Sustainability scientist Ryan Cornell has contributed to Future Agenda, a series from Future Tense in which experts suggest specific, forward-looking actions the new Biden administration should implement. The article is entitled It’s Time to Rethink the Tax Credit on Electric Vehicles.

According to Cornell, we must decouple our economy from fossil fuels and electrify all aspects of our daily lives. While there has been a recent focus on the final pieces of the electrification puzzle (shipping, airlines, steel production), Cornell says we shouldn’t ignore the comparatively low-hanging fruit that is the automotive transportation sector.

Continue Reading

Sustainability scientist Sara Meerow has co-authored a paper using survey experiments to show how people conceptualize different terms used to frame environmental policies and how this affects public opinion. The paper, Positively Resilient? How Framing Local Action Affects Public Opinion, appears in Urban Affairs Review.

The abstract follows.

Continue Reading

Sustainability scholar Evan Berry has shared the following invitation. This is a year of pandemic, a year of disruption, a year in which struggles for racial and economic justice can no longer be ignored. In that spirit, and in the interest of protecting the health of our members, the International Society for the Study of Religion, Nature, and Culture is postponing its in-person conference until 2022. In partnership with Arizona State University, ISSRNC will hold a nearly-carbon neutral virtual conference in February 18-28, 2021. Learn more and register.

Sustainability scientists Michael Schoon and Jennifer Hodbod are among the lecturers presenting the Resilience Alliance's 2021 short course, set for May 24-28, 2021. The purpose of this exciting one-week course is to draw on the expertise of scholars in the RA network to teach about resilience as conceptualized and studied by RA scholars and to facilitate collaboration among a broader network of students and researchers.

The theme for this first RA short course will be Resilience Foundations from Theory to Practice. Key concepts including panarchy and the adaptive cycle, scale and system dynamics, social-ecological systems, and resilience assessment will be explored from their roots through to current advances and applications. The evolution of these concepts and key papers will be presented by researchers who have played a role in their development. In collaborative groups, participants will apply resilience concepts to case studies with the goal of developing manuscript drafts and contributing to a library of cases.

Continue Reading

As 2020 draws to a close, I wanted to thank each of you who has taken the time to open a Bulletin, read an article, send me your news, or participate in a meeting or event.

The university sent its own 2020 in review article this week, which included the launch of the Julie Ann Wrigley Global Futures Laboratory, our #5 in the world ranking for Sustainable Development Goals Impact, and lots of great accomplishments in a really difficult year.

For this group, here are the top 10 events and news items that you found useful, interesting, or click-worthy.

Continue Reading

America’s higher education system faces a crisis of legitimacy. Colleges and universities, while promoting themselves as forces for social mobility, have stacked the deck against their neediest students. Rising college costs, skyrocketing student debt, and increasingly out-of-touch curricula are leading more Americans to question the fairness and value of higher education. What is right, and what misses the mark, in these mounting critiques of our colleges and universities? Can institutions be forced to make sweeping changes to tuition structures, endowment spending, and affirmative action—or are these changes destined to produce more conflict? And what would it take for higher education to transform itself to better serve society?

Thursday, January 14, 2021, 6:00 PM MST, Arizona State University President Michael Crow, co-author of The Fifth Wave: The Evolution of American Higher Education, Pomona College President G. Gabrielle Starr, and California State University Chancellor Joseph Castro visit Zócalo for an in-depth discussion of how to make American higher education a stronger force for equity and innovation. Register for this online event.

The Julie Ann Wrigley Global Futures Laboratory hosted a special discussion with Emmy-winning journalist Frank Sesno and former Obama Administration climate policy advisor John E. Morton for a comprehensive conversation about President-elect Biden's incoming administration and it's placement of the climate and climate action as one of four priorities. The two went over what challenges and opportunities incoming administration and Cabinet-level appointees will confront. What will be their likely priorities—domestically and internationally—and how will they engage a diverse collection of stakeholders?

The interview was conducted by award-winning television journalist and Global Futures Fellow Frank Sesno, who also is director of Planet Forward, a climate and environment focused news platform through George Washington University, where Sesno is faculty. Morton is a former White House Senior Director for Energy and Climate Change, responsible for coordinating policies and strategies on international energy and climate change for the Obama administration. Morton is currently a partner at Pollination, a climate change advisory and investment firm. He brings more than 25 years of experience in emerging markets, investment finance and environmental policy.

The conversation was grounded by a welcome by Peter Schlosser, Vice President and Vice Provost for Global Futures.

View the full conversation here.

Providing low-cost access to land held in a commons while enabling private ownership of the homes on that land, CLTs keep housing affordable and benefit minority communities who have suffered for decades from unfair lending practices and discrimination. This, according to a new post by sustainability scienitsts Chris Boone, dean of the College of Global Futures, and Mark Roseland, professor in the Watts College of Public Service & Community Solutions and director of the Community Capital Lab.

