What would an economy, indeed a society, look like if the material security of its citizens and the ecological integrity of its resource base was a top priority? How would it organize itself, structure its industry, shape its consumption? How would a local-global culture operate if no party could solve its environmental problems by displacing costs onto others? What are the conditions in which humans tend not to increase their use of material and energy? To answer questions like these, many people use terms like "sustainability" and "sustainable development." These terms are much debated, much used, and much abused. Some would even say they have lost all meaning. This course addresses these questions and attempts to give meaning to sustainability, both in its implications for reversing trends in environmental degradation and for promoting policies that address long-term, ecological and social goals. It does this by developing a framework of analysis focusing on: i. institutions, formal and informal rules and norms ranging from the local and regional to the international and global; and ii. sustainability, issues of durable resource use, production and consumption, property, development, local-global interaction, trade, international cooperation, ethics and equity. A major goal is to build analytic tools a policymaker, analyst, citizen activist or businessperson can use in a variety of environmental situations from the local to the global. The course encourages active student engagement with cases, discussions and simulations. Although the only prerequisite is graduate standing, students are expected to be familiar with the biophysical conditions driving global environmental trends.