ASU-Conservation International Professor of Practice, Dr. Jack Kittinger, recently published a paper in PLoS ONE titled “Follow that fish: Uncovering the hidden blue economy in coral reef fisheries.”

The study sheds light on the economic and social value of small-scale coral reef fisheries in Hawai’i with the intention to incentivize sustainability efforts in the region.

Although human well-being depends greatly on nearshore fisheries, these natural resources are often undervalued. Insufficient data exists to support effective policy and development programs.

“This work is the result of a three-year effort to assess the value chain in coral reef fisheries and is one of the four publications that are forthcoming from this project,” explained Kittinger.

Kittinger et al., estimate the economic value of Hawaiian coral reef fisheries at $10.3-$16.4 million, providing over $7 million annually in meals.

The Julie Ann Wrigley Global Institute of Sustainability and the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences announce the launch of the Global Drylands Center at Arizona State University. Led by Julie A. Wrigley Professor Osvaldo Sala, GDC will engage key actors of dryland stewardship in developing use-inspired research, training and solutions for arid ecosystems around the world.

While working with multiple global partners – from Ben-Gurion University to the University of New South Wales and King’s College London – GDC endeavors to establish ASU as a leader in crosscutting research and education pertaining to drylands. The center will focus on a broad array of issues, including the impacts of climate and land-use change, the ecology of desertification, and the societal dimensions of productive ecosystems and healthy lives in drylands.

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Affiliated graduate students, Maria del Mar Mancha-Cisneros and Ute Brady, attended the 16^th Biennial Conference of the International Association for the Study of the Commons (IASC) to develop a set of standard variables for social-ecological systems (SES) that facilitates more effective and sustainable conservation outcomes.

The conference took place in July 2017 in Utrecht, the Netherlands. Mancha-Cisneros and Brady organized the interdisciplinary panel as part of a collaboration between the ASU Center for Biodiversity Outcomes (CBO) and the Center for Behavior, Institutions, and the Environment (CBIE).

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"This year, we are introducing a new category of be Waste Wise Pioneers, which includes universities & media. We analyzed 900 social media accounts to find this year's Pioneers, an increase from 750 in 2016. We believe change and leadership can arise from every part of the society. Communication is a key aspect in fostering and facilitating such change and leadership."

Joe Fullerton graduated from the School of Sustainability with an Executive Master of Sustainability Leadership in May 2017. Fullerton, already working as the Energy and Sustainability Manager at San Mateo County Community College District, decided the one year program was a perfect fit for a full-time sustainability professional like himself.

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In July 2017, a delegation of the ASU Center for Biodiversity Outcomes faculty, professors of practice, postdoctoral research associates and students attended the Partnerships for Conservation workshop sponsored by the International Congress for Conservation Biology in Cartagena, Colombia.

During the meeting, attendees from the center and Conservation International (CI) exchanged ideas following scientific presentations. Samantha Cheng, the center’s new Associate Director of Conservation Evidence, launched a new tool called Colandr, a computer-assisted program for conducting evidence synthesis, as part of the Science for Nature and People Partnership. Founding Director Leah Gerber contributed to the Centre of Excellence for Environmental Decisions International Advisory Board.

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Nancy Grimm, ASU School of Life Sciences professor and Center for Biodiversity Outcomes Affiliate Faculty, was recently named a Fellow of the American Geophysical Union. This recognition is awarded to individuals who have made exceptional contributions in the field.

“It is an honor to join such a great group,” Grimm said. “I am thrilled to be recognized for my contributions and am grateful to all the terrific students, postdocs and colleagues I’ve worked with over the years for helping shape those contributions.”

Congratulations Professor Grimm!

This June, ASU signed its second Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) with Tribhuvan University (TU) in Kathmandu, Nepal, furthering a five-year partnership.

The partnership dates back to 2012, when ASU Senior Sustainability Scientists Netra Chhetri, Nalini Chhetri and Milan Shrestha first engaged with TU and were invited to the university as guest speakers.

