Sustainability News

As 2020 draws to a close, I wanted to thank each of you who has taken the time to open a Bulletin, read an article, send me your news, or participate in a meeting or event.

The university sent its own 2020 in review article this week, which included the launch of the Julie Ann Wrigley Global Futures Laboratory, our #5 in the world ranking for Sustainable Development Goals Impact, and lots of great accomplishments in a really difficult year.

For this group, here are the top 10 events and news items that you found useful, interesting, or click-worthy.

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America’s higher education system faces a crisis of legitimacy. Colleges and universities, while promoting themselves as forces for social mobility, have stacked the deck against their neediest students. Rising college costs, skyrocketing student debt, and increasingly out-of-touch curricula are leading more Americans to question the fairness and value of higher education. What is right, and what misses the mark, in these mounting critiques of our colleges and universities? Can institutions be forced to make sweeping changes to tuition structures, endowment spending, and affirmative action—or are these changes destined to produce more conflict? And what would it take for higher education to transform itself to better serve society?

Thursday, January 14, 2021, 6:00 PM MST, Arizona State University President Michael Crow, co-author of The Fifth Wave: The Evolution of American Higher Education, Pomona College President G. Gabrielle Starr, and California State University Chancellor Joseph Castro visit Zócalo for an in-depth discussion of how to make American higher education a stronger force for equity and innovation. Register for this online event.

The Julie Ann Wrigley Global Futures Laboratory hosted a special discussion with Emmy-winning journalist Frank Sesno and former Obama Administration climate policy advisor John E. Morton for a comprehensive conversation about President-elect Biden's incoming administration and it's placement of the climate and climate action as one of four priorities. The two went over what challenges and opportunities incoming administration and Cabinet-level appointees will confront. What will be their likely priorities—domestically and internationally—and how will they engage a diverse collection of stakeholders?

The interview was conducted by award-winning television journalist and Global Futures Fellow Frank Sesno, who also is director of Planet Forward, a climate and environment focused news platform through George Washington University, where Sesno is faculty. Morton is a former White House Senior Director for Energy and Climate Change, responsible for coordinating policies and strategies on international energy and climate change for the Obama administration. Morton is currently a partner at Pollination, a climate change advisory and investment firm. He brings more than 25 years of experience in emerging markets, investment finance and environmental policy.

The conversation was grounded by a welcome by Peter Schlosser, Vice President and Vice Provost for Global Futures.

View the full conversation here.

Providing low-cost access to land held in a commons while enabling private ownership of the homes on that land, CLTs keep housing affordable and benefit minority communities who have suffered for decades from unfair lending practices and discrimination. This, according to a new post by sustainability scienitsts Chris Boone, dean of the College of Global Futures, and Mark Roseland, professor in the Watts College of Public Service & Community Solutions and director of the Community Capital Lab.

Roseland and Boone published a new piece, entitled How community land trusts can advance racial equity in our cities, in Struggles From Below, an online magazine dedicated to shining a light on initiatives that are changing the world from the bottom up; telling the stories of the individuals trying to improve our system of living to achieve a more humane and ecologically-harmonious existence.

Subscribe to this weekly newsletter to stay up to date on all the news in the world of Research Development. The funding.asu.edu website is dedicated to helping you find funding and develop more competitive proposals.

Over the past year, New America’s Resource Security team ­— a program dedicated to exploring the balance between natural resources and human security — and Arizona State University's Ten Across Initiative, which engages communities along the I-10 corridor on the most urgent global issues of the 21st century, have been researching the effects of climate change and talking to those directly impacted on a daily basis.

During a virtual discussion hosted by Future Tense on Dec. 2, five community leaders and journalists joined moderator, sustainability scientist Wellington “Duke” Reiter, founder and executive director of the Ten Across Initiative, to talk about what it will take to address long-term existential threats, without harming today’s economy.

Read more at ASU Now.

The Environment and Natural Resources Program (ENRP) and the Science, Technology, and Public Policy (STPP) program at Harvard Kennedy School’s Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs offer research fellowships each academic year. The online application deadline is January 18, 2021.

