The Swette Center for Sustainable Food Systems focuses on innovative ideas and solutions to the many challenges of current food systems. In this series, we’re sitting down with the Swette Center affiliated faculty to catch up on food systems, innovation and what makes a good meal. See the rest of the series on our Food Systems Profiles page.

Read on for an interview with Christy Spackman, assistant professor in the School for the Future of Innovation in Society.

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A unique center officially opens on April 3 at Arizona State University, housed within the Julie Ann Wrigley Global Institute of Sustainability.

The Global KAITEKI Center is funded by Mitsubishi Chemical Holdings Corporation (MCHC) and its group’s think tank and research institute, the KAITEKI Institute, and led by Professor George Stephanopoulos, who holds joint positions in the School of Molecular Sciences and the School for Engineering of Matter, Transport and Energy in the Ira A. Fulton Schools of Engineering.

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Hospitals are critical to the health of any city, providing essential care to the communities that they serve. Unlike many other buildings, hospitals can't simply close and send everyone away during an extreme event since it would be dangerous to the patients in need to critical care. In this month's episode, Stephen Elser interviews two leaders from the CannonDesign firm, whose work includes designing hospitals to be resilient to a wide variety of disturbances. We discuss what it means for a hospital to be resilient, the use of landscaping to create "healing environments", and the importance of tailoring a design strategy to meet specific needs. We also hear about their past work in Nantucket Island, Miami, Houston, and Manhattan and the types of design used in those cases. Mike Cavanaugh and Brett Farbstein are, respectively, the Directory of Sustainability and the Directory of Resiliency at CannonDesign. To learn more about the firm and the work that they do, visit www.cannondesign.com. 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.

Listen on iTunes, Stitcher or Buzzsprout.

It is important that businesses understand how they are affecting biodiversity and how well they are managing that impact. Arizona State University, through the PLuS Alliance, partners with the United Nations Environment Programme WCMC on its Aligning Biodiversity Measures for Business project aims to bring together indicator developers and key stakeholders in a series of workshops to form a common view on measuring, monitoring and disclosing corporate biodiversity impact and dependence. From these workshops, the program will then integrate credible and comprehensive indicators of business contributions to the global biodiversity goals into corporate reporting and global policy frameworks.

The first of these workshops, which aims to explore current methodologies and identify common ground took place in Brussels March 26-27, 2019. The second workshop will take place in Brazil in November 2019 and will look to understand how current indicators can contribute to supporting global policy needs.

The PLuS Alliance team of development experts are working to create a knowledge-to-action framework and case studies in agricultural development (Indonesia), social business (Bangladesh), and urban waste management (India), which will be disseminated to practitioner communities globally.

Jacob Bethem, PhD candidate in Arizona State University’s School of Sustainability, only recently defended his PhD dissertation but he has already accepted an offer to teach sustainable business courses at the University of Redlands in California. Bethem will be a Visiting Assistant Professor of Sustainable Business for the 2019-2020 school year.

After completing more than 40 job applications, Bethem became a top-five candidate in at least three schools’ faculty searches, but selected the University of Redlands for its mix of management and ethics courses and emphasis on active learning. He attributes his success in attaining this position to strong recommendations from his instructors and supervising researchers as well as experience gained through various research opportunities provided by ASU in consultative roles for corporate and government executive clients.

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An ASU Now story discusses the complicated matrix of farm labor, wages, costs and consumer prices when it comes to getting produce onto our plates. The growers who produce that produce have been sounding the alarm in recent years that the lack of farm labor is cutting into their livelihoods and leaving crops unharvested in the fields.

An Arizona State University professor has been examining the issue of farm labor and how immigration policy could affect how much we pay for vegetables. The research caught the attention of the U.S. Department of Agriculture, which has given Senior Sustainability Scientist Timothy Richards, a professor in the W. P. Carey School of Business, a two-year grant to delve deeper. He will be working with colleagues at California Polytechnic State University and Cornell University.

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The first Change the World event showcased how Arizona State University students are making a difference through their entrepreneurship, art and ambitious initiatives. Hundreds of students from every campus participated in or attended the festival, held Wednesday at Sun Devil Stadium. At least 15 School of Sustainability students showcased projects, and many other ASU students from around the university presented initiatives relating to sustainability.

The School of Sustainability projects and ideas presented included:

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The Julie Ann Wrigley Global Institute of Sustainability frequently co-sponsors events with the East-West Center in Hawaii. Videos of two of these research seminars were recently made available online for public viewing. Watch them below to learn more about the role that policy-makers, investors and parliaments can play in sustainable development.

“The Trillion-plus Opportunity: Investing to Reverse Global Warming” with Katie Hoffman

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The Julie Ann Wrigley Global Institute of Sustainability at Arizona State University had a presence at the Ten Across Initiative's second summit, held in Phoenix March 26-28. Ten Across examines the U.S. Interstate 10 corridor and engages this region as a living laboratory for resilience, innovation and new narratives for the future.

Arizona Gov. Doug Ducey opened the summit by noting the Phoenix metro area uses less water than it did in 1957 when Dwight Eisenhower was president. “This didn’t happen by accident,” Ducey said. “Along this I-10 corridor, we all have unique challenges with water. … I’m confident if we work together, there’s no challenge we can’t overcome.”

