Sustainability News

Furthering ASU's commitment to translating knowledge in action, its Center for Biodiversity Outcomes joined three powerful international partnerships over the summer of 2016.

The center's new partners include names you might recognize: the World Business Council for Sustainable Development, the International Union for the Conservation of Nature's Red List and Conservation International.

These partnerships respectively seek to promote sustainable development through the global business community, devise strategies for species conservation and biodiversity decision-making, and expand conservation science and training to the next generation of conservation leaders – aims that will put ASU's wealth of sustainability research and expertise to good use.

There are three factors that promote happiness where we live, say School of Sustainability Professor Scott Cloutier and his colleague Deirdre Pfeiffer. In a paper published in the Journal of the American Planning Association, they name these factors as access to open and green space, environmental design that promotes social interaction, and places that are safe and secure.

Cloutier and Pfeiffer conceived of the study after observing urban planning focused solely on improved physical health, leaving  mental and emotional health by the wayside. Now, the pair suggest strategies planners can use to measure all three “happiness” factors, and evaluate the extent to which their proposals would promote better health overall.

The researchers even developed a tool called the “Sustainability through Happiness Framework” that allows planners to collaborate with neighborhood residents on the creation of places where they'll be happy to live.

As the National Park Service marked its centennial in August 2016, the federal agency considered its twin mandates of preserving the most beautiful and historic sites in the country while ensuring that everyone gets an opportunity to see them. How can it accommodate growing numbers of visitors in a sustainable way?

Thankfully, the research of ASU sustainability experts like Megha Budruk, Dave White and Paul Hirt can help NPS better understand the natural systems it protects. These scientists – along with other faculty and students – have studied a range of questions including visitor use, the role of technology in saving the parks and the changing nature of interpretation.

The "Museum on Main Street," conceived by the Smithsonian Institution, brings exciting exhibits to small towns throughout the United States. Among these exhibits is WaterSim, an interactive water management tool developed by researchers at ASU's Decision Center for a Desert City.

According to School of Sustainability Dean Chris Boone, “WaterSim America is a great platform to educate the broader public on what they can do as individuals and groups to manage water in ways that lead to positive change.”

WaterSim achieves this by simulating the impacts of factors like population growth and drought on a given state's water supply and demand. Users then respond to challenges by selecting policies that steady their state’s water system.

As biodiversity is depleted, ASU oceanographer Leah Gerber – director of the Center for Biodiversity Outcomes – guides a United Nations panel that helps policy makers navigate scientific literature on the topic.

Gerber was named coordinating lead author of the United Nations' Intergovernmental Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services, a panel of scientists who will review the massive body of scientific literature around biodiversity and ecosystem services. The panel will organize the combined knowledge into a report that is both relevant and accessible to those who make decisions that impact plant and animal life.

The first authors’ meeting took place in Bonn, Germany, in August of 2016.

ASU researchers are working on a range of long-term solutions to beat the Phoenix heat. Among them are members of the Urban Resilience to Extremes Sustainability Research Network, like sustainability scientists Nancy Grimm and Chuck Redman.

According to Redman, solutions to challenges like heat need to come from a variety of places. He points to landscaping, water use and green roofs as opportunities for improved cooling. Grimm stresses the need to strengthen power infrastructure, our first line of defense against the summer heat. If temperatures trend upward toward 130 degrees, she says, it becomes even more crucial that our infrastructure can withstand both an increased demand for cooling and the heat itself.

When asked to design a program on renewable energy and sustainability to be presented in Kosovo – a country that relies on two coal-fueled power plants – the School of Sustainability's Ryan Johnson gladly accepted.

Johnson, who directs the school's professional training and custom sustainability education efforts, then approached geographer Martin Pasqualetti and electrical engineer Ron Roedel because of their expertise in renewable energy, as well as with a similar program in the Middle East.

After studying Kosovo's great solar potential, the two professors presented their insights at a two-week seminar beginning in May 2016. Each day was split between presentations by Pasqualetti – a sustainability scientist who focused on the social aspects of transitioning to a new energy source – and Roedel, who focused on the technical aspects of renewable energy. Together, they demonstrated the value of renewable energy and interdisciplinary collaboration.

