The goal of this focal area is to address issues arising from major environmental changes that are impacting a substantial portion of the world. The faculty in this focal area are particularly interested in the arena of climate change science and policy and seek to generate new scientific knowledge of the interactions among the atmosphere, the biosphere, and their human dimensions, and to explore innovative approaches to reducing the threats to the global climate system.

Through an interdisciplinary education curriculum, this area seeks to prepare students with the intellectual skills crucial for examining the major global change phenomena, their interactions with anthropogenic drivers, and the international policy and management responses. Courses and seminars in this area include observing the earth from space; patterns and processes in terrestrial ecosystems; domestic and global environmental governance; designing the ecocity; climate economics; and the global change agenda.

Faculty: Xuhui Lee (Coordinator), Paul Anastas, Robert Bailis, Ann E. Camp, Benjamin Cashore, Susan G. Clark, Lisa M. Curran, Paul A. Draghi, William Ellis, Daniel C. Esty, Thomas E. Graedel, John Grim, Erin T. Mansur, Robert Mendelsohn, Peter A. Raymond, Robert Repetto, Oswald J. Schmitz, James Gustave Speth, Mary Evelyn Tucker