailed information in the Handbook

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.

View detailed information in the Handbook