Knowing how the environment can impact livelihoods, Senior Sustainability Scientist Maria Cruz-Torres focuses her research on the relationship between adequate fishing resources and food security in the western Mexican state of Sinaloa. Here, the shrimp industry serves as a source of both income and food for coastal communities, but is suffering as a result of pesticide and fertilizer overuse. For this reason, Sinaloa's women are taking bold measures to help their communities cope.
Cruz-Torres's research identifies several trends that illustrate the resilience of Sinaloa's women. Some are migrating north to find work in maquiladoras, border factories run by United States companies in Mexico. Many are also organizing unions and becoming labor activists in an effort to improve working conditions in both the border-town maquiladoras and Sinaloa’s shrimp fisheries. Additionally, more and more are managing small family businesses that sell shrimp within the larger hierarchy of Mazatlan’s seafood processing and marketing industry.
Priorities in Residential Water Use: A Trade-Off Analysis
Authors
Edward Sadalla, Department of Psychology, Arizona State University
Anna Berlin, Department of Psychology, Arizona State University
Rebecca Neel, Department of Psychology, Arizona State University
Susan Ledlow, Department of Psychology, Arizona State University
Abstract
A trade-off paradigm was used to examine priorities in residential water use. A total of 426 participants allocated either a small or large budget to various household water uses. A comparison of allocations across budget conditions revealed which water uses were regarded as most important, as well as the amount of water regarded as sufficient for each use. Further analyses focused on the perceived importance of outdoor water use, which accounts for the majority of the water used in residences. Data indicated that indoor uses, especially those related to health and sanitation, were consistently higher priorities for participants in this study. The finding that residents are more willing to curtail outdoor water use than indoor water use has important implications for behavior change campaigns. Individual difference variables of environmental orientation and duration of residence in the desert accounted for some of the variance in water choices.
Download the article from the Environment and Behavior at Sage Publications. Access may be limited.
Though initial research indicated that crop yields in temperate regions like North America and Europe would withstand several degrees of warming, results from a new study co-authored by Netra Chhetri, a senior sustainability scientist at ASU's Global Institute of Sustainability, indicate otherwise. The study not only shows that yields in temperate regions will be affected along with those in tropical regions, but that this will occur much sooner than originally anticipated. Beginning in the 2030s, yields from the essential food crops maize, wheat and rice will start to decline significantly.
After creating a new dataset by compiling results from 1,700 published simulations, Chhetri and his team evaluated the impacts of climate change on crop yields with and without adaptations for rice, maize and wheat. Due to increased interest in the impacts of climate change on global food security, the researchers were able to amass the largest dataset to date on crop responses. Their paper, "A meta-analysis of crop yield under climate change and adaptation," published March 16 by the journal Nature Climate Change, feeds directly into the Working Group II report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change Fifth Assessment Report.
A Carpe Diem West Report in partnership with the Center for Natural Resources and Environmental Policy, University of Montana.
There’s a new way of thinking about water in the Colorado River Basin, and it’s a lot more expansive than the state centered battles of the past. This evolution is timely in light of the formidable challenges and uncertainties facing the 35 million people who depend on the Colorado River from Colorado to Calexico.
In November of 2012, the United States and Mexico signed an historic agreement for cooperative management of the Colorado River that builds upon the long-standing Treaty of 1944. Along with the federal officials who led the U.S. delegation, representatives of the seven Colorado River Basin states and environmental groups actively participated in the negotiation process, and are essential partners in its implementation. No one succeeds in this initiative unless everyone pitches in.
This is not the first agreement that grew from and counts on basin-wide cooperation.
In 2007, the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation adopted Interim Guidelines for managing the operation of Lake Powell and Lake Mead, reflecting terms negotiated by the seven basin states to address potential shortages through a system of shared curtailments in response to specified hydrologic conditions. It did not contradict the Law of the River, but as one state official described the agreement, "we stretched the hell out of [it]"—referring to the collection of statutes, regulations, and policies that govern basin-wide water allocation and management.