Developed economies have historically attributed their growth and productivity to urbanization. But in the developing world, urbanization is often associated with negative outcomes like poverty and environmental degradation, says Senior Sustainability Scientist José Lobo.

In a May 2016 contribution to UGEC Viewpoints – a blog of the Urbanization and Global Environmental Change program, hosted by the ASU Wrigley Institute – Lobo considers how urban planning can be implemented to improve the slums of the developing world. He writes that traditional forms of urban planning can have tragic consequences, like evictions and relocations, and points to data collection and community engagement as means to sustainability.

Lobo, who co-leads the Slums, Neighborhoods and Human Development Cities project, also expressed his hope for slums in this January 2016 article, which appeared in ASU Now.

The average American suburb faces many sustainability challenges, including low-density and auto-centric development. But according to Senior Sustainability Scholar Grady Gammage, Jr., suburban cities are also a source of promise.

In his latest book, "The Future of the Suburban City," Gammage takes a fresh look at what it means to be sustainable. He shows that suburbs have a few advantages in an era of climate change, and provides examples of cities that are already making strides toward increased resilience. With these examples, he demonstrates the power of collective action to address the challenges of geography through public policy.

The book, developed with support from the Julie Ann Wrigley Global Institute of Sustainability, serves as a realistic yet hopeful story of Phoenix and shows what is possible for any suburban city.

When a massive locust outbreak struck Argentina in 2016, Senior Sustainability Scientist Arianne Cease flew to the scene to offer her expertise.

Cease, a professor in the School of Sustainability, has studied locusts around the world. She and her lab manager arrived to swarms more than four miles long and two miles high – the worst Argentina had seen in 60 years.

After assessing the situation and sharing her research, Cease hosted a two-day workshop. Here, she described to university researchers and government officials how to address locust outbreaks using a systems approach.

With the aim of creating a rapid-response team to address situations like the one in Argentina, Cease is building a Global Locust Consortium. She hopes to host the initial meeting by early 2017.

In a Christian Science Monitor contribution titled "Water management is a wicked problem, but not an unsolvable one," School of Sustainability alumnus Christa Brelsford untangles the web of water supply and demand.

Brelsford, a postdoctoral fellow of the Arizona State University-Santa Fe Institute Center for Biosocial Complex Systems, discusses the reality of water in the West, writing "There is no new water to allocate, and so the water management task now is to make the best possible use of the water resources that are available."

She goes on to say that water management – which lies at the intersection of economic, legal, political, hydrological, climatological, ecological, agricultural and engineered systems – can result in solutions when a complex systems perspective is applied.

Imagine a village that boasts an open meadow with tall grasses accessible to all.

A local farming family has grazed sheep there for years without issue. But when the rest of the town’s sheep farmers discover its lush pastures, it becomes over-grazed and unable to feed anyone’s sheep.

The commons – common-pool resources like the meadow – are no stranger to conflict and debate. But as two sustainability scientists at Arizona State University explain in the latest edition of their book, Sustaining the Commons, they are also not without solutions.

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Tempe, AZ (June 30, 2016) – The U.S. Department of Defense Office of Economic Adjustment awarded $941,469 to Arizona State University and the City of Surprise to fund the creation of the Arizona Military Energy Land Use Plan (AME-UP). In partnership with the City of Surprise, ASU is working hand-in-hand with multiple stakeholders and military installations to create interactive community planning and web tools for stakeholder development of renewable energy projects.

The AME-UP project will last the duration of 20 months, ending December 2017, and will be broken up into four phases: data collection, outreach, tool development and testing/verifying. The two outcomes of the project will be a best practices plan for assessment of existing and planned energy projects and an online interactive web-mapping tool that can be used by city and community planners, military personnel, renewable energy developers and other stakeholders.

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Manjyot Bhan – a native of Mumbai, India – graduated from the School of Sustainability with a Master of Science in 2010. She also earned a PhD in Public Administration, with a focus on Environmental Policy, from American University in 2015.

