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View Source | February 19, 2019
It isn’t every day the humanities and sciences combine their research, but when they do something new is created and explored. Such will be the case for a new research project, “Philosophy of Sustainability Science,” which will have Arizona State University’s C. Tyler DesRoches, a senior sustainability scholar, on the team of researchers.
ASU Now | February 19, 2019
Outside of New York City, which has done the least of all U.S. cities to adapt to automobiles, Americans without cars are not able to access the economy as well as people with cars, according to ASU research in urban planning.
View Source | February 15, 2019
When the Marine Corps decided it needed to update its base in Kaneohe Bay, Hawaii, to be more resilient in the face of modern challenges and disasters, it came to Arizona State University for expertise. Some military infrastructure is built with codes and standards that are 30 years old, and base buildings can be 60 years old or more.
“They weren’t built to withstand the types of threats — increasing incidents of severe weather, cyberattacks — which weren’t present back then, or different types of advanced weaponry that can assault buildings or personnel,” said senior sustainability scientist Nathan Johnson, an assistant professor in the Polytechnic School of the Ira A. Fulton Schools of Engineering at ASU. Johnson is an expert on sustainable and resilient energy systems.
View Source | February 14, 2019
The U.S. Chamber of Commerce Foundation has announced the growth of its multistakeholder initiative, Beyond 34: Recycling and Recovery for a New Economy. The Rob and Melani Walton Sustainability Solutions Service at Arizona State University has been selected as a technical partner for the project, providing analysis and the development of tools to help communities increase and improve their recycling efforts.
View Source | February 14, 2019
Climate change is complicating land conservation practices because of how it alters land over time. Among other things, climate change is raising new questions about perpetual conservation easements — a critical land preservation tool relied upon by government agencies and nonprofit land trusts. A six-author team that conducted an unprecedented analysis of the structuring of conservation easements in the face of rapid climate change has been awarded the 2019 Morrison Prize, an honor established in 2015 and administered through the program on Law and Sustainability at the Sandra Day O’Connor College of Law at Arizona State University.
View Source | February 12, 2019
Ray Quay, a senior sustainability scientist in the Julie Ann Wrigley Global Institute of Sustainability at Arizona State University, was awarded the 2019 William R. and June Dale Prize for Excellence in Urban and Regional Planning. This year's award theme was "From Blueprint to Resilience: Planning when Change is the Norm," and Quay was the practitioner prize winner in honor of his decades of work in the arena of urban and regional planning for a rapidly-changing world.
Quay is also the director of stakeholder relations and a research professional for ASU's Decision Center for a Desert City. Read more about his work on the prize website.
View Source | February 8, 2019
Osvaldo Sala, an ecologist and distinguished sustainability scientist in the Julie Ann Wrigley Global Institute of Sustainability, was named a Regents' Professor at Arizona State University. To be awarded the distinction, scholars must be full professors, with outstanding achievements in their fields, who are nationally and internationally recognized by their peers.
Sala has spent more than 35 years studying the driest places on Earth: the Patagonian steppe, the annual grasslands of California, the Kalahari in southern Africa, the Loess Plateau in China and the Chihuahuan Desert in New Mexico. His publications are among the most cited in the fields of ecology, sustainability and biology. He has more than 200 publications and 40,000 citations. Sala is also the founding director of the Global Drylands Center.
View Source | February 8, 2019
Arizona State University Professor Donald L. Fixico, a distinguished sustainability scientist in the Julie Ann Wrigley Global Institute of Sustainability, was named a Regent's Professor for his work as a historian, particularly of American Indian cultures.
Bryan McKinley Jones Brayboy, a President’s Professor, director of the Center for Indian Education and ASU’s special adviser to the president on American Indian affairs, was quick to sing Fixico's praises.
ASU Now | February 8, 2019
You could say Stewart Fotheringham, a distinguished sustainability scientist in the Julie Ann Wrigley Global Institute of Sustainability, is where he is now because of a dogged preoccupation with that perennial question of the human condition: Why?
“When I look at a map of disease rates across the country, for example, and I see there are clusters of high rates over here and low rates over here, what I want to know is why? What's causing that?” he said.
February 8, 2019
The public lecture Oxford Professor Jonathan Bate delivered Tuesday night at Changing Hands Bookstore in Phoenix, cheekily titled "The End of the World As We Know It," made a connection between sustainability and the humanities.
“Past, present, future — a narrative structure,” Bate said. “One of my key arguments … about sustainability is that it needs the humanities because humanities give us narratives.”
February 7, 2019
ASU Project Cities is proud to announce our 2019-2020 Community Partner: The City of Peoria!
Peoria is home to more than 171,000 residents and was ranked the number one place to live in Arizona by Money Magazine. With numerous recreational attractions, the city is well known as a family-oriented, active community with an exceptional quality of life. The city has demonstrated a strong commitment to sustainability, as evidenced by its directive to incorporate LEED building design standards, a council-adopted Sustainability Action Plan, and a dedicated full-time staff person to manage and coordinate organization-wide sustainability initiatives.
February 6, 2019
In latest episode of FutureCities podcast, "Heat and Thermal Comfort," host Stephen Elser interviewed Yuliya Dzyuban, Arizona State University School of Sustainability PhD student and Urban Resilience to Extremes Sustainability Research Network fellow, about her research involving extreme heat and the ways that people perceive and cope with that heat.
