Re-establishing Ancient Agricultural Practices: Lessons from the Recent Past (Part One)

By Jennifer Huebert

Editor’s Note: This article is the first of three case studies investigating ancient agricultural practices. Look for the next installment in the Winter 2012 issue.

One of today’s most pressing global issues is the need to produce food more efficiently in order to feed the growing world population (1). This issue has been addressed with solutions ranging from genetically modified food plants to mechanized large-scale monoculture cropping practices. However, modifications people make to the landscape to cultivate food create significant and often destructive changes in the environment (2). Conscious efforts must be made to sustain agroecosystems and conserve natural resources so they can function in perpetuity. … Continue Reading

Human Chains

By Ameret Vahle

While working with cutouts and stencils of human chains in my paintings, I got the idea to put a call out asking people for cutouts of their own. … Continue Reading

Jalan Jati – “Teak Road”

By The Migrant Ecologies Project (Lucy Davis & Collaborators)

Jalan Jati or “Teak Road” is a visual art, science and ecology project tracing the historic, material and poetic journeys of a 1950’s teak bed, found in a Singapore karang guni junk store, back to a location in Southeast Asia where the original teak tree may have grown. … Continue Reading

On Listening and Being Heard at Occupy Wall Street

By Allain Barnett

It was a Saturday night, and I was glued to my computer screen, watching closely as a large line of police officers closed in on a group of citizens occupying a public park in Chicago. … Continue Reading

Letter from the Editor

Since it was founded three years ago, The Sustainability Review’s mission has been to provide a broad readership with meaningful and accessible art, opinion, research and journalism relevant to sustainability. When the new editorial staff came together we attempted to build on this mission by defining what we meant by sustainability. … Continue Reading

Occupy Sustainability: Is This a Special Moment?

By Charles L. Redman, PhD

About a month ago I sent out an email to School of Sustainability (SOS) students and colleagues posing the question of whether key elements of the Occupy Wall Street movement share important similarities with our own quest to encourage and implement a sustainability transformation in society. I received a dozen replies that supported further dialogue. My goal here is to stimulate discussion of these issues with the hope that we can learn from what is happening and, if you choose to do so, encourage you to contribute to the success of this movement.

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Panacea or Platitude: Integrated Water Resource Management – Conceptually Sound But Fundamentally Flawed

By Rhett Larson

Water is unique in that it is often viewed simultaneously as a fundamental human right and yet an increasingly valuable natural resource largely integrated with private real property rights. Because of this dichotomy, water policy lends itself to similar dichotomous discussions, with aspirational platitudes met with pragmatic skepticism. In recent years, this dichotomy has crystallized around the concept of “integrated water resource management” (“IWRM”). IWRM is commonly defined as, “A process which promotes the coordinated development and management of water, land and related resources, in order to maximize the resultant economic and social welfare in an equitable manner without compromising the sustainability of vital ecosystems” (1). This essay describes the objectives of IWRM, examines its limitations in the context of one hotly contested river basin—the Colorado River Basin—and offers pragmatic suggestions on how to realize the aspirations of IWRM.

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Coral Reefs in Crisis: Finding Nemo May Become a lot Tougher

By Tara Haelle

If your food sources vanished tomorrow, how long would it take you to starve to death?

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Traffic Movement

By Steve Jones and Sally Rodgers

Traffic Movement is an imagined environment which transforms a recognizable street scene into a sonorous tone-poem. In this future soundscape, intelligent traffic lights speak their minds, the hum notes and partials of Electric Vehicles (EVs) ascend and descend, birds can be heard in the distant trees and footsteps echo on the city streets.

