Sustainability News

Competitive Intelligence is the ethical collection and analysis of information to provide actionable intelligence for informed decision-making. The Competitive Intelligence Working Group (CIWG) is open to anyone who is currently performing strategic and competitive intelligence activities, or interested in learning more about this growing area in research development. Our members are primarily professional staff in higher education who are advancing the research activities of their institutions.

The CIWG meets and discusses best practices, shares useful resources, and creates a network of academic professionals across the nation who seek to define how CI is used and is perceived in the academic environment. This group connects with colleagues from other universities to expand our understanding of how research development professionals are working with CI and to share common issues and interests.

Bring your questions to the year-end session, May 25, 10:00 a.m. AZ time. Learn more and register. ASUrite login required.

What do Indigenous futurisms and climate fiction have in common? To find out, listen to Indigenous Futurisms And Climate Fiction, a recent episode of "Word" — a KJZZ original podcast about the literary arts in Arizona and the region.

The May 11 episode included Joey Eschrich, editor and program manager for the Center for Science and the Imagination at Arizona State University and assistant director of Future Tense, a partnership of ASU, New America, and Slate that explores emerging technology, public policy, and society.

In collaboration with ASU’s Virginia G. Piper Center for Creative Writing, Eschrich runs the Everything Change global climate fiction contest. A new anthology of climate fiction, Everything Change can be downloaded for free.

This year, undergraduate student William Walker had the privilege of executing one of his goals, which was to bring representation to overlooked identities in sustainability through a student-led course.

With support from the School of Sustainability, Walker developed a student-led, faculty-advised course named "Intersectional Environmentalism and Sustainability." The course, which included undergraduate, graduate, and doctoral students, examined how identities such as race, class, and gender create different realities for different people and how those people navigate the world around them.

According to Walker, students in the class taught the class on topics such as Black representation in sustainability, ecofeminism, and Indigenous leadership in sustainability. Walker said, "This initiative was awe-inspiring because it broadened student's horizons on what inclusion really means."

A web page describing the course and all the students' topics was created by fellow students Tahiry Langrand and Jordan Sene.

University students will strengthen their mapping proficiency with a new online platform. The YouthMappers Academy is a new online learning platform for network members. The Academy will strengthen YouthMappers students’ knowledge and proficiency to work with the ecosystem of OpenStreetMap software and tools and the social and organizational skills related to creating open spatial data for humanitarian and development needs.

Sustainability scholar Patricia Solis is co-founder and director of YouthMappers, a rapidly-growing consortium of student-led chapters on more than 264 university campuses in 58 countries who create and use open spatial data for humanitarian and development needs in collaboration with the United States Agency for International Development, the main co-founding sponsor.

YouthMappers Academy course materials encourage YouthMappers to engage more confidently in open mapping communities and seek to stimulate critical thinking around research and mapping activities, leading to higher quality outputs. The added opportunity to earn micro-credentials will enhance YouthMappers’ job marketability by providing formal recognition of proficiency and achievement in targeted geospatial techniques and concepts.

Read more about the YouthMappers Academy in the May 17, 2021, press release.

Broadening access to higher education. Advancing research that helps people. Taking responsibility for the communities it serves. These are promises laid out in ASU’s charter, and now — to better fulfill those promises — they are the three “pillars” around which the university will organize its efforts going forward. Get a crash course in the Academic, Knowledge and Learning enterprises that will guide the university’s efforts going forward from ASU News.

Many consumers rarely think about where the food and products they buy come from, nor do they understand how harmful the production of these items can be on people and our environment.

In fact, these consumer goods are responsible for 60% of global greenhouse gas emissions, two-thirds of tropical deforestation, 80% of global water use and three-quarters of forced and child labor. That’s a message that Arizona State University’s Sustainability Consortium (TSC) tries to convey to the public in their annual impact report.

This report, released on May 13, shows the work they do is helping consumer goods companies have a positive impact on the planet.

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In 1980, the Arizona Legislature passed the Groundwater Management Act after decades of rapid expansion of farms, industries and cities pushed the use of groundwater to unsustainable levels.

A key goal of the Groundwater Management Act is to achieve "safe-yield" by 2025. "Safe-yield" is a balance between the amount of groundwater withdrawn and the renewal of that resource in the Phoenix, Tucson and Prescott regions.

As Colorado River water becomes less available, parts of Arizona will need to rely more and more on groundwater, increasing the urgency to preserve it as a savings account for a drying future.