Roseland and Boone published a new piece, entitled How community land trusts can advance racial equity in our cities, in Struggles From Below, an online magazine dedicated to shining a light on initiatives that are changing the world from the bottom up; telling the stories of the individuals trying to improve our system of living to achieve a more humane and ecologically-harmonious existence.

The School of Life Sciences partnered with the Mary Lou Fulton Teachers College at Arizona State University to offer the Graduate Certificate in Scientific Teaching in Higher Education.

Associate Professor Bryan Henderson has spearheaded this certificate for the past six years and will now be co-directed by Instructor Mitra Asgari.

One of the essential components of this program is that students complete a capstone experience. They can choose from (1) teaching (e.g., significant teaching as a co-instructor for a course); (2) curriculum development (e.g., developing materials for a lecture course, lecture recitations or lab course); or (3) discipline-based education research (e.g., conducting an education research projects in the context of an undergraduate course).

Students are required to find a mentor before applying to the program. The most common capstone option so far has been for students to TA for their mentor, followed by either co-teaching with their mentor or teaching a course on their own.

By Juliette Dixon, Food Policy and Sustainability Leadership Certificate student 

This blog is part of a series from the December Arizona Immersive program of the Food Policy and Sustainability Leadership Graduate Certificate Program. Students virtually toured the state, meeting with farmers, ranchers, entrepreneurs, government staff and non-profit leaders. 

Continue Reading

Faculty and students from the ASU Center for Biodiversity Outcomes and the Conservation Innovation Lab co-authorized a paper published yesterday in Frontiers in Marine Science, presenting their pilot study conducted last summer in Las Perlas Archipelago, Panama.

The publication, titled “Impacts of Whale Watching on the Behavior of Humpback Whales (Megaptera novaeangliae) in the Coast of Panama,” is a product of the ASU-Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute partnership and our collaboration with the University of San Francisco de Quito, Ecuador.

Learn more about how the project assessed how local whale watching activities were affecting the behavior of the humpback whale population.

Continue Reading

Subscribe to this weekly newsletter to stay up to date on all the news in the world of Research Development. The funding.asu.edu website is dedicated to helping you find funding and develop more competitive proposals.

As the year 2020 nears its inevitable end it’s nice to reflect back and take note of things that worked, things that didn’t work and stuff to just plain, avoid. While 2020 has produced a seemingly unmeasurable amount of “things to avoid” it also marks one year closer to deadlines for carbon neutrality.

Deadlines enforced by both human and natural forces. Human organizations = policy, regulation, laws. Nature = climate change, extreme weather, and future inability for the planet to support human life.

Whether it was the thought of impending doom, or the fear of an avoidable financial burden, a few observations ring true. One, a growing number of companies are publicly setting organizational carbon goals. Two, many of the organizations setting these goals have NO concrete plan of how to reach them. And three, efficacy of offset and the carbon market is beginning to shape up.

No doubt the first two come as little surprise. Almost daily the news reports of another massive corporation like IBM, Apple, Microsoft, Walmart, Nestle or Starbucks are capturing headline news with one huge carbon reduction goal after another. Many corporations have adjusted their perspective from viewing sustainability as a burden, to realizing it creates a competitive edge by differentiating them from their competitors. This phenomenon is being observed with municipalities as well. While it is amazing and wonderful that so much interest is being shown in sustainability, the fact remains that many of these organizations are struggling with how they will, in fact, be able to reduce their footprint to zero.

A recent collaboration between LightWorks and Luminosity Lab sought to understand what organizations had in place to meet their newly publicized goals. The project is an element of a larger portfolio of work developed by LightWorks, Digital Carbon Warehouse (DCW). The DCW: interviews ask – “what, if anything is in place to help ensure a successful transition to net zero carbon”. The team interviewed people in a variety of roles within large national and global companies from multiple industry sectors. the team learned no matter what company, industry sector or operating region an organization was based in, a resounding majority acknowledge that offsets will have a role in the future of their company’s carbon neutrality.

Now, to be fair, acknowledging that offsets will play a role and accepting them in their current state are two completely different acts that won’t be sharing the same stage.

More than half of the responses gathered from the DCW: interviews found the lack of standardization to be the #1 barrier to adoption. Standardization, or the industry wide level setting to establish a single cohesive language governing operation. Currently the market has no agreed upon set of protocols defining how carbon sequestration is measured, tracked and traced, not to mention there is still no universally accepted carbon price. Without the ability to ensure consistent, efficient reporting and provide trustworthy evidence of sequestration, or operate in a steady market, gaining corporate buy-in will be extremely difficult.

Not to fret, change is in the air. This year has ushered in unprecedented changes to conventional thinking in a myriad of realms. Carbon markets are no stranger to this trend. News of a merger between major market actors Sustainability Accounting and Standards Board (SASB) and the International Integrated Reporting Council (IIRC) in late November are strong indicators of positive change. Further, the oil and gas giants BP, in a press release this December, announced their acquisition of more than 50% of the forest trust Finite Carbon. Finite will be attached to BP’s accelerator arm with a targeted expansion of $1B in revenue to small landowners by 2030.

