On March 15, Daniel Sarewitz, Arizona State University professor and Issues in Science and Technology editor-in-chief, moderated the webinar “What Does ‘Food Security’ Really Mean?” to discuss the weaknesses in our food supply systems and the future threats the country faces as we work to strengthen those systems.

The fight against food insecurity has grown in importance over the past decade, as a growing number of underserved communities are living in food deserts — areas that have limited access to food that is both affordable and nutritious. Although the work being done to tackle food insecurity typically happens on a local level, food insecurity is a rising concern for the United States on a global scale. Read the full story on ASU News.

Attendees will engage in the topic of implicit bias and microaggressions with a thoughtful dialogue with the presenter. There are two training dates available on May 7 and June 11. Register in Career EDGE. ASURITE login required.

Join the ASU Travel Service Center team for a Lunch and Learn session on the current requirements when traveling for ASU. Register in Career EDGE for the April 15 or May 11 session.

The ASU Interplanetary Initiative has announced their partnership with Slate on a new podcast — Mission: Interplanetary hosted by former NASA astronaut Cady Coleman and sustainability scholar Andrew Maynard.

Each episode features the hosts engaging with experts about the big questions, challenges and mysteries humans face as we venture out to explore the solar system and beyond. You can find it on Apple podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher or wherever you get your podcasts.

Sustainability professor Alex Dehgan, who is CEO and co-founder of Conservation X Labs, was a panelist at the five-day State of the World 2021 conference hosted by Florida International University and ASU's McCain Institute for International Leadership. The topic of the panel was the Paris Climate Agreement and what happens now that the U.S. has rejoined.

While rejoining the Paris climate agreement was an important and necessary step to reducing climate change’s effects in the United States, it was the first step on a long road toward ensuring a sustainable future.

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Podcasts are an effective, engaging way to engage audiences on timely scientific issues. Join two ASU Sustainability Scientists on April 20 at noon AZ time for a robust discussion on their popular podcasts aimed at increasing public engagement on science topics. Register here.

Among other roles at ASU, Athena Aktipis directs the Interdisciplinary Cooperation Initiative. She studies cooperation across systems from human sharing to cancer. She produces the livestream Channel Zed, chairs the Zombie Apocalypse Medicine Meeting, hosts the science podcast Zombified, and authored the book, The Cheating Cell: How Evolution Helps Us Understand and Treat Cancer.

Andrew Maynard is a scientist, author, and internationally recognized expert and thought leader in emerging technologies and their responsible and ethical development and use. Maynard hosts the new podcast, Mission: Interplanetary for Slate and authored Future Rising: A Journey from the Past to the Edge of Tomorrow, which explores our collective relationship with the future and our responsibility to it.

The Global Locust Initiative Lab hosted a virtual workshop on locust governance with Australian stakeholders on February 16-17, 2021. This workshop was part of a project supported by the Foundation for Food and Agriculture Research and ASU’s Swette Center for Sustainable Food Systems to understand feedbacks among locust populations, land use, and governance.

This is the second of four planned workshops to identify and address institutional barriers to sustainable locust management. The first workshop took place in February of 2020 in Tucumán, Argentina and focused on governance issues surrounding research and management of the South American locust (Schistocerca cancellata). Both led by Clara Therville, Postdoctoral Scholar, and Marty Anderies, Professor, Arizona State University who study how people govern natural resources.

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Written by: Rutva Patel, a masters student working with

ASU LightWorks on the Digital Carbon Warehouse

Advised by: Todd Taylor, blockchain expert, Thunderbird School of Global Management

A blockchain is essentially a digital ledger of transactions that is duplicated and distributed across the entire network of computer systems on the blockchain.

Okay too many jargons, lets simplify this.

Blockchain is essentially a database that is shared among a network of computers that is secured and hence eliminates the need of “trusted” third parties. Whenever there is an activity (addition/updating), a new block is added to this network which is immutable, or in other words the transaction details cannot be altered, only added to.

“Blockchain technology has long been associated with crypto-currencies such as Bitcoin, but there is so much more that it has to offer, particularly in how public and private organisations secure, share and use data,” comments Steve Davies, global leader for blockchain and partner at PwC UK.

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Newcastle University (UK) Research Associate Louise Mair, PhD, published a paper titled “A metric for spatially explicit contributions to science-based species targets” in Nature Ecology & Evolution.

According to the publication, sustainable crop and timber production could prevent 40% of the extinction of terrestrial wildlife – amphibians, birds and mammals. Scientists generated these results using a new metric by the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) called the Species Threat Abatement and Restoration (STAR) Metric.

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Originally published in The London School of Economics and Political Science. Governments have the power to leverage their sizeable purchasing power to encourage widescale production of sustainable products and services, which can help them meet the Paris Climate Accord’s carbon reduction goals. Fatima Hafsa, Nicole Darnall, and Stuart Bretschneider write that the size of government purchases is underestimated and thus opportunities for greater sustainability impact are missed.

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Published originally in ICMA.

Researchers at Arizona State University share results on public procurement efficiency.

By Yifan Chen, Nicole Darnall, Justin Stritch, and Stuart Bretschneider of Arizona State University | Apr 5, 2021

Public procurement is the process by which governments acquire goods, services, and supplies to support essential functions. In the United States, approximately 10 percent of U.S. GDP is spent on public procurement activities, and more than 60 percent of these public procurement expenditures are occurring at the state and local level.