ASU signed its first MOU with TU’s Institute of Engineering (IOE) in 2015. Through that collaboration, two cohorts of ASU students have studied abroad in Nepal. The 2017 study abroad session, called Grassroots Innovation for Sustainable Development, brought ASU and IOE sustainability and engineering students together on two projects to help Nepali farmers: solar-powered lift irrigation and biochar production.

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Since August 2016, an interdisciplinary team of ASU design and sustainability students and faculty have been working on a group project called “Water is Life” with local Hawai’ians to imagine a more sustainable Hawai’i. We followed up with Leah Gibbons, PhD student, Sustainability; Paul Coseo, Assistant Professor, The Design School; and Chingwen Cheng, Assistant Professor, The Design School to talk more about the future of the project and its continued impacts.

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Tod Swanson is a Center for Biodiversity Outcomes (CBO) Faculty Affiliate and Professor in The School of History Philosophy and Religious Studies. He studies language of indigenous people and how language co-evolves with the relationship between people and nature.

Tod grew up in Ecuador and married a woman from a small native community found on the banks of the Napo River in the Amazon jungle. Tod and his extensive Ecuadorian family speak Spanish when they have to, but their native tongue is Kichwa, one of several indigenous languages in Amazonia. The family owns a 600 hectare reserve of rainforest, where they operate the Andes and Amazon Field School.

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Eight people spend a month in the Mojave desert without AC – and with only four gallons of water a day. This was the premise of Drylab, an “extreme experiential learning” experience directed by Senior Sustainability Scientists Marco Janssen and Adriene Jenik.

Drylab participants – ASU students from the arts and sciences – developed clever strategies for survival in this near-future scenario. They ate locally-grown, vegan meals and used baby wipes in lieu of showers. Most importantly, though, they learned the importance of working together.

“Trying to change behavior during scarcity can be difficult,” said participant Sarra Tekola, a PhD student in the School of Sustainability. “We don’t have to work together, except in times of crisis. ... I think our society needs to practice cooperation.”

The ASU Center for Biodiversity Outcomes (CBO) and Conservation International (CI) unveiled a video featuring CBO’s Distinguished Professor of Practice and CI’s new CEO, M. Sanjayan, describing the transformational potential of the ASU-CI Knowledge Partnership during his ASU visit in May 2017.

In the video, Sanjayan explains that “This partnership will help us answer that fundamental question—how do we live on this planet without exhausting the resources we all need to survive?”

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A Thought Leader Series Piece

by Christopher Boone

Note: This essay originally appeared in several newspapers in the Valley and across the country.

Deans of colleges and schools have an annual ritual. Each fall, they greet their incoming class of freshmen – excited, hopeful and mostly young minds ready to enter adulthood, citizenship and self-sufficiency.

These students have worked hard to get into the school of their choice, and now their journey begins. This meeting is a blend of informational, inspirational and joyous.

Often sitting beside these excited young students are their equally excited parents, who have sacrificed to enable their children to reach this auspicious moment. They dream their children will become the proverbial “doctors and lawyers and such,” and also artists, engineers, historians, teachers, journalists and other well-known vocations.

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In 2017, ASU researchers received $4.3 million in Department of Energy (DOE) SunShot Awards for their work with photovoltaics, making ASU the largest recipient of SunShot funding in the Photovoltaics Research category for the year.

The DOE's SunShot Intiative aims to make solar energy cost-competitive with conventional methods, a goal that three senior sustainability scientists at the ASU Wrigley Institute are helping to achieve. Stuart Bowden is designing the M-Cell, a photovoltaic cell architecture to enable higher voltage and lower current. Meanwhile, Meng Tao is working to reduce processing expenses, improve reliability and maintain high efficiency for photovoltaic devices.

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This summer, a group of 11 ASU sustainability and engineering students traveled to the Hindu Kush Himalaya region to help local farmers run their operations year-round – eliminating the need to migrate to lowlands or to other countries as seasonal laborers.

The students, part of a study abroad course organized through the Rob and Melani Walton Sustainability Solutions Initiatives and developed through GlobalResolve,  developed hardware like a solar-powered lift irrigation system during the spring semester, then deployed it while the students were onsite in June.

