Sustainability News

Arizona State University was well represented at the 2021 AAAS meeting, held from Feb. 8-11, with a showcase of more than 50 virtual tours, live chats, scientific sessions, student presentations and poster sessions, and special plenary sessions by world scientific leaders.

The theme for AAAS 2021 was “Understanding Dynamic Ecosystems.” From the environments that we inhabit to the social systems in which we live and work, we are all embedded in a variety of ecosystems. Finding ways of maintaining the stable balance of these ecosystems in the face of rapidly changing circumstances is critical for our advancement.

• WATCH: ASU presentations from this year's AAAS annual meeting

• Read a detailed summary of the event on ASU News
• Sustainability doctoral student wins AAAS student e-poster competition
• AAAS award marks ASU advances in STEM diversity, equity and inclusion

Sustainability PhD student Wenjuan Liu has won first place in the American Association for the Advancement of Science 2021 student e-poster competition. Arizona State University was the host of this year's conference, the world's largest scientific meeting.

Liu's advisors in the School of Sustainability are Hallie Eakin and Datu Agusdinata. Liu's poster, Li Mining-Community-Aquifer Interactions in Salar De Atacama: An Agent-Based Model, was presented live on February 10.

Liu describes the significance of her research: "This research developed an agent-based model to examine how mining’s brine pumping behaviors affect groundwater movements and how changes in water resources affect social-stress dynamics under different mining projections. Our simulations highlight the importance of understanding and managing the downside risks of lithium extraction, point out potential pathways to help build community resilience, and identify governance challenges in regulating lithium mining stemming from resource uncertainties. This study also contributes to informing lithium-mining stakeholders about the challenges and opportunities to provide better management of the world’s largest lithium production sites for a sustainable future."

The abstract follows.

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Distinguished sustainability scientist Bryan McKinley Jones Brayboy has been named ASU's new vice president for social advancement. His duties will include overseeing and implementing a variety of academic and social initiatives in Arizona and Hawaii.

“I’m very excited about this portfolio because it allows me to take on new challenges that are near and dear to my heart,” said Brayboy, President’s Professor, director of the Center for Indian Education and ASU’s senior adviser to the president on American Indian affairs. “This work is an opportunity for ASU to continue living our charter. The social advancement aspect is crucial. Part of my role is to convene people and to bring our vast intellectual and research power to assist in helping create the conditions for a better society.”

Read the full article on ASU News.

Join us on International Women’s Day for the first in a series of events showcasing ASU’s initiatives and partnerships advancing Sustainable Development Goal 5: Gender Equality and the Empowerment of Women and Girls.

Panelists will discuss the barriers women face due to discriminatory laws around the world and learn how ASU is combating these challenges by partnering with global organizations on SDG5 initiatives, including the SDG 5 Training for Parliamentarians and Global Changemakers and WE (women entrepreneurs) Empower UN SDG Challenge.

More info and registration.

Sustainability scholar Shawn Walker, assistant professor of social and behavioral sciences in the New College at ASU, has been quoted in a recent article on disinformation and conspiracy theories.

The article, The Disinformation Vaccine: Is There a Cure for Conspiracy Theories?, appeared February 24, 2021, in Rolling Stone. The article discusses research by Cambridge University's Sander van der Linden, who believes we can protect people against bad information through something akin to inoculation – a sort of truth vaccine. He calls his tactic "prebunking."

Walker, skeptical of applying concepts such as inoculation and herd immunity to disinformation, says the epidemiological approach risks overlooking the nuances and differences between online communities and how one form of intervention or solution might work in, say, a particular Reddit subgroup but not on Twitter. “There has to be thoughtful engagement and the understanding of the different balkanization of these communities,” Walker says. “Some you want to go in and engage, and some you don’t want to because it feeds the beast.” Walker goes on to explore the ethics around profit motives and the snuffing out of not just disinformation but unpopular opinions and inconvenient facts.

The Handbook on Human and Planetary Health will focus on demonstrating how planetary health may be pursued, with an emphasis on humans and on human influences. This which will follow on the success of the Encyclopedia of Sustainability in Higher Education, which is a "living edition" and the Encyclopedia of the UN Sustainable Development Goals, the world´s largest editorial project on sustainable development ever undertaken.