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To highlight some of Project Cities’ star students, we interviewed Keith Morphus. Keith graduated from ASU in December 2020 with a Master’s in Urban and Environmental Planning. Keith has worked on three projects with Project Cities, covering various topics, including downtown revitalization and transit. With the Town of Clarkdale, Keith worked on the Downtown Revitalization Plan. With the City of Peoria, Keith worked on the P83 Urban Village Visioning project for his master’s culminating experience. The following dialogue and summary come from an interview with Keith about his experience in the Project Cities program.

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By Mackenize Martinez, Food Policy and Sustainability Leadership Certificate student 

This blog is part of a series from the December Arizona Immersive program of the Food Policy and Sustainability Leadership Graduate Certificate Program. Students virtually toured the state, meeting with farmers, ranchers, entrepreneurs, government staff and non-profit leaders. 

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It's widely recognized that infrastructure are central to societal goals, that changes to infrastructure and how we use them can have profound impacts on people and economies. It's critical to recognize that infrastructure are the hammer at the end of the arm, and the arm is governance. In the second episode of the Infrastructure of the Anthropocene series, Professor Mikhail Chester (@mikhailchester) of Arizona State University interviews Professor Mary Uhl-Bien (@MaryUhlBien) of Texas Christian University about how infrastructure is governed and why, and particularly about what she has learned about leadership in complexity. The conversation explores complexity leadership theory, the differences between the leadership models used to govern now and those relevant to an age of uncertainty, and the critical role the threat of failure plays in driving adaptation.

Metis Center for Infrastructure and Sustainable Engineering | Arizona State University: https://metis.asu.edu/

Convergence Resilience Research Project | http://convergence.urexsrn.net/.

Listen on iTunes, StitcherGoogle Podcasts, Spotify, or Buzzsprout.

If you have questions, comments, or suggestions for future episodes, e-mail us at futurecitiespodcast@gmail.com or find us on Twitter @FutureCitiesPod. Learn more about the Urban Resilience to Extremes Sustainability Research Network (UREx SRN) at www.sustainability.asu.edu/urbanresilience.

Arizona State University partnered with the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) to co-host the virtual 2021 AAAS Annual Meeting titled “Understanding Dynamic Ecosystems.”

Different university units shared their expertise, including leadership and faculty affiliates from the Center for Biodiversity Outcomes, such as School of Life Sciences Professor Leah Gerber and School of Public Affairs Associate Professor Derrick Anderson. They facilitated a session called “The Art of Bringing Evidence to Decision-Making in Conservation Science.”

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ASU Center for Biodiversity Outcomes Founding Director Leah Gerber was featured in this year’s Earth Day issue of National Geographic in a story titled “The Conservation Popularity Contest: Wildlife funding and advocacy focuses heavily on protecting charismatic species. Is it time to rethink that approach?”

In this article, Gerber warns against making uninformed decisions in conservation that can lead to tremendous misuse of funds for species protection efforts, putting even more species at risk.

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In FY21, the ASU Center for Biodiversity Outcomes introduced the program leads model to scale the reach and impact of our research and activities. This selected group of faculty affiliates will guide research incubators in their respective areas that align with our strategic goals, with the center providing logistics and project management support.

We have selected six initial program leads: Candice Carr Kelman in actionable science; Katie Cramer in coral reef conservation; Caitlin Drummond in decision making, science communication and environmental social science; Gwen Iacona in conservation investment; Kailin Kroetz in sustainable fisheries; Rebecca Muenich in agriculture and biodiversity; and Beckett Sterner in big data and biodiversity.

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Join us at this special Changing Hands Bookstore event with Ayanna Thompson, Regents Professor of English and director of the Arizona Center for Medieval & Renaissance Studies at ASU. The event will be moderated by Steven Beschloss, an award-winning writer, editor, journalist, filmmaker, and the Senior Director of Narrative Development within the Julie Ann Wrigley Global Futures Laboratory.

Why are there so many examples of public figures, entertainers, and normal, everyday people in blackface? This important book explains what blackface is, why it occurred, and its 21st-century legacies. Blackface examines that history and provides hope for a future with new performance paradigms.

A limited number of free tickets are available for this Earth Day event. You can support the independently owned Changing Hands Bookstore by purchasing the book when you register. You will receive the Zoom link by email within 24 hours of the event. Registration and more information.

On Wednesday, March 24, Project Cities Program Manager Steve Russell was joined by Dr. Gregory Broberg, community partners Tracie Hlavinka (Town of Clarkdale) and Jay Davies (City of Peoria), and EPIC-N Program Manager Marshall Curry to present at ASU’s Social Embeddedness Network Conference. The conference brings together various university faculty, staff, students, and community partners to present on their work in community engagement and public services.

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ASU’s College of Global Futures has completed a unique two-day virtual workshop for the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) on March 24-25 on Public Interest Technology (PIT) in international development. The live workshop, which drew attendees from numerous time zones around the world, explored synergies in the application of technology to the advancement of human wellbeing.

Professors Mary Jane Parmentier and Faheem Hussain served as co-hosts for the event, which featured presentations from scholars and researchers from Africa, Europe, Australia and the United States. Breakout presentation topics demonstrated the diversity of ideas in the field —from bridging the digital gender divide, to increasing agricultural yields through the use of sensor technology, to a lack of data regarding human trafficking.

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