Phoenix heat was the topic of discussion in the latest episode of PBS' 'Weathered', a show that helps explain the most common natural disasters, what causes them, how they’re changing, and what we can do to prepare. This episode features ASU researchers and HUE affiliates Mikhail Chester, Ariane Middel and David Hondula.
"Perhaps no place in the United States more clearly illustrates the dangers of global warming than Phoenix, Arizona. 2020 was their hottest year on record, with 53 days reaching at least 110 degrees F. And heat-related deaths there have more than doubled over the last 5 years. But while these trends are truly disturbing, there is hope. Because of its extreme circumstances, Phoenix has been forced to explore innovative solutions and is learning how to adapt urban life to hotter and hotter temperatures.
In this episode of Weathered, we delve into the latest science of the “urban heat island” effect, learn about the looming threat of a potential “Katina-like event” that threatens their electrical grid, and explore the gamut of options being pursued by scientists and activists to make life safer and more livable in America’s hottest city."
Ariane Middel, a HUE partner and Assistant Professor at the School of Arts, Media and Engineering (AME) and School of Computing, Informatics, and Decision Systems Engineering (CIDSE), has been featured in National Geographic Magazine. Middel shares the urban form's significant contribution to shade and thermal comfort.
Early this Spring, ASU’s Sustainable Cities Network (SCN) Steering Committee appointed new city leadership to help guide the collaborative community network into the next year. Serving as the new chair and co-chairs are Braden Kay, Sustainability Director at the City of Tempe (Chair), and Fatima Luna, Environmental and Sustainability Advisor at the City of Tucson and Tim Conner, Manager of Environmental Initiatives at the City of Scottsdale (co-chairs).
Over the past decade, Bonnie Richardson has served an extensive term as SCN chair. Through her leadership, Bonnie is responsible for helping SCN grow to encompass communities statewide, as well as adapt to the many sustainability-related changes and issues facing cities and towns on a daily basis. Bonnie says that SCN has been “the touchstone for so many of the advances in sustainable planning and building in our cities over the last decade.”
On April 14, 2021, ASU Project Cities hosted its spring virtual student showcase for the City of Peoria student projects. Students, ASU staff, and Peoria staff gathered to learn about this semester’s student findings and answer additional questions. Following the presentations, participants split into virtual poster Q/A sessions to talk directly with the students and ask additional questions.
A video recording of the event will be posted to our YouTube channel, subscribe here!
In honor of International Women's Day and Women's History Month, the Julie Ann Wrigley Global Futures Laboratory, Educational Outreach and Student Services, and the ASU SDG5 Coalition are curating a series of events that showcase ASU’s partnerships advancing Sustainable Development Goal 5: Gender Equality and the Empowerment of Women and Girls.
Join us on International Women's Day, March 8th at 11am MST (6pm GMT/1pm EST) for the first event of the series. We will launch the WE Empower UN SDG Challenge 2021 and examine the barriers women face with World Bank Women, Business, and the Law. To learn how ASU is combatting these challenges by partnering with global organizations on SDG5 initiatives, join us to hear from Inter-Parliamentary Union Secretary General, Martin Chungong, ASU's Inaugural SDG5 Male Champion for Change.
“It’s important to do it, to express your ideas. For us, it was really important to do it in a sustainable way.”
Andrea De la Piedra & Mia Perdomo - Co-Founders of Aequales, Latin America
2020 WE Empower Finalist, Latin America & the Caribbean
Ensuring gender equality in today’s world is one of the most fundamental endeavors in obtaining a more equitable, just, and sustainable society. Co-founders Andrea De la Piedra and Mia Perdomo are leading the fight to ensure gender equality through Aequales, a company that brings tools to organizations for closing gender gaps through measurement technology and consultancy services. WE Empower intern, Sidney McKee, interviewed De la Piedra and expands upon how Aequales is furthering gender equality not only in Peru, Colombia, and Mexico but also across the globe.
We finally made it… although the trials and tribulations of 2020 are still waning, 2021 has the potential to be a great year. With most people and companies fully adapting to work-from-home and the vaccine being slowly spread throughout the globe, this year will give our world a chance to focus more on the paramount issues that have been put on the back-burner, like climate change.
With the US rejoining the Paris Accords, there is now more room for teamwork and collaboration among global powers (and emitters), which will undoubtedly lead to greater innovation in the realm of sustainability. As America returns to the fight in a big way, the conversation surrounding climate change has quickly shifted. All across news outlets, there is chatter of how President Biden is directing billions of dollars to combat global warming, and how the Pentagon is now declaring climate change a national security threat. This is a precedence that will create a more climate-conscious union and its effects are already trickling throughout the country. As a result, the impetus of society’s shift to net-zero is stronger than ever. Not only is the new administration taking this issue more seriously than it has in the past but also is calling for governments and global institutions to come together and create real solutions. This push is unprecedented, and, with the exponential advent of technology, there are ample opportunities for groundbreaking ideas to pave the path to a brighter future.