In the coming years, such stretching will need to be done far more often, as pointed out by the findings in the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation’s 2012 Colorado River Basin Water Supply and Demand Study ("Basin Study"), which was conducted in collaboration with the seven Basin states along with Indian tribes and a diverse list of other stakeholders throughout the region.
For this report we interviewed 32 Colorado River leaders to gather and assess their candid opinions about priority actions going forward following the Basin Study. Our interviewees—whose names are listed at the end of this report, but whose comments remained anonymous— included current and former employees of local, state, interstate, tribal, and U.S. and Mexican federal entities, as well as people at water supply organizations, conservation groups and other nonprofits, universities, and research institutes. Many of these individuals are actively involved in the Work Groups currently delving into the options highlighted in the Basin Study, with the support of the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation and the Basin states.
All of our interviewees agreed that time is short, the need for action is urgent, and the innovative solutions emerging throughout the Basin should be shared through more deliberate cooperation and partnerships.
This is a time of opportunity. As one leader observed, "The drought ‘turned the light on’ for many people, so they are more open to the necessary steps to move ahead." Another stressed the importance of capitalizing on that sense of urgency: "It’s important that you don’t take the foot off the pedal. Stay engaged. . . . Ultimately, [the Basin situation] will reach a crisis stage. Unfortunately, when things reach crisis stage, we don’t always make the best decisions." Several people conveyed a pressing need to "act, not study."
Many people offered specific suggestions for priority actions, such as financial incentives for agricultural and urban water conservation and institutional changes to encourage strategic restoration of environmental flows. Others focused more broadly on policies aimed at encouraging movement of water to meet changing demands while maintaining lands in productive agriculture. Some emphasized the need to invest aggressively in new infrastructure to allow water to move between users and to develop new sources.
Virtually everyone emphasized the importance of engaging with one another beyond traditional boundaries, whether among user groups or across state lines and other political divisions. As reflected in our previous two reports on Colorado River management, many people are thinking about and pursuing cooperative solutions and would like to be part of a more deliberate, ongoing dialogue about such opportunities. Some credited the Basin Study with encouraging movement in this direction and are pleased to see a broader range of interests at the table now in Basin Study’s Work Groups and elsewhere, particularly representatives of Indian tribes and NGO stakeholder groups. Several people praised the Basin Study Work Groups for focusing attention on environmental flows and recreational uses of the river, as well as human and agricultural requirements, in its assessment of future water demands.
Even as people are working more cooperatively, they struggle with how to talk about the future of water in the Colorado River Basin. While most public discussions today focus on the projected imbalance of water supply and demand, several of the leaders interviewed for this report argued forcefully for approaching these issues through the lens of vulnerability, especially in light of climate change and increasing frequency of extreme weather events. They urge a greater emphasis on building resilience rather than augmenting water supplies to accommodate growth. Some say this conversation cannot occur without a fundamental reassessment of the Law of the River, although others point to the many ways in which this system of laws and policies has "flexed" over the years.
This report focuses on key themes, as represented by groups of solution options that received the most comments in this interview process.
Most people framed their comments around the options identified in the Basin Study, though their underlying concerns were broader—for example, ecosystem integrity and sustainable agricultural economies. The discussion in the section below titled "Mapping Solutions" highlights solutions grouped within the following themes:
Voluntary and temporary water sharing transactions
Broad water transfer mechanisms engaging water users over larger areas
Urban water conservation and reuse
Physical approaches to augmenting and managing water supplies
Jesus Chavez is a senior in the Urban Dynamics track within the School of Sustainability. An alumnus of El Rancho High School in Pico Rivera, California, Chavez graduates in May 2014 with a bachelor’s in both Sustainability and Urban Planning.
Chavez is energetic in his pursuit of implementable solutions to urban planning predicaments in both his studies and extra-curricular work. In August 2014, he begins an urban planning internship with a private consulting firm in Spain.
Why did you choose ASU?
The School of Sustainability is the major reason I chose ASU, a one-of-a-kind institution tackling wicked problems on a local to global scale. The fact that it is a top-ranked institution for both Sustainability and Urban Planning solidified my decision to get the most out of my education here.