But less than four years away from 2025, meeting and sustaining this goal will likely be impossible under the Arizona Department of Water Resources’ current regulatory authority.

The Myth of Safe-Yield, a new report by the Kyl Center for Water Policy at Morrison Institute, explores what stands in the way of safe-yield and the limits of safe-yield. It offers new strategies and actions that should be considered to secure the long-term sustainability of groundwater in some of Arizona’s most populous regions.

It's considerably less costly to provide permanent supportive housing to people with chronic mental illness than if they experience frequent homelessness. This according to Housing is Health Care, a Morrison Institute report released May 12 concludes.

Some individuals with serious mental illness experience severe, long-term symptoms of their disease. They may lack insight into their condition, not adhere to treatment, and have high support needs, among other challenges.

These individuals can be considered to have a chronic form of serious mental illness. Without appropriate treatment, support, and housing, they can experience recurrent crisis episodes, homelessness, and frequent interactions with emergency, criminal justice, and health systems, incurring great public expense.

The Morrison Institute study examines how housing and in-home supports affect public spending on individuals with chronic mental illness in Maricopa County and outlines recommendations from interviews with dozens of experts who work with and care for individuals with chronic mental illness in Maricopa County about reducing costs and improving care.

During the Spring board of directors meeting, the United States Energy Association confirmed Nathan Johnson to its board of directors. Johnson is a senior sustianability scientist and associate professor in The Polytechnic School at ASU. Johnson and Babcock Power president Michael LeClair were appointed by USEA executive chairman Vicky Bailey.

According to Johnson, USEA's mission is to enhance energy access and energy security for developing countries, and the relationship with ASU will allow both organizations to provide greater innovation to the energy sector and increase solutions research delivered globally.

USEA Acting Executive Director Sheila Hollis said: "Given the global pandemic, changing international energy patterns, and accelerating technological innovation, USEA continues its important mission to inform and promote a nonpolitical dialogue on energy policy and technical developments. The arrival of these two new members diversifies and strengthens the already outstanding experience we are fortunate to have on USEA’s Board.”

The Art in Focus gallery highlights artwork from the museum's permanent collection. As ASU Art Museum, along with many museums across the country, actively works to build a more diverse collection that tells a representative history of art, they make it a priority to collect and exhibit artists who have been marginalized. A recent study of the artists represented in the collections of eighteen major American art museums found that only 12.6% are women.

This installation features works on paper, ceramics, baskets and wood objects made by a range of influential women artists, including Betye Saar, Faith Ringgold, Sandra Ramos, Maria Martinez, Rose Cabat and Louise Nevelson.

To ensure the well-being of all our visitors and staff, we ask that you please comply with our new ASU and city guidelines to keep all of us safe. Reserve your free timed-entry tickets and learn more about the museum's new guidelines before visiting.

Image credit: Yolanda M. Lopez, “Women's Work is Never Done” (from 10x10: Ten Women/ Ten Prints portfolio), 1995, Screenprint, serigraph, 18 color, on Lenox 100 paper, 20 1/8 x 19 1/2 in. (51.12 x 49.53 cm). Gift of the Arizona Print Forum, ASU.

Join ASU's Universal Design and Access Technology (UDAT) Working Group for a morning of virtual, interactive presentations to raise awareness and understanding of digital access and inclusion for the more than 1 billion people with disabilities and impairments.

The 2021 Global Accessibility Awareness Day virtual conference is a great introduction to accessibility for faculty, staff and students who create online content. Virtually "drop-in" for one or more sessions!

Topics include accessible course design, inclusive pedagogy and ASU accessibility resources. More information and registration.

The IASC 2021 Conference: Polycentric Governance aims to bring together scholars and practitioners from various sectors, disciplines, and epistemological traditions to advance our understanding of how polycentric governance works in practice and share knowledge as a diverse research community.

This virtual event is one of a series of Our Commons Future conferences organized by the International Association for the Study of the Commons. Future topics include water commons, knowledge commons, and land and forest commons. Learn more and register.

The Institute for Humanities Research (IHR) at Arizona State University has awarded fellowships to eight ASU faculty for the 2021–22 academic year. Among them are sustainability scholars Serena Ferrando, Daniel Gilfillan and Natalie Lozinski-Veach.

