Sustainability News

On May 6 at the UNESCO world headquarters in Paris, the United Nations released a global assessment on biodiversity as part of the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES). It is the first large-scale global assessment on biodiversity since 2005.

Arizona State University’s Leah Gerber, a professor in the School of Life Sciences, a senior sustainability scientist in the Julie Ann Wrigley Global Institute of Sustainability and founding director of the ASU Center for Biodiversity Outcomes, was one of the lead authors of the IPBES global assessment. In an interview with ASU Now, Gerber provides her thoughts on the assessment and what needs to be done to improve biodiversity of the planet.

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Liana Skibbie is graduating this May with a Master of Sustainability Leadership from the School of Sustainability at Arizona State University. Skibbie, a long-time employee of Starbucks, created a capstone project that aims to build a network of sustainability leaders within Starbucks to foster more sustainable behaviors, especially in regards to waste.

Though it’s not always easy to complete a master’s degree on top of a full workload, Skibbie said she would recommend the program to anyone interested. “This program has been incredible,” Skibbie said. “The professors have been extremely helpful and supportive through the entire thing.”

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Each year, geographers from around the country and the world gather for the annual meeting of the American Association of Geographers. Part of the meeting includes recognizing geographers for their work and achievements over the past year. Senior sustainability scientist Wenwen Li, associate professor with the School of Geographical Sciences and Urban Planning at Arizona State University, was among those who were honored.

During the annual meeting, Li was named an Emerging Scholar by the Spatial Analysis and Modeling Specialty Group. The emerging scholar award honors early- to mid-career scholars who have made significant contributions to education and research initiatives that are congruent with the mission of AAG-SAM.

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One of the goals of the Master of Sustainability Leadership in the School of Sustainability is to teach tools that can be immediately applied to benefit each student’s workplace — and student Christopher William Mutshnick is a great example of that succeeding. Mutshnick, who is graduating with an MSL degree this month, has worked in the field of educational outreach and equity for nearly 10 years and used his capstone project to create for his organization a program that addresses global challenges while improving student learning and access to higher education.

Initially, Mutshnick didn’t see how threats like climate change connected with education. But then it dawned on him: “In my quest to make the world a better place, I had failed to realize that a prerequisite was having a world left to save.” Read his Q&A to learn more about this realization and what Mutshnick has been working on since.

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Being elected to the National Academy of Sciences is one of the highest honors for a scientist, and it also means that members are qualified to inform the president and Congress about issues related to their expertise. Two Arizona State University sustainability scientists, Nancy Grimm and James Elser, can now add that accolade to their already celebrated resumes.

The National Academy of Sciences (NAS) is an honorific society of distinguished scholars engaged in scientific and engineering research dedicated to the advancement of science and technology and to their use for the general welfare of society. The academy announced Tuesday the election of 100 new members and 25 foreign associates in recognition of their distinguished and continuing achievements in original research.

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Arizona State University and Silicon Kingdom Holdings (SKH) have announced an agreement to deploy carbon-capture technology developed by Professor Klaus Lackner, director of ASU’s Center for Negative Carbon Emissions.

The proprietary technology acts like a tree that is thousands of times more efficient at removing CO2 from the air. The “mechanical trees” allow the captured gas to be sequestered or sold for re-use in a variety of applications, such as synthetic fuels, enhanced oil recovery or in food, beverage and agriculture industries.

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Arizona State University President’s Professor Ariel Anbar has been selected to receive the 2019 Science Innovation Award from the European Association of Geochemistry (EAG). This award recognizes scientists who have recently made a particularly important and innovative breakthrough in geochemistry.

Anbar is a scientist and educator interested in Earth’s past and future as an inhabited world and the prospects for life beyond it. He is on the faculty of the School of Earth and Space Exploration and the School of Molecular Sciences and is a Distinguished Sustainability Scholar in ASU’s Julie Ann Wrigley Global Institute of Sustainability. Anbar also directs ASU’s Center for Education Through Exploration, which is reinventing digital learning around curiosity, exploration and discovery.

School of Sustainability junior Jade Lantz has been on our radar a lot lately. Last week, she presented about the benefits of community gardens in Phoenix from an environmental justice perspective, based on research she conducted through the Sustainability Undergraduate Research Experience program. In addition, her hometown newspaper, the Rockford Register Star, recently published her op-ed about food deserts: “My View: The solution to supermarket shutdowns may be in the schools.” In the essay, Lantz wrote that community gardens in schools can ensure that children still have access to healthy, fresh foods even if they live in a food desert.

We asked Lantz a few questions including why she decided to study sustainability and what sustainability means to her.

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Sophia Yvonne Vitale is days away from graduating with her Master of Sustainability Leadership from Arizona State University’s School of Sustainability. She said her inspiration to study sustainability came from a spiritual awakening in which she realized that all of her actions have impacts, and she wanted to do more to change the world.

Despite family tragedies occurring during her studies, Vitale was able to stay on track with her degree and learn a lot through her classes, school mentors, classmates and capstone project — a sustainability consulting project working with businesses. Read more about Vitale’s journey in her Q&A.

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This year, the Julie Ann Wrigley Global Institute of Sustainability at Arizona State University celebrated Earth Day in a new way. Around the clock on April 22, the School of Sustainability's Facebook broadcasted a documentary series highlighting projects and people who are making an impact for a sustainable tomorrow. The successful “24 Hours of Sustainability” broadcast — presented by Wells Fargo and powered by ASU — reached more than 1.7 million Facebook users in 45 countries.

Each short video highlighted a sustainability story in one of five categories: sustainability leaders, students making a difference, conservation leaders at work, teachers inspiring action, and eco-heroes making an impact. Viewers could tune in at any time throughout the day to learn something new about sustainability.

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