March is Women’s History Month, a tribute to the generations of women whose commitment to nature and the planet have proved invaluable to society. In recognition, activist Vandana Shiva discusses ecofeminism and the role of women in ecology movements.
Note:March is Women’s History Month, a tribute to the generations of women whose commitment to nature and the planet have proved invaluable to society. Dr. Shiva, originally a theoretical physicist, is an environmental activist, author and expert in ecofeminism. She will present a Wrigley Lecture during the Fall 2014 semester.
Over the last four decades, I have served grassroots ecological movements, beginning in the 1970s with the historic Chipko (Hug the Tree) Movement, in my region of Central Himalaya. In every movement I have participated in, it was women who led the actions, and women who sustained actions to protect the earth and the sources of their sustenance and livelihoods.
Women of Chipko were protecting their forests because deforestation and logging was leading to floods and droughts. It was leading to landslides and disasters. It was leading to scarcity of fuel and fodder. It was leading to the disappearance of springs and streams, forcing women to walk longer and farther for water.
Ron Broglio, a senior sustainability scientist at Arizona State University's Global Institute of Sustainability, absolved attendees of their digital sins at the Emerge 2014 festival. As a minister of The Digital Tabernacle, Broglio locked away penitents' devices for several minutes so as to shed light on our digital addictions and offer “a space for contemplation in a world of online distraction, neuromarketing and psychotechnology.”
ASU’s Emerge 2014 “Carnival of the Future” – a radically creative, playful and challenging approach to the future world we wish to make – took place in Downtown Phoenix on March 7. In addition to The Digital Tabernacle, Emerge featured cutting-edge performances, flying technology and incisive visions of the future that obliterated the traditional boundaries between engineering, arts, sciences and humanities. To learn more about this performance and view a photo stream of the event, read the full article at Future Tense.
The Polytechnic Campus Sun Devil Fitness Complex, completed in January 2013, has earned gold certification from the U.S. Green Building Council. The complex is the 23rd ASU building to receive gold certification, which is the second highest green building ranking under the U.S. Green Building Council's LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) program.
The project received 17 out of 19 points for optimizing energy performance on its LEED scorecard. Its ability to create onsite renewable energy through solar panels and a solar pool heating system boosted its score. Additionally, the building was designed to funnel air through a breezeway near the building's core, removing heat and providing shade. This passive cooling technique is a hallmark of the building's design.
The Polytechnic Campus Sun Devil Fitness Complex is the 39th ASU building to be LEED certified.
The fourth annual Arizona Solar Summit took place on February 20, 2014, in part of ASU Global Institute of Sustainability’s 2014 Sustainability Solutions Festival.
Nathan Newman, a senior sustainability scientist at Arizona State University's Global Institute of Sustainability, is part of a team recently selected by the Intelligence Advanced Research Projects Activity (IARPA) to improve supercomputing facilities. Supercomputing facilities are clusters of high-powered computers that enable information gathering, storing and analysis on massive scales and are increasingly used by governments, economies, health care services, power and transportation systems, and national security operations.
Because current technologies would require a great amount of electrical power in order to meet this growing demand, a paradigm shift in operations is needed. Newman’s research team is utilizing the latest superconducting materials to develop a new kind of digital circuit, one that can potentially lead supercomputer systems to require much less energy. His group’s work recently resulted in the development of a computer memory device that could enable supercomputing systems to operate as much as 50 times faster and perform 50 times the number of operations while using 50 times less energy.
As the result of a partnership between the Global Institute of Sustainability's Sustainable Schools program and Arizona Forward's Canalscape Committee, three student teams showcased their unique visions for the Grand Canal at the March 1 "Color Canalscape" event.
The teams - comprised of students from St. Francis Xavier Elementary School, Central High School, Brophy College Preparatory School and Xavier College Preparatory School - began their sustainability-themed projects aimed at improving the canal's artistic appeal, infrastructure and landscape systems in August of 2013. The goal of this ongoing educational project is to transform the section of the Grand Canal between Seventh Street and Central Avenue into a shared outdoor learning center for the partner schools that border it.