Bhan is currently a Policy and Business Fellow at a think-tank called the Center for Climate and Energy Solutions (C2ES) – formerly the Pew Center on Global Climate Change – in Arlington, Virginia.

Why did you choose ASU's School of Sustainability?

During an environmental economics undergraduate class at St. Xavier’s College in Mumbai, I realized all our assumptions in textbook economics and of the marketplace were made based on private costs – without accounting for other costs such as environmental, social and health damages to society. My desire to pursue the field of sustainability came out of a classroom experience.

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Throughout the 1970s, the “Golden Age” of environmental law, Congress developed some of the most influential and enduring legislation still effectual in environmental policy today.

In a two-week course this fall, ASU students will have the opportunity to earn credit while getting first-hand insight from two of the “Golden Age” influencers themselves, Leon G. Billings and Thomas C. Jorling – the two senior staff members who led the Senate environment subcommittee during the 1970s.

Students will review key environmental legislation, such as the Clean Air Act, the Clean Water Act and Superfund. But more than just the laws themselves, students will learn about the behind-the-scenes political inner workings that made consensus possible, and will assess both the formal and multidimensional components of that process.

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For the fourth year in a row, the School of Sustainability sponsored a study abroad excursion to Morocco, where Arizona State University students studied the complexities of sustainable development.

Senior Sustainability Scientist Mary Jane Parmentier – who served as a member of the Peace Corps in Morocco in the 1980s and has maintained contacts there – led the program.  Students learned about the differing priorities among the unique cultures in this North African nation, then digested that knowledge during nightly meetings.

The study abroad program has evolved from year to year, becoming more culturally immersive and focused on evaluating sustainability solutions that are being implemented in host countries. For more updates from this excursion and others, visit the Global Sustainability Studies Program's blog.

According to Senior Sustainability Scientist Joan McGregor, Aldo Leopold – known as the father of wildlife management – is the person with whom any discussion about sustainability should start.

"He really was, at least in the West, one of the springboards for environmental ethics," she says.

To explore how modern concepts of sustainability relate to Leopold's work, ASU hosted its third Extending the Land Ethic Summer Institute in June of 2016. The four-week event combined classroom discussions with field trips to places like Arcosanti, Grand Canyon National Park and Homolovi State Park.

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On June 10, School of Sustainability alumni in the Washington, D.C. area connected and caught up over dinner at Ardeo+Bardeo.

The fantastic evening, hosted by the School of Sustainability Alumni Association, was attended by Dean Chris Boone and eight sustainability grads, including Manjyot Bhan, MS '10; Chris Harto, MS '09; Debbie Namugayi, MA '14; Becky Schwartz, BA '10; Mike Herod, EMSL '15; Brian McCollow, BA '13; Alex Rogers, MSUS '15; and Robert Horner, MS '10.

To receive invites to future events, click here to make sure your information is up-to-date and keep an eye on your email.

Lexie Krechel graduated from the School of Sustainability in 2013 with a Bachelor of Arts degree in the Society and Sustainability track.

Krechel also earned a Minor in Social Work along with a Certificate in Public Administration and Management. She currently works as the Community Outreach Coordinator for the Tempe Community Action Agency.

Tell us about your current job and how it is related to sustainability.

I found my current position at Tempe Community Action Agency by looking on nonprofit job boards. I knew that I wanted to stay in the nonprofit world, but just needed to find the right organization. I decided to pursue a position at TCAA because I wanted to be able to see the impact that my work was having on the community.

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According to an Arizona State University study led by Senior Sustainability Scientist Kevin Gurney, federal data on power-plant carbon dioxide emissions is significantly flawed.

Power plants are responsible for roughly 40 percent of carbon dioxide emissions nationwide. Inaccurate data concerning these emissions undermines the federal Clean Power Plan, which is designed to strengthen the clean-energy trend by setting a national limit on the carbon pollution produced by power plants.

“This policy relies on the achievement of state-level CO2 emission-rate targets,” write the study's authors. “When examined at the state level, we find that one-third of the states have differences that exceed 10 percent of their assigned reduction amount. Such levels of uncertainty raise concerns about the ability of individual states to accurately quantify emission rates in order to meet the regulatory targets.”