Enter the Digital Carbon Warehouse (DCW)... The DCW was initiated by Lightworks last year. To remind the audience, the DCW is a block chain EMEA LEED platform that will give individuals and businesses an easy way to track their carbon output and link that to decisions to offset their emissions accordingly. Radical transparency delivered through track and trace smart systems will present pathways to climate-consciousness, achieve corporate carbon agendas, and generate robust local economies. Realized co-benefits to provide additional incentives is an important step to make the platform successful. It is crucial for people to understand not only the value proposition for the greater good but also how this brings value to them individually. The current hypothesized co-benefits related to circular economy are still high-level and the question is, how do we incentivize all demographics to be active users? Increased regulatory and market pressures for businesses to make this shift will likely make them early adopters. This is already being seen with organizations like Microsoft, which announced their purchase of 1.3 million carbon offsets as part of the tech giant’s mission to become carbon negative by 2030. The goal is to get our entire society on board in what is predicted to be a multi-billion-dollar marketplace, serving also as an amazing solution to carbon intensity reduction.
As a thought experiment, what could an actual working model look like? A flexible distributed ledger platform (similar to blockchain) would be required for proper tracking and tracing functions. Since a blockchain is designed to be immutable and the sequestration process is impermanent, there will be a need for innovation in the space in tangent with thorough compliance and contract policies. Essentially, a strict set of standard rules that are maintained in the marketplace through smart contracts and AI will be necessary. AI and machine learning functions could be programmed to ensure that each carbon credit purchased will actually represent the removal of one metric ton of carbon or other equivalent GHG. Once this is achieved, tax incentives from buying offsets would make them more attractive in the market. Eventually, this will all be supported through individualized software that will allow people to estimate the emission they are responsible for from any activity (driving, flying, purchasing), and offset this contribution with the push of a button.
So, where does ASU Lightworks come in? It begins with catalyzing experts and industry leaders from disparate sectors with the shared objective to transition to renewable energy and contribute to economy-wide decarbonization. For the DCW, the Lightworks team has fostered these relationships, contributing to a community of domain experts, industry professionals and corporates from sectors such as data analytics, smart intuitive systems, machine learning, bio/mechanical/software engineering, legal-policy, water, agriculture and economics. On top of this, as we continue to develop the business case and crowdsource different players that can support the tracking and tracing components, we become ever closer to making this a reality.
Imagine a world where individuals and businesses are constantly incentivized to make climate-conscious decisions with real impacts. These decisions will enhance all aspects of our lives from the air we breathe to the food we eat. This is the world we are looking to build. Yet, as implied in this article and in our last blog posts, we still have a lot to achieve. We face a looming challenge that also fortunately presents positive implications and opportunities… Ultimately, as the famous author and optimist, Ryan Holiday, likes to say, the obstacle is the way.
The search for the first winners of The Earthshot Prize has begun and The Julie Ann Wigley Global Futures Laboratory is proud to have been invited to be an Official Nominator for the Prize. Launched just a few weeks ago, The Earthshot Prize is the most prestigious global environment prize in history, aiming to find new solutions to the world’s biggest environmental problems.
As an Official Nominator, we are one of over 100 organizations from across the world, invited to submit nominations across all five Earthshot categories, selected for our ability to identify the most impactful solutions across all sectors, from grassroots to businesses.
We will be nominating individuals, communities, businesses and organizations whose solutions make the most progress towards achieving the five Earthshots – simple but ambitious goals which if achieved by 2030 will improve life for us all, for generations to come.
If you have any suggestions for solutions we, as an organization, should nominate, please read this one page guide and fill out the embedded unofficial Google Form for consideration.
You can find out more about the Prize, our role as an Official Nominator, and the 5-stage process to selecting winners at www.earthshotprize.org.
How can you recognize human-caused climate change with natural causes for elevated carbon dioxide? Do scientists agree that humans activity is behind global warming? Why should we care about biodiversity? These are some of the questions two of our ASU Center for Biodiversity Outcomes scientists, Leah Gerber and Steffen Eikenberry, help answer in this Q&A segment of ASU Now – Discoveries.
ASU’s new University Design Institute (UDI) is coordinating an initiative to accelerate the university’s efforts to redesign American higher education. They aim to advance the development of the UDI, accelerate the development of stackable and competency-based credential systems and scale ASU’s high school programs to enroll 30,000 additional students.
ASU ShapingEDU hosted Learning(Hu)Man, a summer camp experience in which over 2,600 registered education changemakers pushed the creative envelope for how to serve students and advance learner success. Campers explored best practices in learning design, edtech tools, and emergent thinking around the art of the possible.
Each semester, the School of Sustainability recognizes its top academic achievers by publishing the Dean's List. Undergraduate students who earn at least a 3.5 GPA in 12 or more semester hours of graded coursework during a semester in residence at ASU are eligible for the Dean’s List. A notation regarding Dean’s List achievement appears on the student’s unofficial transcript.
Survivor Link, a team of Arizona State University educators, students, faculty and community members who work to promote healthy relationships and provide domestic violence interventions, will receive the 2020 President’s Medal for Social Embeddedness.
