Sustainability News

What is the future of coffee in a changing climate? How can we enhance the livelihoods of farmers while protecting the nature that surrounds them?

Conservation International and the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research partnered with Arizona State University to help answer these questions.

“Farmers and government planners are making decisions today based on their past experience,” ASU-CI Professor of Practice and CI Peru's Director of Science and Development Percy Summers said. “This works in a [short-term, predictable] world, but increasingly change has become the new norm.”

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One of Arizona State University's newest faculty members, Sir Jonathan Bate, is an international leader in green thinking and applied humanities. Bate holds a joint appointment as a Foundation Professor of Environmental Humanities in the Global Futures Laboratory, the School of Sustainability and the Department of English.

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Although she grew up in Phoenix, Emma Goethe attended a small, private university in California until she decided Arizona State University was a better match. She transferred and hasn’t looked back since.

“I decided to transfer to ASU and it was the best decision I have ever made. Once I was admitted to [Barrett, the Honors College at] ASU, sustainability was really the only major that stood out to me,” Goethe said. “Truly, in the beginning, I didn’t know just how much sustainability covers. It’s not just about the environment, but it’s also about economics, policy and the social impacts that sustainability creates.”

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Arizona State University's first solar project in Puerto Rico promotes energy independence for the community of Barrio La Salud. Using flexible solar panels, a novel racking design and battery backup, community leaders can safely remove and replace panels before and after a major storm or hurricane. Doctoral students Jessica Otten and Tara Neitzold are part of a team of Integrative Graduate Education and Research Traineeship (IGERT) students who worked with community leaders to design the system.

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Same faces, different mission. Formerly known as the GIOS proposal team, the GFL RDO team helps Sustainability Scientists & Scholars achieve sustainability research success. We now provide the infrastructure, leadership, training and resources to promote integrated scholarly activities and increase research competitiveness in the pursuit of external funding. Our activities include capacity building, strategic thinking, and fostering collaboration. Although our team no longer offers research advancement services, we are excited to still provide proposal editing to Sustainability Scientists and Scholars.

We aim to increase faculty competitiveness by increasing faculty readiness, catalyzing people and ideas, and developing faculty research skills. Ann Marie Hess continues to lead the team, but now as Capture Manager, Rena Saltzman is Research Development and Project Lead, and Dana Desonie continues as Science Editor.

An Arizona State University School of Sustainability alumnus was one of three experts to author a report on the potential consequences of the current administration’s plan to rollback Obama-era vehicle fuel economy standards. The report from Chris Harto, a former Science Foundation Arizona Fellow (2007-2009) who now serves as a senior policy analyst of transportation and energy for Consumers Reports’ Washington, D.C. office shows that “American consumers will lose about $460 billion dollars in fuel savings in the coming years” if the plans are enacted.

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After the United Nations IPCC Special Report on Climate Change and Land was released in August 2019, several Arizona State University scientists associated with Global Futures Laboratory wrote a response: “Recognizing the urgency of our climate crisis.” This response briefly summarizes the report and the strategies it describes to mitigate climate change and increase global food security. In addition, the response stresses the importance of acting with urgency, removing CO2 from the air and point sources, and engaging people who are most vulnerable to climate change.

You can read the response on Medium. To ensure you don’t miss any Global Futures Laboratory Medium posts, follow our Medium channel directly, or follow us on Twitter or LinkedIn where we announce all new posts.

Osvaldo Sala, a Regents and Foundation Professor at Arizona State University and a Distinguished Sustainability Scientist in the Julie Ann Wrigley Global Institute of Sustainability, was elected on August 16 as president of the Ecological Society of America. Elected by ESA members during the society’s annual meeting in Louisville, Kentucky, Sala will be president for a one-year term that ends in 2020. He is the first Hispanic person to serve as president in the organization's century-long history.

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Extreme weather changes and a boom in population growth will result in a declining of the rivers in Arizona, according to an Arizona State University professor. Heather Bateman, a field ecologist and an associate professor in ASU’s College of Integrative Arts and Sciences predicts that the steady rise of Phoenix’s population will increase the consumption of water which will in turn reduce the amount of water in streams. Bateman has conducted research that shows that in highly modified rivers, there is also a “lower diversity of lizards, amphibians and small mammals.”

