The Salt River Pima-Maricopa Indian Community (SRPMIC) is turning a former Brownfield site into an Environmental Education Demonstration Garden.

The site, formerly called the Beeline Gravel Pit, was a raceway-turned-disposal area that was transformed with the help of EPA Brownfields Site Specific Funds. SRPMIC completed cleanup of the site in 2016—and then began to reimagine its use.

The Environmental Education Demonstration Garden was inspired by the idea of having a new green space to teach SRPMIC Community members about the importance of protecting and taking care of the land and its resources. Rather than develop the site and then invite Community members into it, SRPMIC began site transformation with Community education in mind.

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By employing cyanobacteria – a photosynthesis-happy bug – Senior Sustainability Scientist Taylor Weiss is making environmentally-friendly bioplastics that dissolve in a matter of months.

Weiss achieves this by creating a symbiotic partnership between two bacteria, each specializing in a specific task. He recently joined ASU’s Polytechnic campus, where he is scaling up the process at the Arizona Center for Algae Technology and Innovation.

"Bringing all these elements together and in real-world conditions at large scales needs to be done," Weiss said. "Fortunately, we have a one-of-a-kind academic test bed facility here at AzCATI that is uniquely suited to answer the remaining production questions and push development of the technology."

School of Sustainability Associate Professor Hallie Eakin is the lead author of a new article in the Ecology and Society journal. The article, titled "Transforming governance in telecoupled food systems," uses case studies to analyze how the linking of food systems around the world affects their governance and the actors within them.

The authors conclude that telecoupling has the potential to positively change the governance of food systems. This may alleviate the conflict generated among actors within food systems who have opposing values and interests.

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ASU Center for Biodiversity Outcomes Founding Director Leah Gerber and Faculty Associate Maria del Mar Mancha-Cisneros recently co-authored a publication led by Jorge Alvarez Romero and other conservation scientists around the world titled “Designing connected marine reserves in the face of global warming.”

Larval connectivity between marine reserves is instrumental in providing a healthy network of habitats for some of the world’s most protected species — including fish, which is the most traded food commodity in the world and primary source of income for fishing communities.

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UREx SRN researchers Jason Sauer and Marissa Matsler talk with Portland State University associate professor of urban studies and planning, Nathan McClintock, about green gentrification in the context of urban agriculture in Portland, Oregon.

If you have questions or suggestions for future episodes, e-mail us or follow us on Twitter.

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One of the most pressing global challenges for sustainable development in the era of the Anthropocene is freshwater management. Water is a fundamental human necessity and essential to improve social equity, promote broad economic development and protect the functioning of the earth system.

That’s why ASU’s Decision Center for a Desert City collaborated with scientists, managers, policymakers and other stakeholders in Pernambuco, Brazil – to build local capacity to manage existing and future water resources efficiently, sustainably and equitably. Together, the team developed modeling tools and a decision support system that prepares users for whatever water scenarios come their way.

In our first Spanish episode, we talk about one of the most important activities in the Urban Resilience to Extreme Events Sustainability Research Network (UREx-SRN).

Experts from the network talk about the concept and importance of scenario workshops and their experiences at these workshops across the network cities. Dr. Tischa Muñoz-Erickson shares her experience in the San Juan, Puerto Rico workshop and describes the utility of the workshop for the urban municipality and other actors involved. We also present some comments from participants of the Hermosillo scenario workshop and their perspectives for building a more resilient city.

If you have questions or suggestions for future episodes, e-mail us or follow us on Twitter.

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Thank you for being part of the world's most innovative sustainability laboratory and supporting our effort to advance solutions, engagement, education, research and the U.N. Sustainability Development Goals – both around the world and beyond. All of us at the ASU Wrigley Institute and School of Sustainability wish you and yours a happy holiday season and prosperous 2018.

Christine Carmazzi, an undergraduate student pursuing her Bachelor’s in the international development track, was able to obtain the highly sought after Sustainability and Harvest internship at the Patton Valley Vineyard.

Although Christine believes the most important part of her internship was that she built a monarch butterfly sanctuary, she admits that she feels particularly lucky to have stomped around in a tank of grape juice.

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The world can no longer postulate a scenario that maintains global temperature rise at or below 4 degrees C, without significant removal of existing CO₂ from the air. Based on the amount of CO₂ already in the atmosphere (over 406 ppm) and the steady increase in CO₂ emissions to the atmosphere, even the best possible efforts at reduction will fail to achieve a halt to warming at or below 4 degrees C.

The climate change crisis is so far advanced that even drastically cutting greenhouse gas emissions won’t prevent a convulsive future by itself — the amount of greenhouse gases already in the atmosphere ensures dire trouble ahead.  A forward-looking calculation might postulate a need to return to 350 ppm and acknowledge that by 2040 we will be at 450 ppm.