STPP and ENRP believe that the best scholarship and most enduring impacts from our efforts are those that represent a wide array of perspectives and backgrounds, and so diversity, inclusion, and belonging is a critical component of their mission. Fellowships are open to pre-docs and post-docs, visiting scholars, and researchers at the junior faculty level. They strongly encourage women and scholars from underrepresented communities to apply.

• Energy Innovation and Decarbonization
• Low-carbon Development in China and India
• Technological Systems and Innovation Policy
• Agriculture and Energy Policy (post-docs only)

For better or worse, our environments shape every aspect of our lives, including the food we eat. In a new study, researchers from ASU and Rutgers University found that children who live in an environment with a higher prevalence of unhealthy food sources, such as convenience stores, are more likely to gain weight over time.

The paper, Evidence That Changes in Community Food Environments Lead to Changes in Children’s Weight: Results from a Longitudinal Prospective Cohort Study, was published Dec. 10 in the Journal of the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics. The abstract follows.

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Sustainability scientist Nadya Bliss, executive director of ASU’s Global Security Initiative, says that while security measures such as encryption and authentication have been widely adopted, security tends to be secondary to application capability. She and colleagues from other institutions are urgently calling for a profound change in the way new technologies are designed.

“Capabilities and convenience are important, but they need to be balanced with security,” said Bliss. "Technologists typically prioritize capability over security, and that means we are constantly playing catch up, trying to patch vulnerabilities when they are already in the wild and being exploited."

ASU's Office of the University Provost and Educational Outreach and Student Services (EOSS) invite you to submit a proposal to share how you are partnering with external organizations (e.g., nonprofits, corporate partners, tribal nations, municipalities, etc.) in your socially embedded research, teaching or practice to achieve positive outcomes at the local, regional, national and/or global level.

Participants will engage in a variety of informative virtual breakout sessions and interactive workshops that are designed to bring together our network, share strategies for forging meaningful and mutually beneficial partners with community partners and generate institutional dialogue about how to advance socially embedded research, teaching, student development and practices at ASU.

This year's conference theme is Planting Seeds for Partnerships and Cultivating Community Collaborations. Learn more about the conference, the presentation formats they're seeking, and the variety of topics on the agenda. Proposals will be accepted through Friday, January 8, 2021.

Three sustainability scientists have presented recently at events hosted by the National Academies of Science, Engineering and Mathematics.

In November, Nancy Grimm presented the academic perspective on the topic of urban sustainability, as part of the Roundtable on Science and Technology for Sustainability. Grimm was one of three presenters during the hour-long webinar. View Grimm’s presentation, or watch the full event.

In December, Marty Anderies and B.L. Turner II presented during a three-day workshop, Progress, Challenges, and Opportunities for Sustainability Science. The workshop’s steering committee included board members Pamela Matson and William Clark. Explore videos of the entire workshop here.

Anderies was a panelist on the topic of adapting to shocks and surprise. View Anderies' presentation video, and review his slides. Turner presented on the topic of sustainability science as a growing field of scholarship. Watch Turner's presentation video and review his slides.

The NASEM Gulf Research Program is accepting applications for the 2021 GRP Early-Career Research Fellowship Track 1: Human Health and Community Resilience. Applications are due January 13.

The Gulf Research Program’s Early-Career Research Fellowship supports emerging scientific leaders as they take risks on research ideas not yet tested, pursue unique collaborations, and build a network of colleagues who share their interest in improving offshore energy system safety and the well-being of coastal communities and ecosystems.

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On December 8, 2020, 35 participants learned from ASU’s Research Data Management Officer, Phil Tarrant, about the research data support services offered by Knowledge Enterprise and the ASU Library. They then shared their own best practices and lessons learned, in a robust dialogue about their work in decision support tools and research. Read the event recap here.

If there is one takeaway that is relevant for all sustainability scientists and scholars, it is to affiliate your new or existing ORCID with ASU. ORCID is your research “social security number,” unique to you. Consider it your system of record for research activity and fill out your profile completely.

The event presentation on research data management services, which begins at 03:38 of the event video, touches on a free electronic research notebook solution, ASU’s research data repository, and recommendations for developing decision support tools and models.

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Sustainability scientist Mikhail Chester, director of ASU’s Resilient Infrastructure Laboratory, has published a new book. Urban Infrastructure: Reflections for 2100 is an edited volume imagining infrastructure transitions and goals at end-of-century.

