Sustainability News

By employing cyanobacteria – a photosynthesis-happy bug – Senior Sustainability Scientist Taylor Weiss is making environmentally-friendly bioplastics that dissolve in a matter of months.

Weiss achieves this by creating a symbiotic partnership between two bacteria, each specializing in a specific task. He recently joined ASU’s Polytechnic campus, where he is scaling up the process at the Arizona Center for Algae Technology and Innovation.

"Bringing all these elements together and in real-world conditions at large scales needs to be done," Weiss said. "Fortunately, we have a one-of-a-kind academic test bed facility here at AzCATI that is uniquely suited to answer the remaining production questions and push development of the technology."

School of Sustainability Associate Professor Hallie Eakin is the lead author of a new article in the Ecology and Society journal. The article, titled "Transforming governance in telecoupled food systems," uses case studies to analyze how the linking of food systems around the world affects their governance and the actors within them.

The authors conclude that telecoupling has the potential to positively change the governance of food systems. This may alleviate the conflict generated among actors within food systems who have opposing values and interests.

One of the most pressing global challenges for sustainable development in the era of the Anthropocene is freshwater management. Water is a fundamental human necessity and essential to improve social equity, promote broad economic development and protect the functioning of the earth system.

That’s why ASU’s Decision Center for a Desert City collaborated with scientists, managers, policymakers and other stakeholders in Pernambuco, Brazil – to build local capacity to manage existing and future water resources efficiently, sustainably and equitably. Together, the team developed modeling tools and a decision support system that prepares users for whatever water scenarios come their way.

In December 2017, two years after the Paris climate agreement was signed, the One Planet summit explored ways to meet climate goals without the support of the United States government.

On that note,  Distinguished Sustainability Fellow Sir Crispin Tickell – an ASU Wrigley Institute board member – gave ASU Now his prescription for the denial of climate change science in the U.S.

"We need a bit of political leadership. We had it originally in Britain from Margaret Thatcher, with whom I used to work quite closely," Tickell said. "I think politicians should take a grip and explain clearly to people in language they can understand what is happening and what has to be done about it, and what it will be necessary to do if nothing is done sooner rather than later."

In a December 2017 interview with Juli Staiano, Chief Philanthropy Officer for the American Association for the Advancement of Science, ASU Wrigley Institute board member Robert Litterman gave his reasons for giving back to the field.

"To me, science has always been the sort of North Star. It’s the facts in which we ground our behavior," Litterman told Staiano. "And so, when I see it come under attack and see the damage that that does – particularly in the context of climate – to rational decision making, I feel like I need to support the institution that represents the scientific community. It’s pretty simple."

Coming from a risk management background, Litterman is passionate about the topic of climate risk.

"I think this problem – with respect to climate – is clearly driven by economic interests of those who would be negatively impacted by an appropriate response," Litterman said. "It’s a risk management problem. Everyone understands what we need to do is to price the risk appropriately."

With the aim of finding better solutions to today's food-related challenges, Kelly and Brian Swette have made a major gift to establish the Swette Center for Sustainable Food Systems at Arizona State University.

The new center, housed within the School of Sustainability, will tackle food systems from a holistic standpoint, taking into consideration water and energy use, carbon footprint and nutrition – all with an emphasis on efficiency across the global supply chain. It will also offer the nation’s first degree in Sustainable Food Systems.

Explaining that the new center will accelerate and expand current efforts, Dean Christopher Boone said, "By combining ASU’s assets as a research powerhouse with the entrepreneurial spirit of our students and the expertise from external partners, these sustainable food systems solutions will have profound and positive implications for livelihoods, human health and ecosystem integrity."

Brian is a member of the Board of Directors of the Julie Ann Wrigley Global Institute of Sustainability at ASU, as well as an alumnus of the university. In 2012, he and Kelly launched Sweet Earth Natural Foods – a company that sells plant-based, natural and organic fare.

Nearly 100 hydropower dams are planned for construction along the Mekong River in Southeast Asia. While they are expected to provide clean energy to countries in the region, the dams may also offset natural river patterns if not managed properly.

In a December 2017 issue of Science magazine, Senior Sustainability Scientist John Sabo and his collaborators propose a solution.