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Senior Sustainability Scholar Klaus Lackner, director for the Center for Negative Carbon Emissions, has created a machine that physically sucks greenhouse gases out of the atmosphere. This machine gave a group of Arizona State University grads another idea: Instead of building the new technology, how about creating a marketplace that would incentivize carbon removal, whether by Lacknerian machines or some other method?

In 2018, the grads — Paul Gambill, Jaycen Horton and Ross Kenyon, along with Christophe Jospe, who worked for Lackner at CNCE — founded Nori. The Seattle-based company is flipping some basic ideas about climate change mitigation on their head. Instead of aiming to lower CO2 emissions, Nori focuses instead on Lackner’s notion of pulling out the carbon that’s already in the atmosphere. Instead of, say, taxing those who put CO2 into the air, they want to pay those who remove it.

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When it comes to climate change and carbon reduction, Senior Sustainability Scientist Susanne Neuer is thinking small — extremely small.

The Arizona State University biological oceanographer is an expert on marine phytoplankton, microscopic algae found in the sunlit zone of waters all over the globe. As Neuer is quick to point out, phytoplankton may be small — too small individually to be seen with the naked eye — but they are mighty. Their size belies their critical importance to the biological carbon pump, the primary biological mechanism in the ocean’s absorption of vast quantities of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere.

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The Swette Center for Sustainable Food Systems focuses on innovative ideas and solutions to the many challenges of current food systems. In this series, we’re sitting down with the Swette Center affiliated faculty to catch up on food systems, innovation and what makes a good meal. See the rest of the series on our Food Systems Profiles page.

Read on for an interview with Valerie Mueller, assistant professor in the School of Politics and Global Studies.

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With so many directions one can take in a sustainability career, Garrett Wong wasn’t sure where he would land. But after a series of experiences during his time as an Arizona State University School of Sustainability student, Wong realized he wanted to apply sustainability to the sports industry.

As he said in his interview below, sports involves a wide variety of people from all walks of life: “What better way for sustainability practices to touch all of these individuals than in a space where leadership and teamwork both on and off the field are the driving message?”

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Many students go through elementary, middle and high school without ever learning about sustainability. That needs to change — and Arizona State University is doing something about it.

Accomplishing this will require systemic change and large-scale collaboration, which is why Christopher Boone, dean of the School of Sustainability at ASU, and CaSondra Devine, sustainability initiatives leader at Wells Fargo, recently put their heads together with more than a dozen local and international sustainability leaders for a three-day brainstorming conference hosted at ASU's Wrigley Hall.

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On Cronkite News, see how Project Cities is working with the city of Peoria (the program's 2019-2020 community partner) to use water wisely. The video news story also touches on a previous Project Cities initiative with former partner Apache Junction.

"We all use water, and we need to have a better understanding of how we consume the water and what we are going to do to encourage further decrease in water consumption," said Lisa Estrada, sustainability manager for the City of Peoria. By collaborating with Project Cities, Peoria will create plans for water shortage response and water conservation.

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With great sustainability knowledge comes great sustainability leaders — this is the mantra that Arizona State University School of Sustainability students like Julia Colbert and Kevin Goddard live by. Colbert is a graduate student studying K-12 sustainability education and Goddard is an undergraduate student interested in water policy and sustainable urban design. Together, they have been working hard to get sustainability into K-12 schools through their Student Council Sustainability Officers Initiative (SCSO).

Last fall, Colbert and Goddard partnered with the City of Phoenix to transition SCSO from the city to the School of Sustainability. SCSO is focused on adding a Sustainability Officer position to Student Councils to implement student-led sustainability initiatives in K-12 schools throughout the Valley. Projects may include water and energy conservation, cafeteria waste auditing, recycling and even cultural events such as International Night.

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What makes a queen bee? How does a queen bee achieve her regal status that elevates her from her sterile worker sisters? This has been a long-standing question for scientists studying honey bees, including honey bee expert and Distinguished Sustainability Scientist Robert Page.

To get at the heart of the question, scientists have now used for the first time the gene-editing tool CRISPR/Cas9 to selectively shut off a gene necessary for general female development.

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To begin to imagine the difficulties, joys and adventures of human life powered by an energy system dominated by solar, last week Arizona State University published “The Weight of Light,” a free digital book featuring science fiction stories, essays and art exploring a variety of possible solar futures.

The book features four original science fiction stories — three of which take place in possible future versions of Arizona, with a fourth unfolding in a revitalized and transformed Detroit — each illustrated by an artist from the Phoenix community. The stories are accompanied by essays written by ASU faculty and graduate students in a wide range of fields, from electrical and systems engineering to public policy and futures studies.

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For the past few years, Professor Hallie Eakin has been teaching "SOS 327: Sustainable Food and Farms" in the School of Sustainability at Arizona State University. Eakin, a senior sustainability scientist in the Julie Ann Wrigley Global Institute of Sustainability, is an expert in food systems and students take her class to learn about theories of food security, rural livelihood sustainability and food sovereignty, as well as sustainability challenges associated with food system activities (production, processing, distribution, consumption and waste).

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Two new segments of “Catalyst” by Arizona PBS, in the episode released March 20, feature Senior Sustainability Scientists in the Julie Ann Wrigley Global Institute of Sustainability: Jenni Vanos and Harvey Bryan.

Hot playgrounds and microclimates

The “Hot playgrounds and microclimates” segment discusses research studying the effects of heat and microclimates on playgrounds and the corresponding activity of children playing there.

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