The Handbook on Human and Planetary Health will focus on:

1. Outlining which human activities influence or disturb natural systems
2. Describing the health impacts of environmental problems to human health
3. Illustrating some of the measures which may be deployed to change current trends (e.g. reductions in resource consumption)
4. Showcasing tested solutions to reduce human influences on planetary health

The publication is paying a special attention to the relations between the environment and zoonetic diseases. Other related themes may also be accepted. The publication will be part of the world´s leading peer-reviewed book series on matters related to sustainable development. This will be a high-impact, high citations, peer-reviewed piece.

The editorial team is now asking for expressions of interest, with the following details:

1. Title of the possible contribution
2. One paragraph describing it
3. Names and contact details of the authors

The deadline is 20th March 2021. Full papers are due by 20th June 2021. The book is expected to be published in late 2021. The expressions of interest should be sent by the above deadline to: iusdrp@ls.haw-hamburg.de. Further details on submissions and the format to be followed will be discussed with the authors whose outlines have been accepted.

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SolarSPELL worked with a partner in South Sudan to provide virtual educational learning materials to over 35,000 primary and secondary students learning remotely from July through October 2020. Empower Kids South Sudan trained facilitators to take SolarSPELL units to schools in South Sudan during the COVID-19 pandemic.

The SolarSPELL devices are digital libraries designed and produced by ASU students and professors. They require no access to internet or electricity. Each SolarSPELL device encases a solar panel, a battery, and a Raspberry Pi, which are low-cost, extremely compact computers. All the educational resources are curated and stored on microSD cards inside each device.

Each SolarSPELL unit broadcasts an offline Wi-Fi hotspot that allows users to access the digital library through common internet browsers like Google Chrome or Mozilla Firefox. The virtual interface for the library is designed to resemble the experience of using the internet.

Read the full article on StatePress.com.

ASU's Vice President and Vice Provost of Global Futures, Peter Schlosser, was featured this week on the KAET news and current affairs program Horizon, where he discussed the current threat of climate change and the Biden administration's prioritization of climate action.

"We actually see the expression of this (existential) threat, which is a global threat, but we see it locally. Here in Phoenix, we see wildfires, we have drought...we have record heat, record death related to heat. So, more frequently we see fallout of this global crisis play out in our backyard."

Across the interview with Ted Simmons, Schlosser addresses the ideas of decarbonization, the opportunity of job growth and trillion-dollar industries and the real impact of the Paris Accords and the meaning behind the Unied States re-entering the accords via a recent executive order.

"I hope that by seeing more and experiencing more - more people are getting closer to the crisis - I hope this will wake them up and make them willing to take on different choices, different from what got us into this crisis."

View the fulll interview at KAET PBS.

“How do we expand our reach not just to other disciplines but also to non-scientists to make it easier to work with stakeholders and those who make policy decisions?”

That was the question put forth by Sarah Bearman, second-year PhD student in the School of Earth and Space Exploration questions during the first reading group meeting of Earth System Science for the Anthropocene, or ESSA. ESSA is a growing network of graduate students, faculty members and practitioners addressing global challenges through a new lens. The developing ESSA initiative at ASU, directed by Nancy Grimm (School of Life Sciences) and Abigail York (School of Human Evolution and Social Change), aims to re-think how we approach graduate training in the Anthropocene.

“Students need a new path to help them prepare for careers and multi-disciplinary research outside of academia,” says Grimm, Regents Professor at ASU. Grimm and York state that the formation of the ESSA network was driven by the need to invoke a new science and graduate training. Starting in Spring 2021, graduate students from different research programs and interests virtually join together to discuss articles about the future of science focusing on five key ideas: collaboration, team science, communication, solutions-driven research and framing transdisciplinary scholarship to explicitly center justice, equity, diversity and inclusion.

The ESSA reading group also brings together students from diverse disciplinary backgrounds to open up new doors for collaboration and discussion. An engineering PhD student, Iranvaloo, describes the way scientists can engage in different types of knowledge and methodologies, “...there are a lot of tools and approaches in the engineering and the computer vision realm that can aid in how we approach our experimental problems.”

“We need to make spaces that define what mentoring relationships mean to students and their success,” Grimm says, reflecting on her position as a long-time faculty member and graduate student mentor. “It’s telling to find that there are no pre-existing faculty mentoring trainings at ASU or even other universities...if we want to train students then we must also ask faculty to be held to the same standard”. Grimm and York are working to build a community of students and faculty who embody these same principles in ESSA.