“We have figured out the relationship between river flows and fish catch, and we have developed an algorithm for dam operators to use that will increase fish harvests and still generate power,” Sabo says. “Dams are going to be built no matter how much fuss we make; our research shows how we can be more strategic about the buildout and operations of these dams in the Mekong.”

ASU Project Cities held its first semester-end project showcase with the city of Apache Junction at the university's Memorial Union on November 29, 2017.

Professors and students from multiple campuses presented on the findings of seven courses, during which extensive time was spent researching and creating recommendations for the city that straddles Maricopa and Pinal counties. Roughly 150 people attended the showcase, including members of the Apache Junction government and community, ASU faculty, and graduate and undergraduate students.

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ASU's Walton Sustainability Solutions Initiatives is among the groups working to expand research and resources for an exhibit called Water/Ways.

The exhibit is part of the Smithsonian’s Think Water Initiative, which raises awareness of water as a critical resource for life through exhibitions, educational resources and public programs. Through the Smithsonian's Museum on Main Street program, Water/Ways will be transported to 12 rural communities around Arizona starting in 2018.

“This is another opportunity to educate the public about the challenges we face, of the importance of water and to try and help make us more intelligent managers of the resources in our world that support our lives,” says Senior Sustainability Scholar Paul Hirt, state scholar for the project. “Just explaining to people that there is an imbalance between the supply and demand is an important first step in solving it.”

To help organizations interested in eco-friendly purchasing, ASU's Sustainable Purchasing Research Initiative is partnering with the Environmental Protection Agency on sustainablepurchasing.issuelab.org.

The website features a searchable database of research articles related to the concept of “servicizing,” which promotes a more environmentally responsible way for businesses, nonprofits, governments and individuals to meet their purchasing needs.

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The 23rd Conference of the Parties – a U.N. climate conference in Bonn, Germany – attracted dignitaries from around the world. Luckily, those at home had School of Sustainability student Julia Colbert to fill them in.

Colbert, a student worker with the Walton Sustainability Solutions Initiatives, shared her video coverage of COP23 on YouTube. On top of that, she connected with fourth-to-twelfth-grade classrooms throughout the country via Facetime or Skype, teaching conference-related lessons like “how to negotiate.”

"It was inspiring to see how much they really wanted to learn,” said Colbert. “It made me hopeful that this next generation will be the change-makers that truly make a difference in the fight against climate change."

Small acts of kindness – something as simple as lending a neighbor a cup of sugar – not only bind us together, but are critical to our survival as a species. That's according to Senior Sustainability Scientist Amber Wutich, an anthropology professor and director of ASU's Center for Global Health.

"Sharing is so important, that in most cultures it has its own special vocabulary and rituals," Wutich explains in a November 2017 KEDtalk. "Sharing helps families survive, and it's a core part of people's identity that defines their place in their communities. That's why anthropologists like me have studied how humans share in cultures in every part of the world."

Ryan Johnson, Executive Director of Sustainability Education and Training for ASU's School of Sustainability, has been appointed as a member of the Global Reporting Initiative Stakeholder Council for a term beginning January 2018. Johnson is also a student in the Master of Sustainability Leadership program at ASU.

GRI is an independent international organization that has pioneered sustainability reporting since 1997. The initiative helps businesses and governments worldwide understand and communicate their impact on critical sustainability issues such as climate change, human rights, governance and social well-being.

The GRI Stakeholder Council is the formal stakeholder policy forum within the GRI governance structure. The council's key governance functions include appointing Board members and deliberating on issues of strategic importance to GRI.

The risk of things like skin cancer, extinction of sensitive amphibians and degradation of outdoor buildings is now lower, thanks to the fact that the hole in our ozone layer – which protects Earth from the Sun’s ultraviolet radiation – has shrunk.

Satellite measurements indicate that the ozone hole is about 1 million miles smaller than when measured a year ago, a positive trend that NASA says can be explained by an unstable and warmer Antarctic vortex. Senior Sustainability Scientist Kevin Gurney is heartened by this news, which suggests that other negative trends can also be reversed.

