Sustainability News

A recent article, published in The Journal of Environmental Education, details the findings of a study produced by the ASU Wrigley Institute's Sustainability Science for Sustainable Schools program. The study, conducted by School of Sustainability doctoral graduate Benjamin Warner and senior sustainability scientist Monica Elser, includes a comparison of 59 U.S. Department of Education Green Ribbon Schools.

The article, titled "How Do Sustainable Schools Integrate Sustainability Education? An Assessment of Certified Sustainable K-12 Schools in the United States," provides an analysis of the differences between schools that are certified as sustainable, as well as suggests strategies likely to promote whole-school sustainability.

Right now, political-types from virtually every country in the world are gathering in Peru to talk about climate change. They're working toward a major international agreement about how every nation will pitch in to address global climate change. It's kind of a big deal.

If you're not quite ready to sit at the international table, maybe you just need a little help understanding the jargon. Here are six vocabulary lessons to get you ready for the big negotiations.

Continue Reading

During the first two weeks of December, representatives from virtually every country in the world will gather at a United Nations convention to talk about climate change. They're developing an international agreement, slated to be signed in 2015, that will determine how we will mitigate climate change as a global community.

Global climate policy expert Sonja Klinsky, an assistant professor in the School of Sustainability, answers questions about climate change mitigation.

Continue Reading

Ray Jensen is ASU’s Associate Vice President for Integrated Business Relationships and an advocate for disability services, equity and inclusion. In this essay, Jensen advocates for a new, collaborative model to address disability issues, with the goal of improving global sustainability through inclusion.

A Thought Leader Series Piece

By Ray Jensen

Note: December marks eight years since the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities was adopted at the United Nations headquarters in New York. In this essay, Ray Jensen advocates for a new model to address disability issues, with the goal of improving global sustainability through inclusion.

The romantic biography of theoretical physicist Stephen Hawking, The Theory of Everything, was released this month. Its focus is on the relationship of this extraordinary man and Jane Wilde, who weds Hawking and for as long as she is able, embraces the challenges of his life with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS). From the trailer, it seems that Hawking received, not a death sentence, but a prison sentence when he was a young man, and gradually was translated into a person with a disability. Sometimes it happens that way.

For other people with disabilities, the point of entry is birth, athletic injury, auto accidents or the violence of war. However it arrives, it is usually unexpected, always unwanted, and often the beginning of a journey that can tax the emotional, financial and relational health, not only of the individual with the disability, but of their family and loved ones.

Continue Reading

A new course called Creating Living Buildings - offered through ASU’s School of Sustainability and taught by Senior Sustainability Scientist Mick Dalrymple - imparts the principles of the Living Building Challenge.  The challenge was established by the International Living Future Institute based on a philosophy that buildings are functionally embedded in ecosystems rather than separate from them.

“We want to inform the next generation of green building professionals on the Living Building Challenge and what Living Buildings are,” said Dalrymple, also a practice lead for the Global Sustainability Solutions Services. "Buildings consume natural resources, contribute to climate change and impact human health and productivity. Instead of thinking of green buildings as being less bad, we should think about how buildings can do more good, and that’s the philosophy behind the Living Building Challenge.”

The Walton Sustainability Solutions Initiatives is the newest of 23 internationally renowned members belonging to Volunteers for Economic Growth Alliance (VEGA) – a nonprofit committed to improving life through the development and implementation of USAID-funded programs focused on energy, water, agriculture and economic development across the globe.

Presenting a paradigmatic shift in the way a university can act as a force for good, Arizona State announces its first official charter. The comprehensive document focuses the university’s mission on the inclusion and success of all its students, and on a fundamental social responsibility to the communities ASU serves.

ASU President and Distinguished Sustainability Scientist Michael Crow describes the document as an expression of “the reason for the existence of the institution,” and one that re-imagines the role of a major university in the 21st century.

“We can make our universities produce master learners more dedicated to the breadth of our society, more dedicated to the betterment of our society, more dedicated to the betterment of our democracy,” he says. “If we can do that, we will have had a major impact on the outcome of humanity.”

Video »

A Wall Street Journal article on a recent Phoenix-Tucson water agreement highlights the growing trend among drought-ridden regions of sharing natural resources, and includes insights from sustainability scientists Dave White and David Sampson.

"This is ushering in an era of cooperation where, typically in the past, each player has watched out and protected its own rights," said White, co-director of Decision Center for a Desert City, in the article.

Sampson shared that the Colorado River's flow could eventually fall to as little as 40% of its long-term average.

The agreement the article cites permits Phoenix to send some of its surplus water to Tucson, where it is needed to lower pumping costs. In return, Tucson will give a portion of its Colorado River water to Phoenix when needed.

This year, Sun Devil Athletics purchased 49,000 kilowatt hours of renewable energy from Arizona Public Service, which translates to enough green energy to power the stadium for the next three home games. This is the sixth consecutive year ASU and APS have partnered to bring green sources of electricity to Sun Devil Stadium.

