Description:

The health and wellbeing of humans depends upon the capacity of the biosphere to provide the ecosystem services that sustain them. It is now clear that humans are currently using these services at rates which cannot be sustained. The challenge is for societies to change so as to put themselves on pathways towards sustainable futures. However, initiatives designed to do this must take into account the social and cultural dimensions of such change. The challenge is to couple knowledge about biospheric processes and limits with consideration of human values, judgments and motivation, health, wellbeing and dignity, and ethical dimensions of justice and fairness. To do this coherently, Human Ecology develops integrative transdisciplinary frameworks that can combine insights from a range of disciplines concerned with the human condition with knowledge of ecosystem and Earth processes. The resulting understanding helps formulate pathways towards more humane and sustainable futures.

Learning Goals:

On completing the minor in Human Ecology students will have the knowledge and skills to:

1. Understand the complex, multi-scaled interactions that characterise human-ecological situations and their associated problems.
2. Apply advanced systems thinking to understand human-ecological problems in terms of more basic, simple and easily grasped concepts and processes.
3. Apply critical methodological approaches to evaluate current human-ecological interactions and to critically evaluate proposed alternatives.
4. Apply a range of written, oral and visual communication skills to effectively convey and discuss information about human-ecological change processes, and
5. Demonstrate the ability to engage with community, government or private institutions and companies dealing with managing and improving human-ecological interactions across a range of scales.