Sustainability News

The Tokyo Olympics, starting July 23, will be remembered for three things: a complete lack of spectators, being postponed a year because of a pandemic and searing heat.

Sustainability scientist Jennifer Vanos, an Arizona State University biometeorologist in the School of Sustainability, has been studying the latter for more than two years, publishing a suite of papers on subjects including planning for spectator thermal comfort, a climatological analysis and the need to integrate heat management among athletes, climatologists, events operators, public health officials and emergency medical technicians.

Part of Vanos' research focused on big-picture climatological understanding of Tokyo. The other part honed in on urban differences. "Average temperatures will differ depending on where in the city you are, and the humidity can differ to get them to be higher on the coast than if you're inland a little bit or in the city where there's a little bit less sources of moisture from the ocean,” Vanos said.

Read more about Vanos' work in ASU News.

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Cities that undergo constant but measured change are better positioned to weather the impacts of economic shocks. That’s according to a new paper, Resilience of Urban Economic Structures Following the Great Recession, out earlier this year in the journal Sustainability. Sustainability scientist Shade Shutters is lead author.

In a recent post, John Plodinec summarizes the article; it’s an interesting perspective. Plodinec is the former associate director for resilience technologies at the Community and Regional Resilience Institute (CARRI), established in 2007 at Oak Ridge National Laboratory with the support of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security. Drawing on a parable, Plodinec compares Shutters to a wise forester, looking not at what makes trees fall, but what makes them stand.

You can read Plodinec’s piece here. The paper’s full abstract follows.

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The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change will release its report from Working Group I on August 9. The topic is the physical science basis of climate change, and the approved chapter outline is detailed here.

Please take a moment to tell us how your work ties to the IPCC report in this four-question survey. Results will be used to understand ASU’s intellectual inventory on this topic, and may offer you the opportunity to engage with media and inform policy. Please feel free to forward the survey to ASU colleagues as appropriate.

Complete the Google survey here.

The WE Empower UN SDG Challenge – a global business challenge led in partnership by Vital Voices Global Partnership and Julie Ann Wrigley Global Futures Laboratory at ASU – today announced the five social entrepreneurs selected as their 2021 Awardees.

The five 2021 WE Empower Awardees are:

• Olufunto Boroffice, Founder and CEO, Chanja Datti Ltd (Nigeria)

• Nidhi Pant, Co-Founder and Head of Finance and Partnerships, S4S Technologies (India)

• Sara Saeed, Co-Founder and CEO, Sehat Kahani (Pakistan)

• Panmela Castro, Founder and CEO, Panmela Castro Arte e Cultura and Rede Nami (Brazil)

• Aline Sara, Co-founder and CEO, NaTakallam (United States)

Each entrepreneur was selected on the basis that they lead an enterprise committed to advancing one or more of the United Nation’s Sustainable Development Goals, and leverage their businesses to push for progress in their communities.

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The United Nations Environment Programme has partnered with Arizona State University's Sustainable Purchasing Research Initiative (SPRI) and a team of researchers around the world to produce its 2022 Global Review of Sustainable Public Procurement. Building on the findings of the UN's first edition of the Global Review published in 2013 and the second edition published in 2017, this report will examine the state of sustainable public procurement (SPP) policies and practices globally.

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Application deadline extended for the Global Futures Research Accelerator, a program developed to empower the Scientists and Scholars network to develop an ASU research enterprise strategy to increase competitiveness, funding success, partnerships and societal impact. Early to mid-career faculty with a research focus are encouraged to apply. Classes are planned to run bi-weekly on Fridays, September 3, 2021 through April 29, 2022.

The Research Development Office is offering a virtual info session this Thursday, July 15, from 2-3 p.m. Arizona time. Learn more about the Fall 2021- 2022 Research Accelerator hybrid classes, meet the instructors and hear from a few of your peers from the first cohort.

Access the Zoom session or link to our application and flyer through InfoReady.

Sustainability scientists Alexandra Brewis and Amber Wutich are co-authors (with Cindi SturtzSreetharan, Jessica Hardin and Sarah Trainer) of a new book, Fat in Four Cultures: A Global Ethnography of Weight.

The book looks at how people across four different cultures — Japan, the United States, Paraguay and Samoa — experience being fat. It examines how our bodies impact the way we talk, interact and fit into our social networks, communities and broader society.

What surprised all five scientists is that the thin ideal has sunk in across the world. Public health messaging in all four countries urges people to watch what they eat, control diabetes and keep a handle on their weight.

And people across the world all say the same things in response: I don’t have time to work out. The food near my office is unhealthy but it’s convenient. I know I should eat better, but healthy food costs too much. Yes, I know traditional food is bad for you, but it’s so delicious.

In all four countries, it became clear that if you want that body that society tells you is ideal, it’s going to be expensive and it’s going to take time. Read more in ASU News.

With Arizona experiencing its hottest summer on record last year, identifying heat-mitigation strategies and solutions is already a complex issue, and the lasting effects of racially based redlining implemented throughout the 20th century only add to its complexity.