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Urban Resilience to Extremes Sustainability Research Network (UREx SRN) were recipients of an award from the Ecological Society of America.

Winners of the award are recognized for their “outstanding contributions to ecology in new discoveries, teaching, sustainability, diversity, and lifelong commitment to the profession,” according to an ESA announcement.

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School of Sustainability junior Sakshi Hegde has always cared about the environment. So when it was time to make a decision about what to dedicate her life to, the answer was a no-brainer.

"I knew by the time I was applying to colleges that I wanted my future career to be about protecting the environment," Hegde said. "When I learned about sustainability, I knew it exemplified what I wanted to do with my life."

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As three Arizona State University alumni — Debbie Namugayi, Katherine Palmer and Patrick Ware — show, sustainability practices can be implemented into any career.

As a sustainability manager at Eastern Kentucky University, School of Sustainability alumna Debbie Namugayi works to implement broad policy sustainability initiatives across the entire campus. She also works on engaging students who aren’t necessarily concerned about sustainability, taking a different approach by incentivizing them with fun activities rather than asking them to make sacrifices. She previously worked at the University of Maryland where she promoted a “green chapter” program for Greek life and recently implemented a bike sharing project at the 16,000-strong Eastern Kentucky University.

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Motivated by the proximity of her family and her interest in environmental science, Maddie Mercer decided to attend Arizona State University's School of Sustainability. It's a choice she does not regret.

"I found that the degrees offered by the School of Sustainability were the best fit for me and my interests, and I loved that they were available so close to home," Maddie said. "I also loved the intimacy offered by this program, especially because it gave me the chance to have a small, tight-knit community in the context of the much larger university."

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Paul Westerhoff, the Fulton Chair of Environmental Engineering in the Ira A. Fulton Schools of Engineering and a senior sustainability scientist in the Julie Ann Wrigley Global Institute of Sustainability, was recently named the 2019 Clarke Prize Laureate by the National Water Research Institute. According to their website, the NWRI presents the annual 50,000 dollar prize and a medal to recognize researchers that solve real-world water problems and have made outstanding achievements in water science and technology.

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A team of researchers led by faculty from Arizona State University are working on a project called “Flood Aware” to warn people about urban flooding. The researchers plan to use traffic cameras pointed at curbs and gutters to observe road intersections, use an image processing algorithm to estimate the depth of the water and then feed the obtained data into an existing model that will forecast areas where flooding has already occurred.

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The Sun Valley Forum is an annual event that "accelerates the transformation to sustainable, equitable, and secure economies and communities," according to the forum's website. Founded by Aimée Christensen, the forum each year brings together hundreds of local, national and international leaders from different sectors to work together to build a healthier, more equitable and more resilient world.

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School of Sustainability sophomore William Walker VI has big dreams.

"I study sustainability at Arizona State University because I want to be a proponent of our world in the long-run," said Walker. "I ultimately want to transcend the identity and agency I embody into foundation-based work that focuses on reciprocity and community organizing."

Read more to find out about his time in the Doris Duke Conservation Scholars Program and his plans for the future.

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Sustainability scientists in the Julie Ann Wrigley Global Institute of Sustainability Osvaldo Sala, Christopher Boone and Billie Turner and Arizona State University student Courtney Currier recently published a journal article, “The sustainability publication gap and its implications,” in Current Opinion in Environmental Sustainability.

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As the climate rapidly heats up, we can expect yet another collateral damage: water. This summer, Chennai, the sixth largest city in India extinguished their water supply. Next year, Day Zero — a concept originating in Cape Town where water taps run out of water — is predicted to occur in 21 Indian cities. However the problem is far from unique to India as water shortages are quickly becoming a problem many countries around the globe grapple with, including Iraq and Spain. Sao Paulo, Mexico City and Cape Town are also cities that have, or are predicted to face, water shortages in the coming years.

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Initially developed as a student engineering project, the Solar Powered Educational Learning Library (SolarSPELL) has evolved into a global humanitarian mission that has the potential to revamp the way communities in disadvantaged societies learn and receive healthcare. It all began at Arizona State University when Laura Hosman, an associate professor in the School for the Future of Innovation in Society, asked her students to construct a portable solar-powered library. In just five years, the initiative has distributed hundreds of digital libraries filled with educational resources in communities in nine countries that have limited or no internet connectivity.

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