By Matthew Moore
The Digital Farm Collective is an international initiative to record and share footage, philosophies and scientific data on the growth of produce. Using time-lapse films, interviews with farmers and agricultural data, artist Matthew Moore hopes to contribute to a more sustainable global food system by sharing and preserving the growing practices of produce farmers from all over the world. … Continue Reading
By Daniel Riley and Jacob Park
When President Barack Obama gave his State of the Union Address (1) last month, he made the case that U.S. economic revival is tied to a healthy manufacturing sector. Of course, he is not the first to triumph the importance of manufacturing to the economy. The key question, however, is what type of manufacturing the U.S. should have in the future. … Continue Reading
By Jennifer Huebert
Forgotten or fading traditional agricultural practices may be able to address modern-day agricultural challenges. In this series, several recent efforts to re-establish such practices are reviewed. Each example illustrates a distinct problem, and has a unique history to consider. In the last issue, key criteria for an effective revival of forgotten agricultural technologies were outlined, and a case study from an Israeli desert was presented. This second installment highlights two additional case studies: one from the forests of Central America and another from the Andean highlands. … Continue Reading
By Colin Kunzweiler
Sustainability has been called both a buzzword and the issue of our age, but the field’s explosive growth demonstrates that it is also an “infectious” concept and field. Through a population model that included states of susceptibility, exposure and infectiousness (Figure 1), two authors recently explored individuals’ introduction to and progression within the emerging discipline of sustainability science (1). … Continue Reading
By Amber Hasselbring
In her first solo exhibition at SF Arts Commission Gallery in 2007, Hasselbring launched the Mission Greenbelt project, an ongoing public artwork inspired by the city’s Sidewalk Landscaping Permit, made available in 2006. The permit process allows residents to replace portions of sidewalk concrete with gardens. The Mission Greenbelt project’s goal was to build contiguous habitat gardens in SF’s Mission District, connecting Dolores Park (19th & Dolores) to Franklin Square Park (16th & Bryant). The interactive SFAC Gallery exhibition featured mixed media artworks (see image: mission greenbelt puzzle), bilingual sidewalk landscaping permit applications, a temporary CA native garden, as well as events including a campaign kick-off celebration, workshops, public school visits, plant sales and tours of the proposed Mission Greenbelt route. … Continue Reading
By Amy Youngs
The Worm Share project encourages symbiotic relationships between humans and worms. Through experimental artworks, participatory designs, workshops and networking technologies, I facilitate the travel and propagation of composting worms into domestic spaces and encourage others to do the same. In exchange, the worm colonies provide valuable ecosystem services. … Continue Reading
By Dr. Gary Brinker
Coal and oil have always been the life-blood of the industrial economy. Historically, these energy resources had been so plentiful that, until the latter part of the 20th century, few believed that we could exhaust their supply. And although the chronic negative health effects from inhaling coal dust and the exhaust of burning fossil fuels were recognized early in the industrial era, the full extent of the threat to human health and survival has only recently been realized and acknowledged. The most recent threat to the global ecology in the form of global climate change has energized a social movement to convert energy production to non-fossil sources deemed more environmentally friendly and biologically benign, such as solar, wind, hydroelectric, geothermal and bio-fuels. … Continue Reading
By Rev. Doug Bland
Standing on the steps of the Newman Catholic Student Center across the street from ASU’s campus and the Global Institute of Sustainability (GIOS), Rev. Jan Olav Flaaten told the story of climate refugees in the Pacific island nation of Tuvalu. As he recounted the story of rising sea levels, Flaaten grasped the blue shower curtain that encircled him and slowly raised it from his knees to his waist to his chest. He finished the story with only his nose sticking above the rising cloth waves. … Continue Reading
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
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
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
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
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
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.
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.
By Tara Haelle
If your food sources vanished tomorrow, how long would it take you to starve to death?
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.