Pamela Matson, a member of ASU's Board of Directors for Sustainability, will receive the Doctor of Science honorary degree from Arizona State University at the May 14 undergraduate commencement ceremony. The award recognizes her pioneering research, which addresses issues surrounding sustainability of agricultural systems, vulnerability of people and places to climate change, and global change in nitrogen and carbon cycles. She has worked to develop agricultural approaches that reduce environmental impacts while improving livelihoods and human well-being with multidisciplinary teams of researchers, managers and decision-makers.
Matson is a professor of environmental science at Stanford University and an elected member of both the National Academy of Science and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. In addition to serving on advisory boards for ASU's Global Institute of Sustainability and Colorado State University's School of Global Environmental Sustainability, she has held positions on numerous National Academies' committees, including the Board on Sustainable Development, the Board on Global Change and the Committee on America’s Climate Choices. She was awarded the prestigious MacArthur Fellowship in 1995 for her trailblazing work.
Saritha Ramakrishna, a junior in the School of Sustainability, visited Spain and Morocco last summer through the Global Sustainability Studies Program. Ramakrishna was interested in exploring the interaction between these geographically close countries, as well as how it affected their renewable energy development goals.
Not only did Ramakrishna have the opportunity to apply and expound on information presented in class, she discovered the extent to which economic development, modernization and resource management are complex issues. She also learned the importance of cultural adaptability and was inspired to add an economics major to her sustainability degree.
In a collaboration advanced by Arizona State University LightWorks, AORA Solar NA will install a hybrid concentrated solar power plant on undeveloped university land near the Karsten Golf Course. The plant employs a tower (approximately 100 feet high) appropriately called the Solar Tulip, which concentrates the sun’s energy and turns it into electricity. The system not only produces power 24/7, moving seamlessly from solar to natural gas or biogas, but also uses little to no water while producing a high quality thermal output.
AORA will work with a multidisciplinary ASU team to research options to increase efficiency, improve reliability, utilize the exhaust heat and decrease the cost of this Israeli-developed technology. ASU faculty, research staff and students will work hand in hand with AORA to enhance the system. The groundbreaking is expected to occur in April, with the anticipated operation date in either late September or early October. The ASU/AORA collaborative relationship will not only bring ASU closer to its goal of becoming carbon neutral by 2025, but will also benefit students and researchers across multiple fields of study.
Further bolstering its commitment to sustainability operations and practice, Arizona State University has achieved a Gold rating in the Sustainability Tracking, Assessment and Rating System (STARS), a self-assessment program launched by the Association for the Advancement of Sustainability in Higher Education (AASHE). ASU earned its highest points in engagement, and planning and administration.
“ASU has taken specific, measurable steps to incorporate sustainability as a value at an individual, as well as institutional, level,” said John Riley, the university’s sustainability operations officer. “Our STAR Gold rating reflects the continuing work of our entire university community.”
The STARS program was created by AASHE as a transparent tool for colleges and universities to measure and evaluate progress toward their institutional sustainability goals, taking into account not only environmental factors like energy consumption and greenhouse gas emissions, but also social and economic factors such as engagement and purchasing, among others. The program also helps facilitate a larger dialogue among institutions of higher education regarding sustainability.
The International Renewable Energy Agency (IRENA) and Arizona State University signed an agreement this week to develop a solar certification program for West Africa. The two institutions teamed up to promote and initiate the implementation of harmonized certification programs for technicians of off-grid, as well as grid-connected solar photovoltaic (PV) energy systems for the region. The program aims to develop workforce capacity for the deployment of solar PV systems, a fast-growing form of renewable energy with excellent potential for providing energy security and economic development.
The different levels of technician certification will improve customer confidence in both renewable energy technologies and the technicians who implement them. The program will also support the employability of technicians by providing them with recognized skill sets. In order to ensure these objectives are met, national and regional technical committees will oversee the development of technical competency standards for the solar certification training courses.
