Sustainability Minor

An Interdisciplinary Program

The worldwide human population is estimated to reach a predicted 8.2 billion by 2025, and 9.6 billion by 2050. This population expansion places high demands on both nonrenewable and renewable natural resources, thus creating concern over the sustainability of these resources for future generations.

The concept of sustainability, as described by the United Nations World Commission on the Environment and Development and the National Research Council, emphasizes the long-term use of ecosystem services required for future generations of humans and the environment.

Sustainability starts at the community level, and as such, any efforts at maintaining a balance between human needs and the depletion of natural resources must involve a consideration of basic ecological principles, socioeconomic needs, and a proper ethical foundation.

Pepperdine University's vision statement emphasizes the training of students for "purposeful lives as servant-minded leaders throughout the world." Sustaining the earth's natural resources is an issue that all future generations of world leaders will need to address, and educating those leaders requires cross-disciplinary exposure from several areas of the liberal arts curriculum including natural science, political science, literature, history, religion, business, economics, and communication.

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Sustainability and the Christian Context at Pepperdine

Pepperdine's sustainability minor practices the university's commitment to "truth, having nothing to fear from investigation, should be pursued relentlessly in every discipline." This minor seeks to instantiate the "purpose, service, and leadership" commitments of the Pepperdine mission, as we seek to develop the next generation of sustainability leaders who can examine problems from a service-minded, ethical perspective informed by the rich reservoir of knowledge within the Christian faith. For instance, the Christian affirmation of God as both Creator and Redeemer compels us to seek ecological health and integrity for nonhuman creatures as well as environmental justice for those Jesus calls "the least of these" (Matt 25:40).

This course correlates the Seaver College affirmation that "there are sources of truth deeper than those of secular culture: Moses, purveyor of divine laws; Amos, crying out for social justice and unfeigned piety; Paul, overwhelmed with both the reality of sin and the joy of forgiveness; and ultimately, Jesus of Nazareth, in whom God is uniquely revealed, and by whose death and resurrection all humankind can receive reconciliation with God."

The sustainability minor's interdisciplinary nature also fundamentally affirms the importance of a liberal arts education, as a foundation in the liberal arts and a creative avenue to show how they work together is needed to solve the world's sustainability-related problems. This commitment will further the University's goal of developing students who can apply knowledge ethically to real-world situations and impact the culture around them in the way that George Pepperdine envisioned decades ago.