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
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
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.
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)?
By Bradford Pete-Hill
In the last decade, the advancement of the renewable energy industry in the United States has depended primarily on the efforts of product manufacturers and environmental groups. They have used in-house marketing and outreach programs to gain the public’s interest in renewable energy and to explain the benefits of clean technologies. However, in order for the renewable energy industry to further its market expansion in the U.S., it should transition from self-promoting programs to those that employ and rely on state and regional electric utility1 companies for more substantial growth.
By Tischa A. Muñoz-Erickson and Thaddeus R. Miller
* Op-Ed previously published on February 2009 in the Newsletter of the International Society for Ecological Economics (ISEE), Pages 24-25; http://www.ecoeco.org/pdf/Feb2009.pdf
Newsletter editor: Bernardo Aguilar-González
In the fall of 2007, we joined twenty-eight other students as the first class in the School of Sustainability (SOS) at Arizona State University. As one of the nation’s first schools to offer degrees in Sustainability, we knew that we were embarking on an experiment. Previous training in environmental science and policy, as well as exposure to transdiciplinary fields such as ecological economics, which work across academic disciplines and in conjunction with society, partially prepared us for the problems and opportunities that arise when obtaining a degree in Sustainability.
Building knowledge for sustainability demands exposure to such academic backgrounds, and much more. The School of Sustainability has brought in students and faculty from completely different fields, such as anthropology, ecology, economics, engineering, geography, geology, and the humanities, to engage with each other and sustainability. This unique blend of personnel has a profound effect on the way we work across academic disciplines and approach real-world issues.
As we–students and future scholars and practitioners in the field–attempt to build knowledge for sustainability that will contribute to solutions for society’s problems, we face what we see as three key questions:
1) How do we become agents of change, while working in the context of academic institutional constraints?
2) How do academic institutions balance the production of more stable, disciplinary knowledge with innovative knowledge for sustainability?
3) How do programs like SOS develop and maintain an identity while adapting to an evolving societal discourse around sustainability?
By Kristen Faye Bean, MSW
Although many sustainability concerns concentrate on environmental issues, the United States’ (U.S.) economic downturn that began in December 2007 highlights issues of economic sustainability. The entire U.S. economy is struggling to sustain the power that it has upheld in the world economy. Businesses worry about maintaining profits with minimal costs, and employees are concerned about job sustainability. Employers have begun to focus on aspects of their business that are more robust to economic downturn. The layoffs since December 2007 have been distributed among many different industries; the third quarter of 2009 showed that manufacturing firms, construction, professional and technical services, and management of companies and enterprises had experienced mass layoffs (Bureau of Labor Statistics, 2009). Because of the relatively equal distribution of layoffs, it is unclear what types of employees businesses are relying on to sustain profits with minimal costs. This paper explores whether employees with disabilities are an integral labor market for businesses during weak economic periods.
No(where) Now(here) addresses the issue of wolf recovery in Northern Arizona. The week-long installation took place between October 11th and October 17th, 2009.
The Salt River Project follows the Salt River from the recreation areas East of Phoenix out to the Gillespie Dam West of Phoenix. It is the story of an urban desert river.
The project begins with the conceptual framework provided by high water marks. Clumps of dirt, plastic bags and plant growth five feet up in trees serve as a reminder that the dry riverbed is not dead, but only dormant. Too often in the desert, water concerns orbit around the idea that we’re using up all our resources and that the dryness is a sign of the dismal future. Though transient communities have made the river channel home, and others use it as a dumping ground, sooner or later the water will rise again. Everything found in the channel is colored with this knowledge. … Continue Reading
By Michael M. Crow
During the past few years many of us may have confronted the disturbing realization that the standard operating procedures of our contemporary culture often fall short of the mark or even produce entirely unintended consequences. The near-meltdown of global economic markets and our faltering efforts to revive the economy, to consider but one scenario among many, offer stark evidence that we seem to be grappling with the escalating complexities of the present and future stuck resolutely in the mindset of the past. This is to say nothing about our success in shaping a world that in all likelihood cannot sustain our long-term enhancements in wealth generation and, more generally, quality of life for humanity. Given the apparent limitations in our knowledge matched with our overwhelming hubris as well as capacity to exercise brute force, and there is only one possible conclusion: as a species we are still mired in the final decades of the Stone Age.