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Exodus

Moving to Atlanta from Detroit in 2006, I was immediately struck by the pace of growth in the area. I knew I had to make work that addressed this issue, but I also wanted to avoid rehashing the architectural imagery of new home construction that often defines urban sprawl. Instead, the images in this series were created using motion sensor cameras placed in two cities lying approximately 20 miles northeast of Atlanta: Suwanee, which has seen its population nearly double from 8,725 to 15,355 in the last ten years (1) and Buford, now home to the largest shopping mall in Georgia and the 14th largest in the United States. It is an area very much on the frontlines of urban sprawl in America (2).

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Simulsuck and Womble Tumble Slide

My process involves the collection and reassembly of discarded materials. A recurring theme that
unites my work is reassigned (or voided) utility through a new context, and I work in
several media—sculpture, video, drawing and performance. I scavenge large plastic appliances
or electronics lying in the street or in garbage bins. By harnessing discarded materials, I
utilize waste rather than produce it. Amidst the detritus that is continuously
thrown away in a consumerist society, I search for connections and relationships between materials
and concepts.

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Creating a Sustainable Desert Metropolis

Artists have long appreciated the desert for its otherworldly landscape. Painter Georgia O’Keefe devoted much of her late career to capturing the distinct elements of the American Southwest, and architect and designer Frank Lloyd Wright felt a strong connection to the desert – a place, he said, which inspired its own singular style of architecture.

Environmental artist Joan Baron is no different in her appreciation of the desert’s unique attributes and the creative opportunities they present. Such opportunities are the subject of Baron’s ongoing urban landscape installation, The Edible Landscape Project – a unique rental property for those who crave the hands-on approach to their food source.

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The Problem with “Sustainability”

By Robert Kutter

It might seem like a strange message from the soon-to-be former editor-in-chief of a publication on sustainability, but I don’t like the word “sustainability.” It hides the truly admirable part of what my classmates are trying to do: solve difficult problems with new approaches for the benefit of people and the environment. Actually, sustainability connotes keeping things the same, which is the opposite of what my classmates are trying to do: change things for the better.

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Radishes for Adoption: A Network of Ad-Hoc Food Producers

Motivated to build relationships around local food production and self-sufficiency, “Radishes for Adoption” brought about the playful transition of verandas, rooftops and unused space into tiny, food production areas in Kyoto, Japan.
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Building Businesses through Cleaner Cooking Fuels in Ghana

by Edward Burgess, Research Editor for The Sustainability Review

For this interview, we spoke with Dr. Mark Henderson, Director of the Global Resolve project at Arizona State University. We discussed some of his latest research efforts in Ghana, Africa where he and his colleagues are working with local villages to design technologies and businesses that could improve the health and well-being of the local people and their environment.

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Flying False Colors (The Sixth Day)

Carlo Zanni’s pieces are “data cinema”: he uses live, Internet data to create time-based, social consciousness experiences with games, photos, films and installations that investigate topical issues. … Continue Reading

Closing the Energy Efficiency Information Gap for Small Businesses

Small businesses are vital to the health of the United States’ economy. They provide essential goods and services, employ millions of Americans and generate half the U.S. nonfarm GDP (1). Businesses of all sizes prioritize cost reductions, but small businesses‘which lack the monetary, personnel, and technological resources of large corporations‘are often more sensitive to cost variability. This sensitivity to cost fluctuations is especially pronounced for energy expenditures, which cost U.S. small businesses approximately $130 billion each year (2). By decreasing energy expenditures, small businesses can increase efficiency across their operations, strengthen their financial prospects and minimize their impact on the environment.

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Parquet: A Social Floor Covering in Berlin-Neukölln

Raw materials for the “social parquet” (2010) come from unofficial refuse dumps on the streets of Berlin-Neukölln and residents’ cellars and attics. For example, this parquet includes Muhammet’s kitchen table, a childhood bed that once belonged to Kerstin, Güler’s wardrobe, and a plank from Bernhard’s ship. These are among the roughly 550 found items and donations which compose the “social floor covering.”

