The mission of the Certificate in Sustainability Planning is to provide students with a better understanding of society’s land use and natural resource systems, with a particular emphasis on the factors that contribute to or constrain their level of sustainability. The program aims to give students the knowledge and skills needed to identify and address barriers to sustainability and to formulate strategies to create more sustainable practices, systems and institutions. Using a holistic and integrated approach, the program emphasizes the interdependence of sociocultural, biophysical and political-economic dimensions of sustainability, especially as they relate to urban or other subnational regions.

An important theme of the program is that sustainability planning is primarily about influencing humans and their activities by modifying organizational structures, economic policies and legislative frameworks. Therefore, of paramount importance are topics normally associated with the social sciences, such as urban and regional planning, economics, political science and human geography. However, sustainability is an interdisciplinary science, and thus students must also examine topics typically linked to the biophysical sciences, such as ecology and geomorphology.