Students and researchers from Arizona State University, Northern Arizona University and the University of Arizona are collaborating on an Arizona Board of Regents-funded project to grow algae using wastewater. The algae can then be harvested to create fuel, feed and food products. This collaboration aims to advance algae as an industry in Arizona, one that will produce valuable products and remediate wastewater while creating job opportunities for residents.
With expansive non-arable land suitable for algae farms and more than 330 sunny days per year to encourage algae growth through photosynthesis, Arizona serves as an ideal location for algae research. The Arizona Center for Algae Technology and Innovation (AzCATI), located at ASU's Polytechnic Campus in Mesa, is a hub for research, testing, and commercialization of algae-based products. These include biofuels, pharmaceuticals, nutraceuticals, and other algae biomass coproducts. The center also functions as a learning environment for the next generation of scientists and engineers.
ASU President Michael M. Crow accepted an inaugural award presented by the American Council on Education (ACE) on March 9 during its 96th Annual Meeting in San Diego, Calif. According to ACE, the nation’s largest higher education organization, the new award recognizes a college or university that raised, rallied or repurposed resources to achieve dramatic and successful changes that allowed it to more fully fulfill its mission over a relatively brief period of time.
Crow has become nationally known for his commitment to innovation and for reinventing the research university model to emphasize access and excellence. Faculty members are encouraged to pursue use-inspired research, and the university has worked to improve the environment through its creation of the Global Institute of Sustainability and School of Sustainability. Joan Wodiska, ACE vice president and chief leadership officer, said, “This award shines a bright light on the successes in America’s higher education system, the need for ongoing dynamic changes on college campuses and the next generation of great ideas for our nation and students.”
The Netherlands’ Municipality of Haarlemmermeer is working to become one of northern Europe’s centers for sustainability-driven commerce. Arizona State University is the United States’ leader in sustainability education and research. Together, along with private partners in the Haarlemmermeer region, ASU and the municipality are collaborating to create the world’s first regional plan based on the principles of a “circular economy.”
The project, “Haarlemmermeer Beyond Sustainability,” will be coordinated by the Global Sustainability Solutions Center at Haarlemmermeer, a program within the Rob and Melani Walton Sustainability Solutions Initiatives at ASU’s Global Institute of Sustainability. The center will create a regional visioning and planning strategy that will close resource loops in the most efficient, economical and sustainable manner possible. It will also act as facilitator for the municipality and various stakeholders in the region to define and outline the groundbreaking plan. The project includes designing the circular economy strategy and identifying closed loop energy, water, matter and other resource cycles that are pragmatic, market-based and adaptable for the region.
Knowing how the environment can impact livelihoods, Senior Sustainability Scientist Maria Cruz-Torres focuses her research on the relationship between adequate fishing resources and food security in the western Mexican state of Sinaloa. Here, the shrimp industry serves as a source of both income and food for coastal communities, but is suffering as a result of pesticide and fertilizer overuse. For this reason, Sinaloa's women are taking bold measures to help their communities cope.
A trade-off paradigm was used to examine priorities in residential water use. A total of 426 participants allocated either a small or large budget to various household water uses. A comparison of allocations across budget conditions revealed which water uses were regarded as most important, as well as the amount of water regarded as sufficient for each use. Further analyses focused on the perceived importance of outdoor water use, which accounts for the majority of the water used in residences. Data indicated that indoor uses, especially those related to health and sanitation, were consistently higher priorities for participants in this study. The finding that residents are more willing to curtail outdoor water use than indoor water use has important implications for behavior change campaigns. Individual difference variables of environmental orientation and duration of residence in the desert accounted for some of the variance in water choices.
Jesus Chavez is a senior in the Urban Dynamics track within the 
March is Women’s History Month, a tribute to the generations of women whose commitment to nature and the planet have proved invaluable to society. In recognition, activist Vandana Shiva discusses ecofeminism and the role of women in ecology movements.
A Thought Leader Series Piece
The fourth annual Arizona Solar Summit took place on February 20, 2014, in part of ASU Global Institute of Sustainability’s 2014 
