‘Sustainability’ is about “meeting the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs” (UN Brundtland Commission, 1987). But there is no single or simple answer to the question of what can and should be sustained. Across community, private and public sectors, there are many different visions of sustainability and different approaches to motivating the social change required to achieve those visions. Each has particular emphases, blind-spots and trade-offs. Each creates relative winners and losers. This course asks: how do different actors understand the challenge of sustainability, and how do they attempt to instigate the social change required to achieve it? This course considers the roles played, visions offered and approaches promoted by a variety of actors: corporations, social movements, philanthropists, think tanks, local and national governments, and inter-governmental bodies. In the process, the course examines the often hidden, but unavoidable, politics of sustainability-oriented social change. Case studies will be drawn from Aotearoa New Zealand and abroad, highlighting environmental, social and economic aspects of sustainability.