Redlining was the practice of denying loans to people of color and low-income individuals based on the financial risk of the area where they chose to live. Essentially, this process aided in the active separation of races during segregation.

On the Mapping Inequality: Redlining in New Deal America website, a map of Phoenix shows how the city’s neighborhoods were categorized by lenders in 1940.

Patricia Solis, executive director of the Knowledge Exchange for Resilience (KER) at Arizona State University, and her team began by mapping and formulating a rich dataset. By linking heat-associated deaths, state programs, cooling centers, utility bills and more, Solis discovered that people who live in mobile homes were disproportionately affected by extreme heat.

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As normalcy begins to come back into our lives, what habits that we adopted during the pandemic are we most likely to continue? In a new article released today in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, researchers from Arizona State University highlight their findings from a nationwide survey documenting potential behavioral changes Americans see themselves making.

Most notably, many Americans see themselves continuing to have telecommute, or work from home, options. In our pre-pandemic world, only 13% of survey respondents participated in telecommute work. But as this method of work became more normalized, 26% of respondents noted that they will be likely to continue telecommuting at least a few days every week.

“This is a large shift, and it comes with a number of cascading effects, including changes to rush-hour traffic patterns, changing demand for downtown services and changes in where people want to live and what they are looking for in a home and a neighborhood,” said sustainability scientist Deborah Salon, associate professor in the School of Geographical Sciences and Urban Planning at ASU and lead author of the article. Co-authors included sustainability scientists Sara Khoeini, Nathan Parker and Ram Pendyala, among others. Read the story in ASU News.

The article's abstract follows.

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For blue-water sailors, the French Frigate Shoals is often thought of as a place with significant wildlife and deep cultural meaning. The Polynesian Voyaging Society hopes to train sailors in this spot in the Pacific Ocean. It’s all in preparation for next year’s Moananuiākea Voyage, a circumnavigation of the Pacific Ocean in which ASU will play an important partner role.

“The Pacific Ocean voyage will serve as a point of coalescence for researchers and educators at ASU — and elsewhere — to imagine and create a future that helps make the planet more habitable and allows for new relations among peoples for shared purpose,” said Bryan McKinley Jones Brayboy, the university’s vice president of social advancement, President’s Professor, director of the Center for Indian Education, and ASU’s senior adviser to the president on American Indian Affairs.

“Our role is to support, amplify and enhance PVS’ message,” Brayboy said. “That message is: We all share one home — planet Earth." ASU will work with PVS to create a 'Third Canoe,' a virtual platform that will allow educators and students across the globe to virtually participate and learn.

Read more in this ASU News article.

The NSF’s Faculty Early Career Development (CAREER) Program identifies the nation’s most promising young faculty members and provides them with funding to pursue outstanding research, excellence in teaching and the integration of education and research. Often, these awards spur the creativity of the faculty member and helps set them on an innovative career path.

Four sustainability scientists are among ASU's most recent 16 CAREER award recipients. Margaret Garcia, Giulia Pedrielli, Jorge Sefair and Jennifer Vanos are featured in a recent article in ASU News. Read more about their work.

A recent study published in Global Ecology and Conservation examined over 2,300 snake removals in Phoenix between 2018 and 2019, comparing removal locations to neighborhood-level socioeconomic and demographic factors. The article, entitled Unwanted residential wildlife: Evaluating social-ecological patterns for snake removals, found snake removals occurred more frequently in high-income neighborhoods with recently constructed homes closer to undeveloped desert.

Western diamondback rattlesnakes, which are venomous, were extracted most often, making up 68% of removals. The non-venomous Sonoran gopher snake was a distant runner-up, making up 16% of removals.

Sustainability scientist Heather Bateman, an associate professor at ASU who is the lead author the study, said the size and depth of the dataset from Rattlesnake Solutions is an invaluable new source of information.

Read more about the work, supported by the NSF-funded Central Arizona-Phoenix Long-Term Ecological Research program, in this AZ Central article.

The paper's abstract follows.

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Arizona State University is excited to be a Host Institution for this year’s Global Conference on Sustainability in Higher Education, a virtual conference taking place October 12-14. GCSHE offers three full days of live content and networking, plus 80 days of on-demand access (through December 31).

As a Host Institution, we have 200 registration passes for our university only, as well as unique opportunities to be recognized for our commitment to sustainability. Sign up using the instructions below to gain free access to this great event:

1. Click HERE to register.

   If you are a Presenter or Student Presenter, use the Presenter Access Code provided in your acceptance email. Submit an emerging issues session proposal here.

2. Fill out all the relevant fields.

   Use your institutional email address only. The Discount Code is linked to our email domain (@asu.edu, @thunderbird.asu.edu). Other email addresses (such as Gmail, Outlook, or Yahoo) will not work with the Discount Code and will be deleted.

3. Enter the promotional code.

   After entering your ticket, but before clicking Checkout, enter the following Promotional Code and hit Apply: ARIZONASTATE30JUN21

   This will drop your total to $0.00.