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Skills for Sustainability Professionals

In response to a growing need to move the world toward sustainable development and sustainable practices, a whole new professional track has emerged in the last decade. In 2010, the International Society of Sustainability Professionals (ISSP)—the professional association that serves the needs of people working in this field—undertook a research study to answer the question, “What should a sustainability professional know how to do?” What we learned should inform everyone entering and working in this field.
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Virtual scarcity and “epic wins”: Is sustainability in need of more games?

Collaboration, urgent optimism, committed focus—these are the skills and qualities needed in humans to solve sustainability’s biggest challenges and, as it turns out, also the most minor of missions belonging to Azeroth in the online video game “World of Warcraft.”

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Sustainable Cinema

“Sustainable Cinema” is a series of kinetic public sculptures that merge natural power with visual illusions to create a moving image. The artworks combine references to both the optical illusion toys that led to the invention of movies and early energy sources. By referencing the histories of both film and industrialization, these sculptures explore a possible future of environmentally responsible media—looking forward by looking back.

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The Second Green Wave

Enrollment in post-secondary, degree-granting institutions swelled 26% between 1997 and 2007, according to the U.S. Department of Education. Moreover, the last decade has seen a dramatic upsurge of interest in the environment and sustainability on college and university campuses—in and out of the classroom.

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Great Divide

2010 – cotton, wire / ~13 x 3 x 3 feet

This work utilizes 100 pounds of raw cotton, grown, sourced and discarded near my former studio on the U.S.-Mexico border. Since the passage of NAFTA, more than a million Mexican farmers have lost their land due to the market saturation of U.S. cotton and other crops, driving prices for these goods below the cost of production. Unable to compete, small farmers have been forced out of business.

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Peak phosphorus: the crunch time for humanity?

by Dana Cordell, Stuart White and Tom Lindström

The element phosphorus underpins our ability to produce food. Yet only recently has a vigorous debate emerged regarding the longevity of the world’s main source of phosphorus – phosphate rock.

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Youth, Sustainability and Art: The Barrett Summer Scholars Program

Youth involvement in the sustainability movement is absolutely critical, for they will inherit and craft the future of our planet. They have the opportunity to learn to see the world as a system from day one. They can avoid the bad habits and shortsighted thinking that have plagued the generations that precede them.  And they are ready and waiting to learn what needs to be done.

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The Bus Project

“The Bus Project” focuses on the social impact of the public bus system in Phoenix, a city with a strong car culture. The idea was born out of the frustration that I felt trying to move through the valley without a car, using a system whose dysfunction and idiosyncrasies seem endemic to most urban areas in the American Southwest. This ongoing project attempts to give a face to the urban landscape through dialogue with and portraits of the people who move through it.

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Phosphorus and food security: Framing a global sustainability challenge through art

By Laura Turnbull

The role of art in science has gained precedence as a means to engage non-scientific communities in key science-related issues. ASU’s Sustainable Phosphorus Summit explored how art can serve as a universal language by which to communicate critical sustainability challenges – with colorful results.

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Feeding our cities: Why genetic engineering is our friend

By Britt Lewis

Recent concerns about phosphorous sustainability are fueled by the persistent overuse of phosphorous in fertilizers to increase crop yields. On the one hand, the United States has increased food production to both feed a growing population and produce biofuels. On the other hand, using phosphorus-laden fertilizers has imbalanced crop cycles and polluted surface water, even killing off an area the size of New Jersey in the Gulf of Mexico.

Phosphorus mine reserves are quickly diminishing, which has led to scarcity predictions worldwide. With phosphorus as vital to agriculture as water, food security hangs in the balance.

The following is a Q&A conversation with Dr. Roberto Gaxiola, an assistant professor at Arizona State University, whose research explores the role that transgenic crops might play in sustaining agriculture under limited phosphorus conditions.