If you’re a graduate student, faculty member or practitioner, you can join the ESSA scholars community by contacting essa@asu.edu or follow @ESSA_ASU on Twitter for reading group and networking announcements.

“The heat in 2020 was not helpful in the least, and the global pandemic was not helpful as well,” said associate professor David Hondula, a partner with the Healthy Urban Environments program at the Global Institute of Sustainability and Innovation.

In an article featured in the Arizona Republic, Hondula points to energy assistance and home weatherization assistance for low-income people as solutions to help avoid severe risk and even deaths due to the extreme heat and conditions of the current climate.

Read more about the consequences of the State’s driest summer on record and the pandemic on vulnerable people in our communities.

This year, the Faculty Women’s Association (FWA) is exploring the impact of systemic racism in our community and higher education. For their 2021 FWA Leadership Summit, Embracing Our Charter: Leading Inclusion at ASU and Beyond, they highlight inspirational leaders who move forward justice, inclusion, diversity and equity within ASU and beyond. Through a dynamic discussion, panelists will share their experience and leadership strategies in their work to confront systemic racism and promote inclusive practices and initiatives. We invite you to join us for this important dialogue!

Event panelists include Cassandra Aska, Sara Brownell, Tiffany Ana Lopez, Ayanna Thompson, and moderator Lisa Magaña. This event is open to all ASU faculty, staff and students.

"Visualizing and reporting the summary figures for the COVID-19 pandemic is not as straightforward as measuring the number of steps you take in a day or number of transactions in a week," say ASU authors Michael Simeone, Gracie Valdez and Shawn Walker in a new piece for Future Tense. Simeone and Walker are sustainability scientists at ASU.

We are surrounded by charts, graphs, and dashboards that try to summarize and surveil the COVID-19 pandemic in the United States; we haven’t seen this kind of explosion of data visualization since the advent of the Weather Channel. But these dashboards, none of which existed before March, are experiencing some growing pains.

Read the full article, What COVID-19 Dashboards Aren’t Telling Us, published Feb. 9, 2021.

Drs. Jim Elser and Phil Haygarth – two big names in the field of phosphorus sustainability – have joined forces to write a book for lay audiences that describes the nature and history of phosphorus, its uses, and its twin role as both an essential ingredient of agriculture and a major contaminant of our waters. Join the book launch event, set for February 23 at 9:30 a.m. MST. Register online.

Jim Elser is a limnologist and National Academy of Sciences member with research focused on the effect of key limiting nutrients such as nitrogen and phosphorus in lake ecosystems. He is a Research Professor and Distinguished Sustainability Scientist in ASU’s School of Life Sciences and School of Sustainability and serves as the Director for the Sustainable Phosphorus Alliance. He is also director of the Flathead Lake Biological Station of the University of Montana.

Phosphorus: Past and Future, available from Oxford University Press, discusses emerging efforts and innovations to develop phosphorus sustainability solutions to protect our food supply and water quality. The book launch event will include a high-level tour of the book with the authors and the insights they gained from writing it. There will be plenty of time for the audience to ask questions of the authors. You can also follow the conversation at the Twitter hashtag #thePbook.

According to experts from ASU's Decision Theater, the United States needs a Continuity of the Economy plan to ensure we can reconstitute the economy in the wake of a devastating cyberattack. ASU's Jon Miller and sustainability scientist Shade T. Shutters contributed an article to Future Agenda, a series from Future Tense in which experts suggest specific, forward-looking actions the new Biden administration should implement.

Miller and Shutters' co-authors were sustainability fellow Benjamin Ruddell of Northern Arizona University, with Samantha F. Ravich and Annie Fixler of the Center on Cyber and Technology Innovation at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies. Their article is entitled Who Gets Their Lights Back First if a Cyberattack Brings Down the Grid?

ASU’s Decision Theater and the Center on Cyber and Technology Innovation at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies are partnering on a data driven visualization of interconnectivity and dependencies across economic sectors to demonstrate how the U.S. government can begin to understand prioritization of recovery.