The new program includes enrollment in the National Council for Faculty Development and Diversity's Faculty Success Program, which provides faculty with the skills needed to increase both research and writing productivity while maintaining a healthy work-life balance.

"The new IHR Fellows program is focused on faculty development. It enables dedicated time for writing, research and public humanities work," said IHR associate director and sustainability scholar Ron Broglio.

Read more about the faculty and their respective projects on ASU News.

Sustainability scientist Rhett Larson was recently quoted by the Associated Press in an article about anticipated reductions in water the state of Arizona receives from the Colorado River. Larson is also the Richard Morrison Professor of Water Law in ASU's Sandra Day O'Connor College of Law.

The reductions in Arizona won’t hit cities or people’s homes, or affect water delivered through the canal system for Native American tribes. Still, anyone living in the desert should be concerned — but not panic — about water and think ways to live with less, said Larson, an expert on water law and policy.

"The fact that you’re not feeling it in your tap doesn’t mean you won’t feel it at the grocery store because Pinal County farmers are growing a lot of the things you eat and use," he said. Read the article in the Associated Press.

Groundwater is a critical resource in Arizona, and changes in demand for groundwater have given rise to growing concern about the long-term resilience of some of the state’s aquifers.

The Kyl Center for Water Policy’s new Arizona Groundwater Level Change App shows what’s happening in sub-basins across the state – where groundwater levels are rising or declining and where more data may be needed.

The data for this powerful new tool are derived from the Arizona Department of Water Resources' Statewide Groundwater Level Changes report (Open-File Report No.18, December 2020).

Explore the new groundwater level change app.

Arizona State University is working with the National Ecological Observatory Network (NEON), operated by Battelle, to collect information that informs our understanding of use of large-scale data sets in higher education, your familiarity with NEON data, and your usage/non-usage of NEON data. Data gathered will be used to inform outreach efforts and for educational planning purposes.

The assessment team is asking for your assistance in completing this short survey. The survey aims to gather feedback from higher education administrators, faculty, and staff and should take no more than ten-minutes to complete. You must be 18 years of age or older to participate.

Please click here to take the survey: NEON Needs Assessment

This link is an anonymous link so no identifying information will be attached to your responses. Feel free to share the link with your colleagues or your professional network. We encourage you to list your institution and role, but doing so is not mandatory.

At a noon event on May 12, ASU Morrison Institute for Public Policy and the ASU Center for Health Information & Research (CHiR) will present findings from a study sponsored by the Association for the Chronically Mentally Ill (ACMI). Register via Zoom.

Some individuals with serious mental illness experience severe, long-term symptoms of their disease. They may lack insight into their condition, not adhere to treatment, and have high support needs, among other challenges.

These individuals can be considered to have a chronic form of serious mental illness. Without appropriate treatment, support, and housing, they can experience recurrent crisis episodes, homelessness, and frequent interactions with emergency, criminal justice, and health systems, incurring great public expense.

Continue Reading

With applications open through July 30, now is the time to submit your application to 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. Read the flyer to learn more.

Here are answers to some of the most common questions we’ve received about the program.

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Archimedes once observed that with a long enough lever he could move the world. In the case of moving the world to a more sustainable place, government purchasing could be just what he would have ordered.

“Government is the largest buyer of goods across the globe,” Arizona State University Sustainable Purchasing Research Initiative co-founder Nicole Darnall told an international audience during a Security and Sustainability Forum webinar April 22. That means, she said, that government purchasing can play a huge role in advancing sustainability around the world.

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ASU vice president and vice provost of Global Futures, Peter Schlosser, was recently named as chair of the Development Board for the American Geophysical Union (AGU). Joining Schlosser on the board as new members are John Podesta, former advisor to presidents Obama and Clinton and founder and Chair of the Board of Directors for the think tank Center for American Progress, and Tong Zhu, Dean of College of Environmental Sciences and Engineering at Peking University. They join a board dedicated to a membership of 130,000 members, from ethusiasts to experts from around the world, focused on Earth and space sciences.

In his introductory address to the AGU membership, Schlosser, who was first appointed to the AGU board in 2015 and recognizes AGU as the first scientific organization he joined, said, "I was trained as a physicist and used measurements of isotopes and trace substances to better understand the hydrosphere, air/sea gas exchange and continental paleoclimate. Thus, AGU was a natural choice as its broad scope in Earth and Space Science covered my interests in a way no other professional society did."

Learn more about Schlosser's appointment and the AGU.