With regard to influencing the direction of climate change, Gurney says, "It suggests more than a possibility — it suggests that we can achieve the solution to a large global environmental problem."

Carbon-dioxide removal could be a trillion-dollar enterprise because it not only slows the rise in CO₂ but reverses it.

Many companies are vying to prove that carbon removal is feasible, but also owe their origins to the ideas of a physicist and sustainability scientist named Klaus Lackner, who now works at Arizona State University.

Featured in The New Yorker, this article chronicles the journey that led Klaus to found the Center for Negative Carbon Emissions.

Shirley-Ann Augustin-Behravesh, a lecturer with the School of Sustainability, won the Decision Sciences Institute's conference paper competition for her outstanding thesis research paper titled "Uncovering Sustainable Business Practice Bundles."

Augustin-Behravesh's effort to bring together both the School of Sustainability and W. P. Carey School of Business allowed her to produce a paper that demonstrates how decision landscapes for businesses can be rooted in sustainability.

A Thought Leader Series Piece

by Alan AtKisson

When it comes to sustainability as it is practiced today, I helped get a number of things started, from the use of sustainability indicators, to the concept of training “sustainability change agents," to the search for measures of our planet’s ecological boundaries, to weaving the concept of sustainability into the practice of developing the “Blue Economy” – the economy of our oceans and seas.

By making this statement, I do not mean to imply that I take credit for those things — far from it. The emphasis is on “helped." These were processes that would have happened anyway, no doubt. I was just lucky enough to be around in their early, generative moments, and to lend a hand.

Don’t worry: the main purpose of this short article is not to reminisce, as you will see, but to look ahead and reflect on what the sustainability movement needs going forward. But sometimes, to see the way ahead clearly, we have to look back.

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At the first U.N. climate meeting since President Trump announced the withdrawal of the U.S. from the Paris agreement, countries came together to iron out some details – like rules for how carbon emissions will be measured and how to pay for these efforts.

Called COP23, the meeting took place in Bonn, Germany in November 2017, and School of Sustainability Professor Sonja Klinsky provided advance insight.

“We are still part of the Paris agreement. If the United States wants to pull out of the accord, it will have to file this in writing in November 2019,” Klinsky told ASU Now. "Other countries’ perceptions of the willingness of the U.S. to be a cooperative global actor generally may change how effective it is at promoting its own interests. It is a distinct possibility that the U.S. will have less influence in this arena than it had previously; however, it is too early to say whether or not this has happened."

A multi-disciplinary team from Arizona State University, U.S. Geological Survey, New Mexico State University, University of Arizona and Utah State University will carry out research to inform the management of Department of Defense drylands in the western U.S. The newly-funded proposal will investigate the interactive effects of climate change and disturbance on vegetation communities and ecosystem processes across three large deserts of the western U.S.

Researchers will assess the vulnerability of vegetation and ecosystem processes to drought and disturbance with a set of factorial field experiments aimed at isolating key drivers of change under drought conditions predicted by climate models. They will combine experimental results with existing long-term climate and vegetation data collected in actively-managed and paired-protected areas to quantitatively model and scale vegetation sensitivity to different climate drivers in relation to disturbance history. Importantly, this allows for frameworks of understanding and planning at spatiotemporal scales not possible with on-the-ground or site-specific measurements alone.

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"We've seen a strong business case for the circular economy transitions we've made at Google," Sustainability Lead Kate Brandt told an audience at her November 2017 Wrigley Lecture.

Titled "Google: Searching for a Circular Transition," Brandt's lecture detailed how the tech giant is working to embed circular economy principles into its infrastructure, operations and culture. She pointed to numerous wins, including using machine learning to avoid 1.5 million pounds of food waste last year and increase efficiency in an already highly-efficient data center by 40 percent.

Google is among the Global Partners of the Ellen MacArthur Foundation, an organization Brandt referenced throughout her lecture for its exemplary work. ASU joined the foundation's Circular Economy 100 program as a pioneer university in 2016, and the ASU Wrigley Institute is developing an ‘Introduction to Circular Economy’ course through that partnership.

Brandt also met with School of Sustainability students, faculty and staff during her visit to ASU. She remarked at how impressed and heartened she was by the university's sustainability efforts.