View Source | February 6, 2019
In preparation for its annual meeting, the American Association of Geographers has named its 2019 Fellows. Included in this year’s honors are two from Arizona State University’s School of Geographical Sciences and Urban Planning: sustainability scientists Anthony Brazel and Martin Pasqualetti.
In 2018, the American Association of Geographers created the Fellows to recognize geographers who have made significant contributions to advancing the field of geography. Beyond the recognition, those selected as Fellows serve the AAG in creating and contributing to key initiatives, advising on strategic directions and mentoring early and mid-career faculty.
January 30, 2019
This month Marco Janssen, a professor in the School of Sustainability and director of the Center for Behavior, Institutions and the Environment, started his two-year term as president of the International Association for the Study of the Commons. Founded in 1989, the IASC is devoted to bringing together multi-disciplinary researchers, practitioners and policymakers for the purpose of improving governance and management, advancing understanding and creating sustainable solutions for the commons, common-pool resources or any other form of shared resource.
The founding president of the IASC, the late Elinor Ostrom, won the 2009 Nobel Prize in Economic Sciences for her analysis of economic governance, especially the commons. The study of the commons has extended beyond the traditional natural resources to applications in digital environments, health, urban space and space exploration.
View Source | January 28, 2019
ASU Now asked several Arizona State University professors about how our relationships with each other, the world around us and ourselves can make us happy. One faculty member they interviewed was Scott Cloutier, assistant professor in the School of Sustainability.
At ASU, Cloutier leads the Sustainable Neighborhoods for Happiness project and has developed the “Sustainability Through Happiness Index,” a tool that allows planners to engage with neighborhood residents and collaborate to better understand and implement changes that will create happy places to live.
January 25, 2019
Amanda Ellis, executive director of Hawaii and Asia Pacific in the Julie Ann Wrigley Global Institute of Sustainability at Arizona State University, was part of a panel discussion at the 2019 World Economic Forum Annual Meeting held in Davos, Switzerland. In the discussion, titled “Women Leaders and the SDGs – How can women achieve the U.N. Sustainable Development Goals?,” Ellis showcased the WE Empower U.N. SDG Challenge, a program that celebrates extraordinary women entrepreneurs advancing the U.N. Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).
Photo: Ellis (third from left) poses with the other panel speakers Márcia Balisciano, head of sustainability at RELX Group and board member of the Ban Ki-Moon Centre for Global Citizens; Sanjeev Khagram, dean of Thunderbird School of Global Management; and Alyse Nelson, president and CEO of Vital Voices Global Partnership.
January 16, 2019
At Arizona State University, successful results often come from collaborative action, especially when making events more eco-friendly. Thanks to ASU students and the work of two ASU sustainability leaders, Colin Tetreault and Lesley Michalegko, the NCAA Women’s Collegiate Triathlon National Championships that took place at Tempe Town Lake on November 4, 2018, was a more sustainable endeavor.
Tetreault is an instructor in the School of Sustainability and Michalegko is a program manager for University Sustainability Practices. Through mutual effort and the support of students, they made the NCAA triathlon a place where functionality met sustainability. They found ways to reduce waste, save money, and increase the fan and competitor experience while simultaneously driving revenue.
View Source | January 16, 2019
Sarra Tekola, a PhD student in the School of Sustainability who is a first-generation college student, is a recent awardee of the distinguished Ford Foundation Fellowship. The Ford Foundation awards research-funding fellowships to both predoctoral and postdoctoral researchers.
Tekola took advantage of ASU’s support of Ford Fellowship applicants via the Graduate College's Distinguished Graduate Fellowships Initiative, developed in partnership with the Office of National Scholarship Advisement at Barrett. She attended information sessions and writing workshops, in addition to other rigorous pursuits in the process of strategically writing, reviewing and revising — and then redoing the whole process over again and again, until her Ford application was perfect.
January 15, 2019
C. Tyler DesRoches, an Assistant Professor in the School of Sustainability, is part of a research team that recently won a €10,000 (approximately $11,400 grant) from the Helsinki Institute of Sustainability Science to develop a new research project entitled “Philosophy of Sustainability Science.” The primary purpose of this project will be to develop a systematic and philosophically sophisticated understanding of sustainability science, legitimize it as a field of science and propose effective strategies for its development.
DesRoches explained that a philosophy of sustainability science will answer many questions, including: “What, if anything, is distinctive about sustainability science? What makes sustainability science different from other scientific practices? What is the role of values, particularly ethical values, in sustainability science? Is ethics essential to sustainability science? Finally, sustainability scientists are keen to promote interdisciplinarity, but is scientific integration always a good thing? What conditions must be satisfied for successful interdisciplinary exchange?”
View Source | January 11, 2019
On Thursday night at the Barrett & O'Connor Center in Washington, D.C., Arizona State University hosted a panel that discussed how society can transition to a carbon economy — as in, pulling carbon from the air and making money from it in an effort to fight climate change.
A financier, a businessman, a policy expert and the inventor of a carbon-capture machine discussed the opportunities and obstacles involved in turning waste into capital at “Hacking for Carbon: Building an Innovation Pipeline for the New Carbon Economy.”
Panelist Klaus Lackner, a senior sustainability scientist in the Julie Anne Wrigley Global Institute of Sustainability, has been thinking about how to manage carbon since the 1990s.
