Study sheet: Sustainability Transition Foundations

📋 Course Outline

1. Why Sustainability Matters
2. Course Structure and Evaluation
3. Planetary Boundaries and Social Foundations
4. Major Sustainability Challenges
5. Climate Change Mechanisms and Impacts
6. Biodiversity and Pollution
7. Inequality and Human Well-Being
8. Ecological Footprint and Development
9. Business Transformation for Sustainability

📖 1. Why Sustainability Matters

📝 Essential Points

• Climate, biodiversity, deforestation, and water are identified as the most urgent sustainability challenges by a 2025 survey of 400 sustainability experts across all continents and sectors. — GlobeScan & ERM Sustainability Institute

• Climate change, biodiversity loss, and critical changes to Earth systems are major long-term risks because they damage health, food systems, wildlife, and the life-supporting services provided by Earth systems. — WEF, Global Risks Report, 2026

• Private businesses supply 70% of GDP in OECD countries, 90% of jobs in developing countries, and 85% of technology investment in OECD countries.

📌 Leading businesses treat sustainability as a core business driver and provide evidence of their impacts, whereas business contributions to sustainable development are generally judged insufficient. — GlobeScan, ERM Sustainability Institute & Volans, 2025

💡 Memory Hook

Environmental pressures → systemic risks → business responsibility

📖 2. Course Structure and Evaluation

📝 Essential Points

• The Sustainability Transition course is a compulsory, interdisciplinary and applied class delivered through 50% immersive 3D learning and 50% face-to-face interaction in a two-week bootcamp.

• Students complete 24 virtual rooms in three acts, working in groups of three, completing one or two rooms at a time, and participating in collective debriefs.

• The course objectives are: understanding major sustainability challenges, discovering how companies adapt and innovate, learning the Sustainability Donut, Materiality Matrix, LCA and GHG Protocol, designing innovative business models for sustainability

• Assessment consists of participation worth 20%, an individual Moodle quiz worth 40%, and a group final assignment worth 40%.

💡 Memory Hook

Learn → simulate → innovate → transform

📖 3. Planetary Boundaries and Social Foundations

🔑 Key Concepts & Definitions

• Planetary boundaries : Safe limits on human pressures affecting nine biophysical processes that regulate the state and resilience of the Earth system.
• Sustainability Donut : Fanning & Raworth, Nature 646: 47-56, 2025 — A representation of sustainability as operating above minimum human needs for all and below planetary boundaries.

📝 Essential Points

• Seven of the nine planetary boundaries were transgressed in 2025, placing humanity in ecological overshoot and unsafe territory. — Sakschewski and Caesar et al.

• The bottom 50% of the world captures 8% of total income and owns 2% of wealth, while the top 10% captures 53% of total income and owns 75% of wealth. — World Inequality Report, 2026

💡 Memory Hook

Ecological overshoot versus social shortfall

📖 4. Major Sustainability Challenges

📝 Essential Points

• The major sustainability challenges are:
  • climate change
  • biodiversity loss
  • pollution
  • economic inequalities
  • resource scarcity

📌 Economic inequalities both fuel major environmental threats and are worsened by those threats, including through economic growth and unequal exposure to environmental damage.

📖 5. Climate Change Mechanisms and Impacts

📝 Essential Points

• 🔄 The climate-change mechanism is:

  1. human activities emit greenhouse gases
  2. greenhouse gas concentrations increase
  3. the planet warms
  4. climatic impacts intensify

• Global temperature has increased by 1.4°C and is increasing by 0.35°C per decade.

• Carbon dioxide is the most important greenhouse gas in the course, its most important source is fossil-fuel combustion, and about 50% of carbon dioxide emissions remain in the atmosphere while the rest is absorbed by land and oceans.

• Atmospheric carbon dioxide concentration reached 425 ppm in 2026, compared with a pre-industrial level of 280 ppm, and has not been this high for at least 800,000 years.

💡 Memory Hook

Emissions → concentrations → warming → impacts

📖 6. Biodiversity and Pollution

🔑 Key Concepts & Definitions

• Living Planet Index : WWF & ZSL, Living Planet Index, 2024 — An indicator developed by WWF and ZSL that tracks the abundance of vertebrate populations worldwide.

📝 Essential Points

• The latest Living Planet Index figure shows a 73% decline in vertebrate populations compared with 1970.

• Land conversion destroys habitats through (IPBES):

  • residences
  • industrial and commercial sites
  • transport networks
  • harbours and airports
  • mines and quarries
  • dumpsites and construction sites
  • sports and leisure facilities

📖 7. Inequality and Human Well-Being

📝 Essential Points

• The wealthiest people contribute disproportionately to climate change, while the poorest people are most vulnerable to its effects. — IPCC, 2023

• Inequality affects well-being through:

  • stress
  • self-doubt
  • social anxiety
  • public health
  • violence
  • trust
  • democratic decision-making
  • community building

💡 Memory Hook

Wealthiest contribute more, poorest suffer more

📖 8. Ecological Footprint and Development

🔑 Key Concepts & Definitions

• Ecological footprint : Global Footprint Network — The productive area required to provide the renewable resources humanity uses and absorb its waste, expressed in global hectares.
• Biocapacity : Global Footprint Network — The productive area available to generate renewable resources and absorb waste.

📝 Essential Points

📌 Consumption is sustainable when the Ecological Footprint is lower than biocapacity, because ecological demand remains below nature's productive and absorptive capacity.

💡 Memory Hook

Footprint measures demand; biocapacity measures supply

📖 9. Business Transformation for Sustainability

📝 Essential Points

📌 Companies should integrate environmental and social responsibilities into their core strategies because they both affect and are affected by sustainability issues through impacts, risks, and opportunities.

• Technology and innovation are essential levers for companies to address sustainability challenges, particularly through better products and services and collaboration across internal functions and external stakeholders.

💡 Memory Hook

Core strategy → innovation → sustainable transformation

📊 Synthesis Tables

Ecological Demand and Supply

Notion	Meaning	Sustainability implication
Ecological Footprint	Productive area required to provide resources and absorb waste	Demand measure
Biocapacity	Productive area available to generate resources and absorb waste	Supply measure
Sustainable relationship	Ecological Footprint is lower than biocapacity	Demand remains within ecological capacity

Course Assessment

Component	Format	Weight
Participation	Attendance and class participation	20%
Quiz	Individual Moodle quiz	40%
Final assignment	Group sustainable innovation and business model	40%