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A tale of two neighbors: the United States’ and Canada’s distinct but intertwined paths to sustainability

By Genevieve Metson

The U.S. and Canada are the largest trading partners in the world. According to the U.S. Department of State, the total trade between these two countries exceeded $610 billion in 2008. Seventy-five percent of Canada’s exports go to the U.S., and 20% of U.S. exports go to Canada. They also share the longest non-militarized border between any two nations and a vast continent with a multitude of natural resources. Their close geographic, economic and political ties make them strong partners but also leave each vulnerable to decisions across the border. As a citizen and resident of both nations, I can attest to these close ties and to the double-edged sword of such an intimate relationship.

The close relationship between these two nations intertwines their futures as well. If either nation strives for a more sustainable society, it should not expect to succeed by acting in isolation. However, their distinct histories, political systems and geographic realities mean that the path toward sustainability will be different for Canada and the U.S. These nations must coordinate their dissimilar strategies toward sustainability.

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Photosynthesis Photography

Imagine a photographic world where you don’t need heavy metals and litres of water to make photographs.

Imagine a photographic world where you can discard your unwanted images as well as used and expired materials in your own backyard or compost bin.

Imagine a photographic world where your garden is your photographic supplies store.

Imagine no more.
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Archives of Horror and Hope

Appalachian Coal serves electric companies 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.
PLEASE read this writing with the lights out…..

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Superstition Vistas and the Battle for Smart Growth Communities

By Martin A. Gromulat

Superstition Vistas is a nearly 175,000-acre plot of land managed by the Arizona State Land Department (Department). Named for the mountain range that dominates the area, Superstition Vistas is located in the Sun Corridor, an area that stretches from Phoenix to Tucson and is predicted to grow to 15 million inhabitants by 2060. The Department’s stated goal is to develop Superstition Vistas as a sustainable community – one that can be the model for future sustainable desert development.

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TSR and Dialogue on Sustainability

By Robert Kutter

This year, we want to make The Sustainability Review (TSR) more accessible and reach a wider audience. We’ve made changes to TSR’s format to help meet these goals. But before talking about these changes, I’d like to briefly explain why I think engaging a wide audience is so important in sustainability.

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Rapid response: Sustainability demands more speed and agility from universities

By R.F. “Rick” Shangraw, Jr.

If you’ve ever wondered why sustainability is so difficult to achieve, consider the Thanksgiving dinner. Each year in homes across our nation, many hours of preparation go into making a big meal that is consumed in a fraction of that time, followed by a lengthy cleanup effort and several days of leftovers. While overly simplistic, it’s an example of the inherent difficulties in balancing production and consumption while also managing their byproducts of waste and surplus.

Whether the goal is wise use of natural resources or economic stability, achieving stasis—the state of optimal balance—is a highly dynamic process that requires timely intervention to keep systems in check. Many experts agree that a variety of factors, including exponential population growth, are increasing the frequency and severity of change in many previously “stable” ecosystems.

As a result, there is an urgent need for more rapid innovation in response to changes in our natural and societal ecosystems in order to sustain or improve living standards and protect our planet. Research universities can play an important role in catalyzing this innovation, but only if they learn to accelerate the pace of discovery and improve the mechanisms for quickly driving these discoveries into the marketplace. In particular, we desperately need innovations that enable society to identify and correct imbalances earlier to prevent cascading effects.

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Drugs in Water: A San Francisco Bay Case Study

by Morgan Levy, UC Berkeley, Energy & Resources Group

This is one part of a joint Art & Research entry. See the corresponding art piece here.

Introduction

Hormones, antidepressants, antibiotics, and chemicals from personal care products have been founds in waterways nationwide (1). Most wastewater treatment plants are not equipped to filter pharmaceuticals and personal care products (PPCPs) from treated wastewater and existing treatment processes do so with varying levels of success (2). Thus contaminants not removed during treatment can enter water systems such as freshwater streams and rivers, canals, lakes and reservoirs, groundwater aquifers, estuaries, and oceans (2, 3). Active pharmaceutical compounds are robust and persist in the environment. Pharmaceuticals are specifically made to withstand digestion processes in human (and animal) bodies, and some drug compounds will leave sewage plants at concentrations that are just as strong as when the water entered the sewer system (4, 5).
Two studies from the South San Francisco Bay (“South Bay”) in northern California demonstrate a geographically specific, yet nationally representative example of how PPCP contaminants enter and persist in our linked natural and human environment.