Through the APS Renewable Energy Incentive Program, ASU has installed more than 50 projects on three of its campuses, for a total of nearly 24 MW of solar generation. ASU now has more solar installed on its campus than any other university in the country.

In an article for Nature Publishing Group's journal Scientific Reports, Christa Brelsford - a School of Sustainability alumna and Sante Fe Institute postdoctoral fellow - and co-author Xin Lu analyze interactions by communities of Twitter users preceding and following the 2011 earthquake and tsunami in Japan.

The authors find that among Japanese-speaking Twitter users, the disaster created more new connections and more changes in online communities than it did globally and (not surprisingly) it produced world-wide increases in earthquake-related tweets. In addition, the authors describe a novel framework for investigating the dynamics of communities in social networks that can be used to study any kind of social change.

For the tenth year in a row, the ASU Wrigley Institute will be represented at Arizona Forward’s Earth Fest, taking place at the Desert Botanical Garden on October 28. The fest serves as a venue for local environmental education organizations to share their work with Valley teachers. The ASU Wrigley Institute will have two tables at the fest: one for Ecology Explorers and one for Sustainability Science for Sustainable Schools.

Heather Lineberry is senior curator and associate director of the ASU Art Museum. Her curatorial work explores how new art practices can impact decision making and change entrenched behaviors and systems. In this essay, she explores how art can facilitate deep collaboration across disciplines and social groups to challenge existing models and propose new ones.

An interdisciplinary team of ASU experts - including sustainability scientists Matthew Fraser, David Gutson and Thomas Seager - offers a new anticipatory approach to Life Cycle Assessment. The approach, featured in the Sept. 16 issue of the journal Environmental Science and Technology, explores best- and worst-case scenarios for the impacts of technologies in diverse categories. It was developed using the photovoltaic cell, a rapidly emerging technology used in solar panels, as a test subject.

Life Cycle Assessment is a tool commonly used by environmental engineers to weigh the positive and negative attributes of a technology at all stages of its life. Because the tool historically relies on hard data that can only be obtained after any environmental harm has already occurred, it presents a dilemma. The anticipatory approach to Life Cycle Assessment remedies this by embracing, rather than trying to eliminate, uncertainty or conflicting data. Instead of looking at one parameter at a time, it compares many uncertain parameters to identify an environmentally promising research agenda.

During the "Unpacking Green Growth" conference organized in part by the ASU Wrigley Institute, the LuAn Declaration on Green Development in Poor Regions was released in a farmer's house in LuAn City - a poor region in the middle of China. According to the LuAn Declaration, human society is transitioning from the Industrial Era to the Internet Era. This transition is dramatically impacting the traditional development paradigm, and makes it possible for poor regions to leapfrog to an internet-based green economy of the future.

ASU's Listen(n) Symposium – a series of panel discussions, musical performances and art installations – aims to open our eyes to sustainability issues by opening our ears to the sonic environment. The symposium, which takes place Oct. 16-17 at the ASU Art Museum and Julie Ann Wrigley Global Institute for Sustainability, hopes to forge cross-disciplinary efforts to address environmental issues in new and innovative ways.

“At its base, the symposium is about the ways we engage the environment through the mode of listening, and whether we can attune our listening practices to a degree that allows us to think about these environmental issues in a way that moves beyond, say, studying statistical analyses,” said Professor Daniel Gilfillan. “(This approach) brings the individual into the realm of the environmental space. It encourages students to think about how composition, how sound, how art as a medium, allows us to engage with these more critical issues in a way that is both creative and forward thinking.”

"Trout Fishing in America and Other stories" is an art exhibition that follows conservation biologists as they work to save two endangered species in the Grand Canyon: the humpback chub and California condor. The artists behind the exhibition, Bryndis Snæbjörnsdóttir of Iceland and Mark Wilson of England, dedicated over two years to collecting photos, videos and artifacts that provide a visual – and, in some instances, tangible – experience of the region and the complex conservation processes that govern its inhabitants.

"Trout Fishing in America and Other stories" is funded by the “Rhetoric and Sustainability” seed grant, offered through the Julie Ann Wrigley Global Institute of Sustainability. The exhibition represents an ongoing partnership between the ASU Art Museum and ASU Wrigley Institute, as both units participate in the Arts and Humanities in Sustainability Series. The partnership recognizes art's ability to go beyond science to understand people’s perceptions and where roadblocks to sustainable solutions implementation lie.

In recognition of his outstanding leadership in promoting interdisciplinary research between the microbial ecology and water/wastewater treatment fields, ASU Regents' Professor Bruce Rittmann receives the 2014 ISME/IWA Bio Cluster Award.

Rittman flew across the Atlantic this week to accept the award, of which he is the first winner. The recognition comes jointly from the International Water Association and the International Society of Microbial Ecology.

Paul Westerhoff, an ASU engineering professor and senior sustainability scientist, has been appointed vice provost of academic research programming at the university. The new position is designed to elevate ASU’s efforts to meet the outlined 2020 research goals. Westerhoff’s appointment takes effect immediately.