4. Complete your registration.

   Registration deadline is October 14, 2021 at 11:59 pm ET

GCSHE has opened an Emerging Issues Call for Proposals. Proposals related to racial justice, campus reopenings, and resilience in the face of climate change are particularly welcome. If you would like to present a session at this year's conference, themed "The future is...", submit your proposal by August 20.

The ASU Swette Center for Sustainable Food Systems recently released a report to help President Joe Biden set a new agriculture agenda based to organic foods. "The Critical To-Do List for Organic Agriculture: Recommendations for the President" is outlined with 46 recommendations for the current administration and Congress to use as a framework for food development and safety as well as its impacts on climate change, research, supply chain, animal welfare standards, racial justice, social equity and enforcement.

"In our report, we establish a baseline of support that USDA should provide the organic sector — 6% of whatever dollars are being distributed," said Kathleen Merrigan, Swette Center executive director and Kelly and Brian Swette Professor of Practice in Sustainable Food Systems. "We chose this number because 6% of food purchased in the U.S. today is organic. We argue that support for the organic sector should, at minimum, be commensurate with its market share."

Learn more about the center's approach to developing these recommendations and some information behind the numbers in this exclusive interview with Merrigan on ASU News.

People of color are far more likely to live in extreme urban heat zones. This is according to a study co-authored by sustainability scientist Glenn Sheriff. The piece, Disproportionate exposure to urban heat island intensity across major US cities, was published in Nature Communications.

The Associated Press interviewed Sheriff for its article, People of color more exposed to heat islands, study finds. Through republication on ABC News and US News and World Report, the article featuring Sheriff saw readership of over 31 million. The work was also covered by CNN and the Washington Post, as well as local NBC affiliate 12 News. Visit altmetric.com for additional metrics.

The paper’s abstract follows.

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A heat dome is baking Arizona and Nevada, where temperatures have soared past 115 degrees this week and doctors are warning that people can get third-degree burns from the sizzling asphalt.

Last month, the Phoenix City Council approved $2.8 million in new climate spending, including creating a four-person Office of Heat Response and Mitigation. “That’s a good start, but we’re clearly not doing enough yet,” said David Hondula, an Arizona State University sustainability scientist who studies heat’s consequences.

Drastically reducing heat deaths would require adding trees and shade in underserved neighborhoods and increasing funding to help residents who need help with energy bills or who lack air conditioning, among other things, he said.

“Every one of these heat deaths should be preventable,” he said. “But it’s not just an engineering problem. It means tackling tough issues like poverty or homelessness. And the numbers suggest we’re moving in the wrong direction. Right now, heat deaths are increasing faster than population growth and aging.”

Hondula was quoted in a New York Times article that has seen readership over 36 million, with more than 7,000 social media shares. ASU faculty, staff and students can read the article with a free group pass subscription via ASU Libraries.

As it drafts its next decadal strategic plan, the U.S. Global Change Research Program (USGCRP) should shift its focus to providing insights that help society prepare for and avoid the worst potential consequences of climate change, while protecting the most vulnerable, says a new report from the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. Traditional climate research that projects changes in the natural environment to estimate potential consequences is not meeting the needs of decision-makers as they respond to the climate crisis, the report says.

Global Change Research Needs and Opportunities for 2022-2031 recommends USGCRP accelerate research on the multidirectional relationships among human and natural systems to advance our understanding of how to manage urgent current and future climate risks. Our food availability, for example, depends on a complex interaction between natural systems, such as the carbon and water cycles, and aspects of human systems, such as population growth or farming practices.

Sustainability scientist Nancy Grimm is an advisor to the USGRP and was an author of the report. Sustainability scientist Hallie Eakin, who is a member of the NAS Board on Environmental Change and Society, served as a reviewer of the report. Read the press release on nationalacademies.org.

To better prepare for an ever-warming world in which heat waves are increasingly common, a group of international researchers is calling attention to the physiological variables and complexities of how humans react to the heat, or their “thermoregulation.” It turns out that these variables characteristically are often oversimplified and that oversimplification can result in a faulty understanding of how heat will affect humans as the climate changes.

The researchers’ commentary, Simplicity lacks robustness when projecting heat-health outcomes in a changing climate, was published online in the journal Nature Communications. Sustainability scientist Jennifer Vanos is the lead author.

“We’re hoping that this paper will lead people to think more about the intricacies of the human body and how it deals with heat in the same way that we think about the intricacies of climate models,” said Vanos.

“We often see news reports of study results suggesting that a place in the future will not be survivable,” said Vanos. “That’s important, but we want a place to be livable, not just survivable. Livable means the climate can safely sustain work, play and well-being for an extended period of time.” Read more in ASU News.

In the June 20 edition of The New York Times, writer Jack Healy visits Phoenix to explore how the region is addressing a housing shortage while in the midst of near-record heat. The article interviews Melissa Guardaro, an assistant research professor at the Global Institute of Sustainability and Innovation at Arizona State University and a HUE researcher.

“Extreme heat has made the problems we have all the more evident,” said Melissa Guardaro, regarding the rising housing crisis and the scorching heat in Phoenix.

Read the full article. ASU faculty, staff and students can read the article with a free New York Times group pass subscription via ASU Libraries.