The Julie Ann Wrigley Global Futures Laboratory is partnering with the U.S. Indo-Pacific Command (USINDOPACOM) to present the 2021 Virtual Pacific Environmental Security Forum (PESF), Feb 22-26, 2021. The primary purpose of the PESF is to increase regional militaries' understanding of environmental security issues and their environmental stewardship obligations, and to coordinate efforts with civilian agencies and NGOs for whole-of-government and whole-of-society solutions.

Amanda Ellis, Director of Global Partnerships for GFL and Dave White, Deputy Director of the Global Institute of Sustainability and Innovation, are leading the Education Working Group and coordinating ASU’s engagement in PESF. Dr. Klaus Lackner, Director and Professor, Center for Negative Carbon Emissions will give a keynote address on Carbon Drawdown. Other ASU speakers featured at the event include Maria Espinosa, Student Veteran, The Laboratory for Energy And Power Solutions (LEAPS) and Netra Chhetri, Associate Professor, School for the Future of Innovation in Society.

Global Futures Laboratory will co-chair this year's International Leadership Association annual conference. The call for proposals is open. Submit by February 28.

Together, how can we more fully unleash the abundant potential of people, including ourselves, to collaborate across today's many multi-faceted opportunities and complex issues? How can leadership be a greater catalyst for societal and eco-systemic advancement? How can leadership create the conditions for more equitable relationships across divides, even across lines of conflict?

You're invited to submit a proposal on these and other themes for the 2021 annual global conference of the International Leadership Association, which is scheduled to take place from 20-23 October in Geneva, Switzerland.

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In a recent meeting of center directors affiliated with the Global Institute of Sustainability and Innovation, participants were asked to provide a recent highlight or accomplishment. A wide variety of answers were shared, and some of them are reproduced here.

Center for Games and Impact has hosted workshops, local trainings, thought leader gatherings and a month-long game exhibit at the Phoenix Art Museum with thousands of visits.

Center for Global Discovery and Conservation Science has acquired the Allen Coral Atlas, giving the Global Futures Laboratory the world's largest coral reef monitoring system.

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On Feb. 4, in association with Arizona State University, the American Resilience Project, a nonprofit organization that uses storytelling to address social issues and inspire action, premiered the second film in its “Current Revolution” series on energy transitions, titled “Nation in Transition,” which tells the story of the closing of the coal plant on the Navajo Nation.

Sustainability scholar Paul Hirt, ASU emeritus professor of history, helped to produce the documentary with filmmaker Roger Sorkin. One of the key units at ASU that provided support for this film was sustainability scholar Steven Beschloss’ Narrative Storytelling Initiative. The ASU Julie Ann Wrigley Global Futures Laboratory and the ASU School of Historical, Philosophical and Religious Studies co-sponsored the premiere, which featured a dialogue with Hirt and Sorkin, as well as Edward Dee, executive director of the Office of Navajo Government Development, and sustainability scholar Kris Mayes, co-director of the Just Energy Transition Center in the Julie Ann Wrigley Global Futures Laboratory.

Watch the video, or read a Q&A with Hirt and Sorkin at ASU News.

WE Empower UN SDG Challenge awardee Shimrit Perkol-Finkel, co-founder and CEO of ECOncrete Tech, will be one of three presenters at a February 10 event hosted by Okinawa Institute of Science and Technology Foundation, in partnership with the Pacific International Center for High Technology Research (PICHTR) Climate Adaptation Collective in Honolulu, Hawai'i.

To address the climate crisis brought upon by unprecedented levels of carbon released into the atmosphere due to human activity, President Joe Biden’s Administration has placed a focus on carbon reduction and sequestration as core elements of The Biden Plan for a Clean Energy Revolution and Environmental Justice.

This webinar will feature innovative technologies from the United States, Japan, and internationally that are capable of reducing and sequestering carbon across the built and natural environments. Presenting with Perkol-Finkel are Christie Gamble, Senior Director of Sustainability for CarbonCure Technologies, and Yabing Qi, Professor at OIST. Register online.

In early 2020, Rob and Melani Walton Sustainability Solutions colleagues, Alicia Marseille, interim deputy director, and Raj Buch, director of sustainability practice, joined the Consumer Brand Association’s Recycling Leadership Council (RLC), a broad coalition of stakeholders brought together to identify the federal government’s role in fixing the U.S. recycling system.

On February 4, RLC released its Blueprint for America’s Recycling System. The detailed report provides a vision for ambitious policy action that will move the United States toward a circular economy.

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