On April 29, 2020, ASU Project Cities hosted our first-ever entirely virtual Student Showcase for the Spring 2020 semester. Over one hundred attendees appeared on Zoom throughout the day to learn from this semester’s students and discuss their research findings. The event featured multiple virtual “rooms,” including the main stage presentations and their project findings and breakout Q&A sessions. A virtual “lobby” also remained open throughout the day for tech support, a reception, and networking.
My name is Lina, and when I was a kid, I used to believe that I am a superhero, [this is] because I am meant to be one,” Lina Khalifeh declared at the 2019 WE Empower pitch night hosted by billionaire fashion designer Diane von Furstenberg in her New York studio apartment. WE Empower intern, Revere Wood elaborates on how Lina Khalifeh and SheFighter are continuing to support the SDGs while navigating through the challenges of COVID-19.
The City of Glendale manages approximately 135 Aboveground Storage Tanks (ASTs). ASTs are necessary components for storing valuable chemical agents for a variety of uses, from water treatment to backup power generation. ASTs must be appropriately maintained to ensure citizen and employee safety, and while there are existing standards and regulations, Glendale experts describe a lack of cohesive standards in the industry. Students in Albert Brown’s ERM 401/501 and EGR 427: Hazardous Waste Management spent their Spring 2019 semester researching AST regulations and standards with the goals of identifying AST best management practices and developing an efficient and effective operations and maintenance program for Glendale to consider applying to their ASTs.
This summary report is unique, as it represents the combined effort of a hybrid, multi-campus course format that brought together ASU students from the Tempe campus, Polytechnic campus, as well as online students simultaneously in a quasi-virtual learning environment. To conduct their research, students attended workshops, conducted site visits, performed literature reviews, and held stakeholder interviews with Glendale representatives. Analysis of the gathered information led to a robust list of both specific and generalizable recommendations, aimed at ensuring maximum safety levels for Glendale’s ASTs and the city staff maintaining them.
The Challenge aims to support the development of Public Interest Technology programs within academia by encouraging new ideas, fostering collaborations, and incentivizing resource- and information-sharing among network members.
The map linked here illustrates a range of actors and instances of their multi-stakeholder collaborations on specific sub-themes within animal agriculture. While this is already a complex web of players it is not meant to be exhaustive, it is rather an indicative list arrayed in clusters of key institutions and the categories in which they are primarily engaged (in many cases these are simplifications, because organizations also work across these categories). The reach of the map attempts to capture the international landscape, but owing to limitations of space, for some branches they are limited to the North American context.
To the extent possible, the entries are provided hyperlinks to organizational websites, and in the case of collaborations, to the page describing their membership.
The description of a complex mix of issues surrounding industrial animal agriculture is here presented visually in a mind map – a methodology and a toolset for visualizing a system through a core idea and the main themes that branch from it, as well and the inter-relationships and layers of context under main themes. These can be developed individually or in a group process, and can serve to develop dialogue while offering the option to ‘navigate’ to different sub-themes as those sharing the map determine where to focus. Visual cues as to the hierarchy of ideas can be conveyed with the shapes and colors in the map, and solid or dashed lines can suggest levels of relationship.
More subtle and complex dynamic tools, such as KUMU allow for the mapping of causal relationships and can be designed to jump to other maps related to the node picked to follow down a particular path and reflect other hierarchies and dependencies in a system.
Here is the written narrative following ‘round the dial’ presented in clockwise sequence:
Not all animal sourced foods are created equal...
In terms of nutritional value,
Or in the efficiency with which they convert feed into food for humans
Or in in terms of impacts on the environment...
Livestock production systems provide ecosystem services (and dis-services) depending on the scale and their technical configuration
Animal sourced foods are being consumed at uneven levels...
either regionally, or
Within countries
Or at local levels;
Strong cultural and historic associations with particular animal species persisting in different contexts.
Different scales of animal production also co-exist
And have complex social, economic and environmental functions
And these scales are shifting, with a trend to larger and more concentrated operations...
these transformations bring multiple impacts...
Important ramifications overlapping in the other ‘hot topic’ papers...in italics
Diets and human health
Preferences on protein translating into environmental impacts
Industrial production processes creating vulnerabilities in animal diseases (loss of immunological firebreaks) as well as antimicrobial resistance (AMR)
Dislocation of small-scale animal keepers into marginal areas, forest edges - links to zoonotic disease transmission with wild animal trade
Food waste
Generation and re-use of organic matter for animal consumption
Nature-based solutions
Crop-livestock integration on farm to reduce nutrient concentrations or deficiencies borne of the separation of animal and cropping systems
Sourcing animal foods from grazing non-arable lands, or alternative feed proteins (insects, etc.)
Utilizing animals for restoration of degraded landscapes
Just transitions
Social dislocation and economic outcomes borne of rapid industrialization of animal agriculture
The search for the first winners of The Earthshot Prize has begun and The Julie Ann Wigley Global Futures Laboratory is proud to have been invited to be an Official Nominator for the Prize. Launched just a few weeks ago, The Earthshot Prize is the most prestigious global environment prize in history, aiming to find new solutions to the world’s biggest environmental problems.