By Alison Dalton Smith
Happiness is considered a universal human aspiration, but the means to achieving happiness has become inexorably entangled with gaining material possessions. In common paradigms of economic development, Gross Domestic Product is used as a proxy for measuring the well-being of a nation’s citizens. While this is often true in impoverished nations where basic needs are not met, there is a threshold point past which increasing economic gains no longer necessarily deliver increases in human well-being. Beyond this threshold, economic measures are no longer adequate for accurate measurement of a nation’s human well-being. In fact, this myopic focus on economic growth has created an unsustainable way of life that is increasingly unfulfilling for those that are engaged in the cycles of consumption. In this paper, I will address both recent patterns in human well-being in industrialized nations and more comprehensive indexes that quantify human well-being.
By Manjyot Bhan
Abstract
Before the 1980s, environmental regulation in India was almost non-existent. In pursuit of economic development, the Government of India (GoI) kept environmental regulation of multinational corporations to a minimum in order to attract foreign direct investment. Multinational corporations have often been blamed for taking advantage of weak enforcements in India; however, in recent years, many of them have started to self-regulate and often set their environmental standards above the minimum compliances enforced by the GoI. My research will investigate the change in environmental management of PepsiCo, India—an American large food and beverage multinational corporation.
By John M. Quick
Sustainability has been defined by the United Nations as the human ability to meet “the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs.” While one would be hard pressed to find an individual who is ideologically opposed to this tenet of sustainability, one may encounter similar difficulty in locating a person whose lifestyle truly embodies these ideals. Visions of a healthy, thriving, and “green” planet inspire warm and positive feelings in many people. Yet, as it turns out, human nature is such that thoughts are often not followed by actions. While the minds of some of the world’s citizens may be captivated by the notion of sustainability, taking real action in support of it can prove difficult. This discrepancy between thought and actual behavior presents sustainable living with its greatest challenge.
The attached photograph and menu are documentation of the first performance art in a series entitled Consuming the Land: The Practice of American Traditions. Aldo Leopold, an esteemed early conservationist, reminds us that land is much more than soil; it includes waters, plants, and animals, all of which we humans consume. This project is informed by the tradition of consuming the land, as a society and as individuals, and focuses on our local history of land consumption and the consumption of the land as a result of holiday feasts. In the first phase, the artist’s family Thanksgiving feast is measured in how many miles the food has traveled to get to their mouths. Future phases will include the Christmas/New Year Holiday and may extend into 2010 for a complete annual cycle of consumption. In pursuing this project, Ms. Bailey hopes to reach a goal of sustainable feasting that reflects her responsibility to the land and her family.
Commingled Sorting Facility
In Commingled Sorting Facility, a raccoon is found peering into a garbage can. The animal makes several trips in and out of the bin to extract consumable waste. Meanwhile, refuse also collects on its body. … Continue Reading
The services of a praying mantis
In an effort to make ecological concepts like biodiversity applicable to policy, natural resource accounting (also known as Green GDP) attempts to place an economic value on “ecosystem services” provided by plants, animals and ecological process. The prerequisites of clean air, adequate water supplies, food production, and predictable weather certainly have economic value and should be preserved. However, this view has been accused of not giving adequate weight to more subjective concepts, such as intrinsic value, beauty, and desirability. While the cultural aesthetics attached to flowers will probably prevent them from being evaluated purely on considerations of carbon sequestration and soil erosion—should less charismatic species, such as this praying mantis, be appraised only on their virtues as an environmentally friendly form of pest control?
Contributor’s Biography:
Jeffrey W. Ackley is a National Science Foundation Urban Ecology Fellow at Arizona State University. His doctoral research involves reptiles in disturbed, artificial, and urban habitats. He hopes to identify how animals respond to different types of human activities in order to make existing urban populations more sustainable, and to lessen the ecological consequences of future development. He is also a rescue diver and an underwater photographer.
