The University of Hawaiʻi at Hilo will begin offering a certificate in energy science in fall 2016. The program was made possible through collaboration with ASU's School of Sustainability, which shared courses, syllabi and rationale for its own undergraduate certificate in energy and sustainability.

Representatives from the School of Sustainability met with UH Hilo's Bruce Mathews – interim dean of the College of Agriculture, Forestry and Natural Resource Management – and physics professor Philippe Binder when the certificate was in its infancy. Sustainability scientists Mike Pasqualetti and Jon Kelman helped to fine-tune further details.

“Energy science is a really critical component of our future,” said Mathews. “Our energy is dependent on outside resources, and nutrients used as fertilizers are derived from outside energy, too. We are so dependent on imported fossil fuel, oil and coal. For us to become self-reliant is extremely critical.”

Jin Jo – who earned the first PhD in sustainability in the nation from ASU's School of Sustainability – is part of a trio of Illinois State University faculty working in renewable energy honored with the Outstanding Cross-Disciplinary Team Research Award. Jo is assistant professor of technology in the Renewable Energy program.

The first cohort in a partnership with leading Pakistani engineering universities – dedicated to researching and developing solutions for Pakistan’s energy needs – was welcomed to ASU in January 2016.

The 24 exchange graduate students are part of a project called the U.S.-Pakistan Centers for Advanced Studies in Energy – directed by Senior Sustainability Scientist Sayfe Kiaei. USPCAS-E aims to fully unlock Pakistan’s economic potential through an educated and involved workforce. It intends to accomplish this by addressing Pakistan's unique energy needs and developing relationships between government, industry and academia to inform sustainable policy.

The collaboration is sponsored by Pakistan’s Higher Education Commission and the U.S. Agency for International Development, who awarded ASU $18 million to support the project.

In February 2016, Arizona State University and two other major research institutions formally launched the PLuS Alliance, a new tri-continental partnership to help find research-led solutions to global challenges and expand access to world-class learning.

ASU, King’s College London and the University of New South Wales in Australia are combining cutting-edge research capabilities, faculty expertise and student experience to address global issues related to sustainability, health, social justice, and technology and innovation. The research will be supported with a suite of related online learning programs.

“There are two essential, core things that need to be advanced at the largest scale possible, with the deepest impact possible,” said ASU President Michael Crow. “And those are educational attainment and sustainable outcomes. And those two things together sit at the core of this alliance.”

Alongside the January 2016 U.S. Conference of Mayors in Washington, D.C., leaders from Phoenix, Mesa, Los Angeles, San Francisco, and Aurora and Fort Collins, Colorado, met to discuss what actions their cities are taking to address urban water supply and demand issues in an era of changing climate.

The “Western Mayors Water and Climate Change Summit” was hosted by Dave White – director of the ASU Wrigley Institute’s Decision Center for a Desert City –  and Phoenix Mayor Greg Stanton. The mayors of participating cities covered topics like the role information technology will play in conserving water and the importance of educating the next generation of leaders in government, industry and environmental policy.

“The idea of thinking about providing a secure, sustainable water supply for future generations is this notion of a public good that really crosses sectors — public, private, nonprofit — and requires us to train leaders in all of them,” White said.

Building on the initial meeting, the group will evaluate a series of principles developed by Decision Center for a Desert City with the goal of refining, and ultimately moving toward, a consensus for implementation.

More than 100 volunteers – including ASU students, faculty, staff and alumni – converge each February to collect oranges from 140 trees on the Tempe campus. Though the ASU community may more commonly encounter the sour orange juice as DevilAde, it is also used in dressings, marinades, and a number of sweet and savory dishes.

The Seville sour orange campus harvest earned the 2015 President’s Award for Sustainability, which recognizes outstanding university organizations that develop sustainable principles, services and programs to support ASU’s core missions. The 2016 harvest took place Feb. 5–7.

To calculate the value of natural capital, you start with the same economic principles used to value traditional assets, explains economist and School of Sustainability professor Joshua Abbott. Then, you factor in changes in ecosystems and human behavior that influence the appreciation or depreciation of that natural resource. The result is a figure that can be compared on a balance sheet with traditional assets like real estate, factory machinery and infrastructure.

Abbott — with lead author Eli Fenichel of Yale and colleagues from California State University at Chico, Michigan State University and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration — published these findings in February 2016 in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

“Without an apples-to-apples valuation approach, the value of natural capital cannot be measured against other assets and expenses,” Abbott said. “Our work can help governments and businesses track the sustainable use of natural resources.”