“This class cooperates with local farmers to combine existing irrigation and solar technologies to provide a refreshing shortcut for the region’s food and energy challenges,” said Senior Sustainability Scientist Netra Chhetri. “With assured water supply, these farmers can plan their crops better and grow off-season vegetables that fetch four times more value than cereals, which are the current crops being harvested.”

By Erin Rugland

The City of Peoria recently finalized a contract with energy efficiency and renewable energy company, Ameresco, Inc. This partnership will include energy efficiency retrofits of thirteen different city facilities, as well as solar photovoltaic installations at eight different sites in the City.

In addition to these projects, two sites in Peoria will become Net Zero: the Sunrise Mountain Library and Fire Station 191. This means that the buildings' energy usage will be roughly equal to the renewable energy produced on-site.

Two additional sites will be "unofficially" Net Zero. Fire Station 196 and Pinnacle Peak Patrol Services Building are within 10% of the size required to confidently be deemed Net Zero, but will produce energy similarly to the true Net Zero sites.

Lisa Estrada, the City of Peoria’s Economic Efficiency and Sustainability Manager, has been working for the City for over 10 years and has had significant involvement in the SCN Steering Committee and Solar & Energy Efficiency Workgroup. She has helped to work behind-the-scenes in the City to prepare for this contract with Ameresco, utilizing knowledge gleaned from SCN and other city participants.

According to Ms. Estrada, “Being part of ASU’s Sustainable Cities Network provides a forum in which we can learn from each others’ successes. Ideas begin to formulate here at SCN and with hard work and persistence, these ideas eventually can lead to a great project like this one. I’m always inspired by the collective knowledge and expertise in the room. SCN has definitely been integral to our success in Peoria.”

The City of Peoria’s upcoming projects are completely self-funded and will take the City even further toward achieving its sustainability goals. Click here to read more about the City of Peoria’s energy efficiency efforts.

A team from Arizona State University, led by ASU Lightworks® Director Bill Brandt, wrapped up a week-long series of meetings with Bulgarian institutions in Sofia, Bulgaria. These meetings established collaborative partnerships around digital learning, innovation and entrepreneurship, environmental health and safety, circular economy and energy and sustainability.

“Arizona and Bulgaria share similarities in size and the importance of mining business to their economies," Brandt told reporters in Sofia. "We are excited by the opportunities we found to partner with Bulgaria's leading higher education and research institutions, including technological universities and business schools, the Naval Academy, Academy of Science and Sofia Tech Park, major industrial companies, municipalities and clusters to drive innovation and best practices.”

ASU has already started joint projects with partners in Romania and Kosovo.

Julie Wrigley has stood for sustainability since before the term existed.

And on American Renewable Energy Day (AREDay), Wrigley was awarded for standing behind the country’s first School of Sustainability, a unit of the Julie Ann Wrigley Global Institute of Sustainability at Arizona State University. Her investment helped establish both the institute and the school, which has graduated over 1,000 sustainability leaders since its founding in 2006.

Calling Wrigley a “sustainability pioneer,” Sally Ranney of the American Renewable Energy Institute presented her with the award at the conclusion of an AREDay panel discussion.

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A team of researchers at Arizona State University have launched a project to make it easier for cities to “buy green.”

The “Advancing Green Purchasing in Local Governments” initiative is based on a survey of more than 600 government officials representing 459 cities. To construct the survey, the researchers met with 14 purchasing officers from the City of Phoenix and used their feedback to compile the questions that would be asked. An analysis of the survey results then led the experts to generate several actionable recommendations that would help city officials increase their eco-friendly purchases. The plan is to broadcast the recommendations in a wide marketing push that will reach thousands of local governments nationwide.

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As local governments step to the forefront of sustainability commitment-making, a team of Arizona State University researchers – including School of Sustainability Professor Nicole Darnall – launch a project aimed at making it easier for cities to “buy green."

Called the Sustainable Purchasing Research Initiative, the project was informed by survey responses from 616 government officials from 459 cities. The responses led the ASU team to create eight real-world recommendations that can be used by city officials considering environmentally-friendly products – from light bulbs to carpeting.

The tips will be disseminated in a marketing blast that will reach thousands of local governments nationwide.