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The ASU Center for Biodiversity Outcomes led a Governance and Biodiversity Workshop on December 12, 2017 with the intention of building local empirical governance work to scale.

This workshop, which was spearheaded by Associate Director of Social Sciences Abigail York, was attended by representatives from various colleges and ranging interests. Attendees discussed various types of governance approaches including property rights focused systems, informal or decentralized systems, mixed systems and top-down governmental policy.  When weighing different governance mechanisms, cultural barriers to success were considered for social barriers, climate and boundaries for political barriers, ecosystem services for environmental barriers and feasibility for economic barriers.

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In December 2017, two years after the Paris climate agreement was signed, the One Planet summit explored ways to meet climate goals without the support of the United States government.

On that note,  Distinguished Sustainability Fellow Sir Crispin Tickell – an ASU Wrigley Institute board member – gave ASU Now his prescription for the denial of climate change science in the U.S.

"We need a bit of political leadership. We had it originally in Britain from Margaret Thatcher, with whom I used to work quite closely," Tickell said. "I think politicians should take a grip and explain clearly to people in language they can understand what is happening and what has to be done about it, and what it will be necessary to do if nothing is done sooner rather than later."

In a December 2017 interview with Juli Staiano, Chief Philanthropy Officer for the American Association for the Advancement of Science, ASU Wrigley Institute board member Robert Litterman gave his reasons for giving back to the field.

"To me, science has always been the sort of North Star. It’s the facts in which we ground our behavior," Litterman told Staiano. "And so, when I see it come under attack and see the damage that that does – particularly in the context of climate – to rational decision making, I feel like I need to support the institution that represents the scientific community. It’s pretty simple."

Coming from a risk management background, Litterman is passionate about the topic of climate risk.

"I think this problem – with respect to climate – is clearly driven by economic interests of those who would be negatively impacted by an appropriate response," Litterman said. "It’s a risk management problem. Everyone understands what we need to do is to price the risk appropriately."

In a recent press conference in Tokyo, the International Union for the Conservation of Nature, or IUCN, Red List of Threatened Species revealed that species of wild rice, wheat and yam are threatened due to an intense increase in agricultural production and urban expansion.

The IUCN Red List also confirms that poor fishing practices have caused dramatic declines in the Irrawaddy Dolphin and Finless Porpoise.

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ASU Center for Biodiversity Outcomes Affiliated Student Heather Fischer is conducting a survey on nature conservation and social media via The Marine Conservation and Biodiversity Lab in the School of Life Sciences.

The research team is looking for responses from undergraduate and graduate students. This project is aimed at examining the role of social media and online news outlets on college students’ exposure to nature conservation related issues.

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ASU Center for Biodiversity Outcomes Founding Director Leah Gerber co-authored two publications in the December 2017 issue of Frontiers in Ecology and the Environment aimed at cultivating a scientific community engaged in translational ecology. That is, as the authors define it, “a research approach that yields useful scientific outcomes through ongoing collaboration between scientists and stakeholders.”

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ASU-Conservation International Professor of Practice Jack Kittinger recently co-authored a journal publication titled “Bright spots among the world’s coral reefs” in Nature.

The paper presents compiled data and analysis from research conducted in more than 2,500 coral reefs around the world. This novel approach seeks to find solutions to reef degradation due to human activity by studying what the authors refer to as ‘outliers.’ These are identified coral reef areas that are either doing extremely well (bright spots) or very poorly (dark spots).

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The ASU Center for Biodiversity Outcomes, in partnership with the Central Arizona Conservation Alliance, is currently hiring an interdisciplinary graduate student worker to support exploration and analysis of the use of messaging to power public understanding, connection, and support for Sonoran Desert conservation.

Application deadline is Friday, December 15, 2017.

With the aim of finding better solutions to today's food-related challenges, Kelly and Brian Swette have made a major gift to establish the Swette Center for Sustainable Food Systems at Arizona State University.

The new center, housed within the School of Sustainability, will tackle food systems from a holistic standpoint, taking into consideration water and energy use, carbon footprint and nutrition – all with an emphasis on efficiency across the global supply chain. It will also offer the nation’s first degree in Sustainable Food Systems.

Explaining that the new center will accelerate and expand current efforts, Dean Christopher Boone said, "By combining ASU’s assets as a research powerhouse with the entrepreneurial spirit of our students and the expertise from external partners, these sustainable food systems solutions will have profound and positive implications for livelihoods, human health and ecosystem integrity."

Brian is a member of the Board of Directors of the Julie Ann Wrigley Global Institute of Sustainability at ASU, as well as an alumnus of the university. In 2012, he and Kelly launched Sweet Earth Natural Foods – a company that sells plant-based, natural and organic fare.