The study garnered attention in the national media, with coverage in both The Washington Post and Newsweek.

Ecologists who are motivated to achieve real impact in nature conservation should consider engaging with the corporate sector, according to an editorial in the February 2016 issue of the journal Frontiers in Ecology and the Environment.

The authors - including sustainability scientists Leah Gerber and Sheila Bonini - contend that there is a high demand from the corporate sector for ecological science. Businesses are beginning to see the world’s economic and ecological systems as they are – inextricable. They are realizing that maintaining the natural resources upon which their operations depend ensures their long-term viability, and that failing to do so is costly.

But right now, the authors say, businesses do not have adequate access to the ecological expertise and data they need to properly price nature. Efforts like those by The Sustainability Consortium – which translates sustainability life-cycle analysis into practical business tools used by Walmart and other leading consumer-goods companies – and ASU's Center for Biodiversity Outcomes need to be increased.

The authors stress that, in meeting the need for their expertise in the corporate sector, ecologists can make a strong contribution to addressing the complex sustainability challenges we face.

Three Arizona State University faculty and Center for Biodiversity Outcomes affiliates will be leading events at the September 2016 International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) World Conservation Congress in Hawaii. Their proposals were among those selected from a field of nearly 1,500 submitted for consideration after review by at least three independent technical reviewers.

Leaders on the selected proposals are Penny Langhammer, adjunct professor in the School of Life Sciences and a faculty affiliate of the center; Beth Polidoro, assistant professor in the School of Mathematical and Natural Sciences and IUCN project lead for the center; and Candice Carr Kelman, assistant director of the School of Sustainability. Both Polidoro and Carr Kelman are also senior sustainability scientists in the Julie Ann Wrigley Global Institute of Sustainability.

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Five of the seven newest Regents’ Professors are sustainability scientists: Janet Franklin, Petra Fromme, Edward Kavazanjian, Robert Page Jr. and Billie Turner II. Regents’ Professor is the highest faculty honor and goes to full professors from one of the three Arizona public universities whose exceptional achievements have brought them national or international distinction.

The USAID Takamol- Gender Program, in collaboration with Arizona State University and the Jordanian Ministry of Environment, conducted the first-ever gender and climate change conference in February 2016.

Among those to provide opening remarks was Global Sustainability Solutions Services Practice Lead Rajesh Buch, who highlighted the intersection between climate change and gender in light of Jordan’s drive to accelerate its green growth initiatives after the December 2015 Conference of Parties in Paris.

Women in Jordanian communities are leaders and change makers who would benefit from stronger integration between gender mainstreaming and sustainable development concepts. Through multi-stakeholder dialogues and exchanges of knowledge, Takamol hopes to facilitate this integration by developing a policy paper and action plan. Guest speakers from ASU provided international best practices and shared knowledge on gender and climate change linkages within various contexts.

“We hope to contribute to impactful and innovative solutions to the social, environmental and economic challenges of this region, specifically around the implications of climate change on gender” said Gary Dirks, executive director for the Julie Ann Wrigley Global Institute of Sustainability.

B. L.Turner II, Professor of Environment and Society in the School of Geographical Sciences and Urban Planning, School of Sustainability

Named as a Regents’ Professor, the highest faculty honor at Arizona State University for his research on how humans affect the environment.

Mike Pasqualetti's paper "A Paradox of Plenty: Renewable Energy on Navajo Nation Lands" is published in the journal Society and Natural Resources.

ABSTRACT - A persistent paradox in the global boom of renewable energy revolves around how little of its vast potential has been developed on Native American lands. For economic and environmental reasons, attempts to reverse this pattern are on the rise. Such plans will encounter many unique conditions, particularly those related to tribal norms, customs, and histories. This article examines the prospect of renewable energy (RE) development on the Navajo Nation of the American Southwest. We examine its potential in light of past energy projects, current jurisdictions and control, and the cultural and social heritage of the Navajo Nation. We find that robust RE development on Navajo Nation lands will remain hindered without accounting for Navajo values, intratribal and tribal–nontribal politics, and their relationship to a multifaceted set of regulatory procedures. Without due consideration of these factors, RE development on Navajo and other Native American lands will continue to be slow and disappointing.

You can access the entire article on-line here:  http://www.tandfonline.com/eprint/afjNHRVpWZSdx37weq4e/ful.