By Ben Miller
Traditional higher education pedagogy, or the approach to instructional design, must now come to terms with the boundless, yet challenging, opportunities made possible through information technology. Education faces a transformative period in which characteristics of traditional in-person pedagogy interact with those of internet-based, digital learning. The necessity of this transformation stems from the widening discrepancy between how students prefer to gather information and the pace at which information can be collected outside of traditional classrooms and the satisfaction endemic to the traditional pedagogical approach (Johnson 2005; Tapscott, 2008). This discussion provides an overview of key characteristics of the contemporary college student, presents suggestions towards optimizing digital pedagogy design, and introduces a financial justification for shifting from traditional pedagogy to online instructional modeling.
By Heather Findling
When you walk into the “Defining Sustainability” exhibition at the Arizona State University Art Museum, you are thrust into a world of warning. The exhibition challenges viewers to step out of their day-to-day bustle, examining events such as industrialization and natural disasters, and to consider that the human existence is based on a limited supply of natural resources. Artists convey themes of conservation, decay, and survival.
The exhibition starts with older, more historic pieces, gradually bringing the viewer to the present with contemporary art. Some pieces depict land as an untouched utopia, while others challenge the notion of industrial “progress.” Some render apocalyptic messages of environmental abandonment and collapse. The quiet and serene atmosphere of the gallery allows visitors to let their mind wander, with sustainability texts ever-present to bring back ones’ focus.
Oscar Oiwa’s "Black Snow II," Oil on canvas 227 x 444 cm (90"x180"), 2003, Arizona State University Art Museum collection, Tempe, Arizona. Reproduction courtesy of artist Oscar Oiwa and P.P.O.W. Gallery, NY, NY.
As I enter the gallery space, one piece in particular catches my attention: Oscar Oiwa’s multi-paneled Black Snow 2, painted in 2003. The visual attraction does not come from the painting’s size (90” x 180”); instead, it derives from the painting’s mysterious and illusive oranges, yellows, reds, and blacks. There is a peaceful quality to the painting. Yet at the same time, a sense of uneasiness pulls at me.
By Kyle Boggs
In Northern Arizona, on the slopes of the state’s highest peak, stands an on-going controversy illuminating deep cultural divides. Here, human rights and environmental justice stand in opposition to enhanced skiing recreation. As the dominant Euro-American culture shifts its perception of progress to achieve a just and sustainable future, the fight to save the San Francisco Peaks from contamination and further development stands at the crossroads of this transition.
The Urban Foodshed Collaborative provides a space and structure for New Haven youth to connect to the potential of the land around them. The youth grow food as well as their entrepreneurial abilities, and through this process, UFC grows young leaders. We aim to turn conceptions on their head. We create opportunity where others saw vacant lots. All through collaboration.
UFC braids together a number of trends that allow it to succeed: the need for New Haven youth to have valuable, building experiences that pay a deserved wage, the desire of restaurants and markets to source locally-grown, culturally-relevant produce, and the city of New Haven’s aim to turn vacant lots into green, productive space. To watch the video, click below: … Continue Reading
By Neal Humphrey
Abstract
In order to investigate the potential growth of public transit for the creation of a more sustainable transit paradigm, this paper seeks to explore the features of a Bus Rapid Transit (BRT) system, and compare them to the costs and benefits of other public transit options. BRT is often viewed as an intermediary transit option, providing many of the benefits of light rail systems that normal buses cannot provide, yet doing so with reduced cost and, therefore, greater potential service. As growing cities seek to meet their transit needs, Bus Rapid Transit can provide many of the benefits of both light-rail and bus services and as such may prove to be the most effective public transportation option in many communities.
This paper presents the five main components comprising the definition of a BRT system, as summarized from a variety of presentations. It discusses the implementation of these five components, related costs, and potential benefits. Importantly, it provides context of why a BRT system must be viewed as separate from a standard bus system. BRT systems can be a valuable tool to broaden public transportation accessibility, increasing the sustainability of our increasingly urban population. … Continue Reading