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.

… Continue Reading

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.

… Continue Reading

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?

… Continue Reading

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.

… Continue Reading