Sustainability 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.

Continue Reading

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 "Safe-yield" is a balance between the amount of groundwater withdrawn and the renewal of that resource in the Phoenix, Tucson and Prescott regions.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.

Continue Reading

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.

Continue Reading

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.

It’s not uncommon for friends, family, and neighbors to ask sustainability scientist Ryan Cornell about his home’s solar power. And he loves most of the questions. It’s a chance to talk about a subject he enjoys, while encouraging people to think about adding solar to their own homes. Most questions are pretty straightforward: How much energy does it produce? Does it produce enough electricity to power your cars? What happens when it is cloudy?

The fact that it is possible to power an entire house and two cars with today’s technology seems to intrigue most people. It also inevitably leads to another question. The question that drives Cornell a little bit crazy: When will the roof pay for itself?

"It is a completely valid question," says Cornell, "and while there are problems with the question itself, I still understand why someone wants to know. The problem with the question is that it is a gross oversimplification."

Read the article in Slate to see what Cornell says about fossil fuels, human health and peer pressure.

The World Academy of Art & Science regional event Perspectives on Post Pandemic is being organized to examine different perspectives on social, economic, political, educational and environmental matters, taking into account the plurality of realities in Latin America. View the agenda and register.

Despite the sizable number of studies and analysis inspired by the deepening of the COVID-19 pandemic, we still face several major uncertainties. This event aims to discuss ways for a humanitarian recovery that ensures environmental sustainability. WAAS believes that the integration of sciences and arts within a humanistic framework and with deference to the environment and cultural diversity can effectively give rise to public policies leading to global recovery and social transformation. This event will include visions and perspectives of Latin American WAAS members, and invited speakers from the rest of the world. The need to build social and political systems that are more resilient and less susceptible to future crises makes imperative the promotion and encouragement of wide-ranging dialogues. This meeting will be an opportunity to exchange ideas among peers, and identify ways to better understand the reality that we are currently experiencing.

Water both nurtures and erodes our land. Changes in the land affect our water quality and supply.

Any story about watersheds is a story about both water and land. This story map connects our water supply to the landscapes we depend on, both natural and built environments. It drills down into the complex relationships between land and water by examining forest health, wildfires, climate change, and our state's amazing biodiversity.

Kyl Center for Water Policy at Morrison Institute, the University of Arizona's Project WET (Water Education for Teachers), and the National Forest Foundation developed this story map on watershed function and health so that teachers and students, interested community members, and water users can better understand Arizona's forest-water connection.

A new open access book, Resilient Urban Futures, addresses the way in which urban and urbanizing regions profoundly impact and are impacted by climate change. Editors include Urban Resilience to Extremes SRN members Zoé Hamstead, sustainability fellow David Iwaniac, Timon McPhearson, Marta Berbés-Blázquez, Elizabeth Cook and School of Sustainability adjunct faculty member Tischa Munoz-Erickson.

The editors and authors show why cities must wage simultaneous battles to curb global climate change trends while adapting and transforming to address local climate impacts. This book addresses how cities develop anticipatory and long-range planning capacities for more resilient futures, earnest collaboration across disciplines, and radical reconfigurations of the power regimes that have institutionalized the disenfranchisement of minority groups.

Although planning processes consider visions for the future, the editors highlight a more ambitious long-term positive visioning approach that accounts for unpredictability, system dynamics and equity in decision-making.

This volume brings the science of urban transformation together with practices of professionals who govern and manage our social, ecological and technological systems to design processes by which cities may achieve resilient urban futures in the face of climate change.

TSC Summit 2021 gathers TSC members, partners and invited guests to bring big ideas, on-the-ground solutions and deep dives into transparency to tackle the path towards more sustainable consumer products. Through a mix of global content covering major issues in supply chains and scalable system changes, TSC tackles what it means to be resilient, together, in the face of worsening climate change and increasing pressure from consumers on brands and retailers.

This event is free to anyone from ASU: select "Arizona State University" from the Company Name drop-down. View the schedule and register.

Attendance for every day except Tuesday, May 11th will be restricted to TSC members and invited guests only. Because this event is virtual, there is no limit on TSC member registrations. All TSC members attend for free. TSC Summit will be presented virtually on the Pathable platform.