The book overview follows.

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Dec. 9: Rae Zimmerman, the NYU lead for ASU's Urban Resilience to Extremes Sustainability Research Network, will present a new UREx researcher-practitioner paper on GI and stormwater management as part of the "Innovative Initiatives 2" session.

The presentation will take place on Wednesday, December 9, 2020, from 14:25 - 14:40 CET time (6:25 a.m. AZ time). See p. 5 of the program for more details.

Read the paper, and register for the event.

What are the challenges and opportunities facing the incoming Biden Administration as they confront the realities of climate change? What will be their likely priorities—domestically and internationally—and how will they engage the diverse collection of stakeholders?

Join us for a special interview by Emmy-award-winning television journalist and Global Futures Fellow Frank Sesno with former White House Senior Director for Energy and Climate Change John E. Morton, who was responsible for coordinating policies and strategies on international energy and climate change issues for the Obama administration.

Hosted by the Julie Ann Wrigley Global Futures Laboratory, this one-hour live Zoom event starts at 10 AM MT on Friday, Dec. 18. Register via Zoom.

ASU’s Community Capital Lab, led by sustainability scientist Mark Roseland, has published the Sustainable Maryvale StoryMap. Developed in collaboration with ASU’s Design Studio for Community Solutions, the tool focuses on a Phoenix, Arizona neighborhood to demonstrate how we can localize the Sustainable Development Goals. The Lab proposes using six forms of Community Capital to redirect local systems toward community sustainability by localizing the SDGs. Sustainable Maryvale demonstrates the value of this approach at the neighborhood level and how it can be replicated in neighborhoods across the US and beyond.

The Sustainable Maryvale StoryMap has been submitted to the 2020 ArcGIS StoryMap Competition for the Sustainable Development Goals hosted by ESRI and the Sustainable Development Solutions Network (SDSN). Winners will be announced in February 2021. ASU is one of more than 850 university members of the SDSN. The SDSN was established in 2012 to mobilize global scientific and technological expertise to promote practical solutions for sustainable development, including the implementation of the Sustainable Development Goals.

Join sustainability scientist Peter Byck, producer and director of carbon nation and carbon cowboys, for a premiere of his students' work this semester. The event format will be to showcase one film, then do a Q&A with the filmmakers, then repeat for the second film. Join via Zoom on Friday, December 11, at 10:00 a.m. Arizona time.

The Visitors demonstrates how the COVID-19 pandemic has highlighted the importance of wildlife and parks to human health and well-being, while addressing waste management and other pressing sustainability challenges.

Inseparable provides a perspective on the COVID-19 pandemic as a wake-up call to our inextricable connection to the Earth and an opportunity for us to reconnect to nature to find peace amidst increasing uncertainty.

The Babbitt Center for Land and Water Policy at the Lincoln Institute of Land Policy announces a call for proposals for their Babbitt Dissertation Fellowship.

The Lincoln Institute of Land Policy established the Babbitt Center for Land and Water Policy in 2017. The Babbitt Center is focusing on the Colorado River Basin, beginning in Arizona and Colorado and expanding throughout the Basin. The Babbitt Center takes a four-pronged approach to securing a better water future: 1) research; 2) innovation; 3) build and strengthen partnerships; and 4) education. Read more.

The center invites applications from doctoral students who are conducting dissertation projects in fields that address the Babbitt Center’s primary interest areas in improving the integration of land use and water management and policy. This fellowship provides an important link between the Lincoln Institute’s education mission and its research objective by supporting scholars early in their careers. Apply by March 1.

Several years ago ASU's Center for Biodiversity Outcomes developed the Environmental Leadership and Communication Graduate Certificate to empower students to communicate with the press, the public, policymakers and other relevant stakeholders. This certificate is a 15-credit course of study consisting of 12 elective credits in policy, management, communication, leadership, a student’s subject of interest and a capstone 3-credit course in Environmental Leadership and Communication (BIO 578). This is the only required course and may be taken at any point during the student’s certification.

Sustainability scientist Leah Gerber will be teaching the required course BIO 578 in Spring 2021 and would like to reach a wider student audience, both with the course and the certificate. Contact Gerber with questions.