Successes like the SASB & IIRC merger or BP acquisition send a trend-setting messages that resonate with industry peers. As more companies take on the challenges of meeting their carbon goals, collectively we inch closer to addressing the gaps throughout the carbon market ecosystem. Universities will play a significant role in identifying transition pathways and are proving to be an influential partner to organizations of all shapes and sizes. Applying innovation, collaboration, and trust to develop frameworks and collaborations necessary to facilitate the world’s transition to a carbon free economy.

While yes, 2020 was an “interesting year”, optimistic perspectives are bringing a carbon neutral future into view. Clearly, significant, challenging and potentially painful adjustments are undoubtedly in store – it can be argued having a focus on a viable path will help to quiet the chattering chaos that envelops periods of unrest, turmoil, and change.

Over the past year, New America’s Resource Security team ­— a program dedicated to exploring the balance between natural resources and human security — and Arizona State University's Ten Across Initiative, which engages communities along the I-10 corridor on the most urgent global issues of the 21st century, have been researching the effects of climate change and talking to those directly impacted on a daily basis.

During a virtual discussion hosted by Future Tense on Dec. 2, five community leaders and journalists joined moderator, sustainability scientist Wellington “Duke” Reiter, founder and executive director of the Ten Across Initiative, to talk about what it will take to address long-term existential threats, without harming today’s economy.

Read more at ASU Now.

The Environment and Natural Resources Program (ENRP) and the Science, Technology, and Public Policy (STPP) program at Harvard Kennedy School’s Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs offer research fellowships each academic year. The online application deadline is January 18, 2021.

STPP and ENRP believe that the best scholarship and most enduring impacts from our efforts are those that represent a wide array of perspectives and backgrounds, and so diversity, inclusion, and belonging is a critical component of their mission. Fellowships are open to pre-docs and post-docs, visiting scholars, and researchers at the junior faculty level. They strongly encourage women and scholars from underrepresented communities to apply.

• Energy Innovation and Decarbonization
• Low-carbon Development in China and India
• Technological Systems and Innovation Policy
• Agriculture and Energy Policy (post-docs only)

By Douglas Lawton, PhD Candidate in ASU School of Life Sciences, December 14, 2020

After a record-breaking drought for the past two years, Australia is experiencing a resurgence in Australian Plague Locust (Chortoicetes terminifera) outbreaks throughout the eastern seaboard, but more intensely in New South Wales. The Australian Plague Locust Commission (APLC) predicts that swarms and outbreaks will likely continue into December with a moderate likelihood of region-wide outbreaks developing later into summer.

Continue Reading

Ferran Garcia-Pichel, a member of the Global Dryland Center's executive committee board, is one of many researchers volunteering to study and resore biocrust in the McDowell Sonoran Conservancy. This work was the focus of an article in the Arizona Republic, "How researchers hope to preserve and restore 'biocrust,' the desert's protective skin."

Biocrust stabilizes desert soil and protects it from erosion. "If there is no crust, nothing protects the soil. So with any amount of storm or wind, you'll get anything from sun devils to to big haboobs," Garcia-Pichel said in the article. Read more about biocrust and its importance in the Arizona Republic.

For better or worse, our environments shape every aspect of our lives, including the food we eat. In a new study, researchers from ASU and Rutgers University found that children who live in an environment with a higher prevalence of unhealthy food sources, such as convenience stores, are more likely to gain weight over time.

The paper, Evidence That Changes in Community Food Environments Lead to Changes in Children’s Weight: Results from a Longitudinal Prospective Cohort Study, was published Dec. 10 in the Journal of the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics. The abstract follows.

Continue Reading

Sustainability scientist Nadya Bliss, executive director of ASU’s Global Security Initiative, says that while security measures such as encryption and authentication have been widely adopted, security tends to be secondary to application capability. She and colleagues from other institutions are urgently calling for a profound change in the way new technologies are designed.

“Capabilities and convenience are important, but they need to be balanced with security,” said Bliss. "Technologists typically prioritize capability over security, and that means we are constantly playing catch up, trying to patch vulnerabilities when they are already in the wild and being exploited."

ASU's Office of the University Provost and Educational Outreach and Student Services (EOSS) invite you to submit a proposal to share how you are partnering with external organizations (e.g., nonprofits, corporate partners, tribal nations, municipalities, etc.) in your socially embedded research, teaching or practice to achieve positive outcomes at the local, regional, national and/or global level.

Participants will engage in a variety of informative virtual breakout sessions and interactive workshops that are designed to bring together our network, share strategies for forging meaningful and mutually beneficial partners with community partners and generate institutional dialogue about how to advance socially embedded research, teaching, student development and practices at ASU.

This year's conference theme is Planting Seeds for Partnerships and Cultivating Community Collaborations. Learn more about the conference, the presentation formats they're seeking, and the variety of topics on the agenda. Proposals will be accepted through Friday, January 8, 2021.