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All-Salt

This is one part of a joint Art & Research entry. See the corresponding research piece here.

In the spirit of cure-alls and tonics of a less-regulated medical era, Alviso’s Medicinal All-Salt harvests the bounty of a unique yet-unregulated pharmaceutical disposal industry, combining two popular commodities, sea salt and recycled pharmaceuticals, to produce a mock-medicinal salt product: “All-Salt.” There are no laws that require industry or government to test, monitor, or control the levels of pharmaceutical content in water, or understand impacts on humans and the environment.

The Alviso’s Medicinal All-Salt project involved rigorous research and synthesis of available environmental water quality and wastewater treatment information, and then humorous presentation of that material so as to engage a general audience on water quality/wastewater issues. It was completed in September, 2010 in San Jose California as a part of the Zer01 San Jose new media arts festival; it involved construction of model salt-evaporation ponds, salt product samples, tours of the San Francisco Bay ‘harvesting waters’ and old industrial salt ponds, and production of a formal report on the drugs found in the South San Francisco Bay.
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I Am

Up Scenic Point

I thank the rocks

And the plants

And the animals

For being part of me

As I am part of them

–

Not from each other

We are each other

As we human beings

Are all one another

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The Kerala Model of Development: A Path to Sustainability

The Indian state of Kerala has developed in a unique way over the last century.  A socialist state government promoted education and ecological conservation before these issues were common place among other Indian states.  These policies have resulted in a state where (1) a majority of the citizens are multilingual; (2) where the infant death rate is lower than that of the United States; (3) where the average life expectancy is equal to that of most first world nations; and (4) where ecological conservation is practiced, fostered from an understanding of the interconnectedness between society and the natural world.

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Letter from the Editor

Dear Readers,

Welcome to the first issue of The Sustainability Review, an online, biannual publication hosting art, opinion and research contributions.  TSR is associated with Arizona State University’s School of Sustainability, but is open to participation and contribution from people across and outside of academia.  TSR has two overarching goals: to communicate the concepts, challenges and approaches of sustainability, sustainability science and sustainable thinking, and to engage people from all fields in discussions about sustainability topics through accessible and interesting writing and other communication forms, such as photography.  At the very least, the editors of this inaugural issue hope to contribute to and help shape sustainability discussions.

TSR publishes contributions explaining complex concepts and issues in an accessible and engaging way.  It also seeks to involve people who might be shut out from typical sustainability discourse, particularly in academic settings.  TSR provides a forum for a spectrum of views on sustainability – from sustainable enterprise to community building and environmental justice concerns. The first issue includes research, essays and art pieces demonstrating a wide range of sustainability thought.  It includes perspectives on academic innovation with ASU leading the way from ASU President Michael Crow (American Research Universities Must Lead Our Emergence From the Stone Age), PepsiCo’s water conservation and waste management initiatives in India (Environmental Management of Multinational Corporations in India: The Case of PepsiCo), and various consumption practices and consequences (Rio Salado Walk; Consuming the Land; Commingled Sorting Facility; Too Much of a Good Thing: The Relationship Between Money and Happiness in a Post-Industrial Society).  It highlights questions such as, How do we measure the value of different species and ecosystems (The Services of the Praying Mantis)?  What does building knowledge for sustainability mean in the context of higher learning institutions (Students’ Perspective on Building Knowledge for Sustainability)?

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Material Histories: Rio Salado Habitat Restoration Area, 16th Street [1/4 square mile] Phoenix, Arizona + Brush Creek Road [2 miles] Snowmass Village, Colorado

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