Arizona will once again be on the spotlight as it hosts the Fourth Sustainability Solutions Festival, organized by ASU Walton Sustainability Solution Initiatives. Everyone is invited to the #Sustival to participate and discover the planet’s top sustainability events and organizations, from February 3-25, 2017.

This year’s theme is “(re)imagine our Home!” The festival includes conferences and activities that convene leaders in sustainability theory and practice and community gatherings for all ages at multiple locations. A full schedule is available here.

Michael Barton

Now researchers from Arizona State University are reporting on a 10-year project that studies the long term effects humans have had on the land - and the consequences for the communities whose livelihoods depend on those lands.

The found that there are thresholds that separate success and failure and that current practices will increase our problems, but if you go beyond the threshold every disaster will strike. They also found that farmers can't equally cultivate crops and herd animals successfully. Lastly, they found that human activities directly effect the natural landscape.

ASU's Center for Biodiversity Outcomes is behind a revolutionary tool unveiled at the World Business Council for Sustainable Development, held in Paris in December 2015, and now piquing the interest of major corporations.

The Green Infrastructure Support Tool was developed by Senior Sustainability Scientist John Sabo - affiliated faculty in the Center for Biodiversity Outcomes - and helps corporations apply analytics to their water use, simultaneously supporting water conservation, habitat restoration and the bottom line.

Dow Chemical is now considering implementation of the tool at its Texas operations on the Brazos River. Here, there are many places where wetlands can be restored, but only a few that are economically viable and will better meet Dow's bottom line. Finding where it would be best to invest in green infrastructure is what the tool does.

The development of the tool was made possible through a partnership with Earth Genome - a nonprofit with the goal to enable key institutions to account for natural capital in decision-making.

ASU is taking the lead on a collaborative national project –supported by the National Science Foundation, the U.S. Department of Agriculture and the National Center for Atmospheric Research – to answer questions about urban farming.

Senior sustainability scientist Alex Maholov is the project's lead principal investigator and oversees an interdisciplinary team consisting of computational and climate scientists, mathematicians, statisticians, geoscientists and social scientists. The team will help predict the yields of crops, studying “what if” scenarios to optimize future outcomes. For example, the team will study what would happen if vacant lands around the Phoenix metropolitan area were converted to farms.

The end product will be a physics-based model utilizing weather and farming data to predict environmental, economic and socio-economic impacts of increased urban agriculture. The model will be public and accessible to everyone, including scientists, researchers, farmers, city planners and policymakers.

Peter Byck

School of Sustainability Professor, Peter Byck, is the director of "Hybrid Law" that was shown at the 2016 North American International Auto Show in Detroit. As part of his mission to promote a low carbon economy, his movie follows a small-town police force that strays from their traditions to use hybrid cars.

For the first time in its history, the International Union for Conservation of Nature will host its World Conservation Congress on U.S. soil – a bid secured with the assistance of ASU.

Likened to the United Nations of nature conservation, the IUCN is a global organization based in Switzerland whose members include NGOs, governments and universities. It hosts the WCC every four years, providing a forum for members to share information and experiences, debate major sustainable development issues and propose solutions.

The conference has been hosted throughout the world in its 68 years – most recently by South Korea. Not only will the 2016 conference be held in Hawai'i, it will feature three events sponsored by the ASU Wrigley Institute, as well as a subcommittee on Neighbor Islands and Counties chaired by board member John DeFries.

The December 2015 conference in Paris, where governments of the world adopted an arguably game-changing international agreement on climate change, was a lot to process for many of us.

To aid our digestion of this historic event, four ASU experts and conference attendees will join us for the latest installment in the Case Critical series, "Postcards from Paris," on January 20, 2016. They'll cover what happened at COP21, what they did while they were there, what they consider to be the innovations of the Paris agreement, and what the agreement implies for the U.S. and world. What might ASU staff, students and faculty contribute as all parties move forward?

The experts include Manjana Milkoreit, a senior sustainability fellow and postdoctoral research fellow with the Walton Initiatives; Jeffrey Swofford, a doctoral student in the School of Sustainability; Daniel Bodansky, a foundation professor of law in the Sandra Day O'Connor College of Law and the faculty co-director of the Center for Law and Global Affairs; and Sonja Klinsky, a senior sustainability scientist and assistant professor in the School of Sustainability.

The event is co-sponsored by the Center for Law and Global Affairs at the Sandra Day O'Connor College of Law.