Changing Futures Campaign Pillar Narrative: Reshape our relationship with the planet
Planet Reshape our relationship with the
This is our moment
Arizona State University is confronting the most pressing challenges Earth faces by leveraging knowledge and resources to reshape our relationship with the planet.
Ensuring our planet stays habitable and healthy is a complex task that requires vision, perseverance and expertise. We can only achieve this by collaborating across disciplines and humbly recognizing that humans play a vital role in Earth’s systems. ASU is convening and engaging those who will take on our planetary challenges today and shaping those who will chart new directions for a more sustainable tomorrow.
(Front cover) Greg Asner, director of the ASU Center for Global Discovery and Conservation Science, and a team of divers survey coral growing on sunken warships. This research seeks to understand the biodiversity of different oceanic environments as part of ASU’s collaboration with Mongabay.
“The most important thing we can have now, in this dark time, is hope. I think universities have a big role to play in that, because before young minds go out in the world, if we don’t give them hope, we’re doomed.”
—Dr. Jane Goodall, DBE
Founder of the Jane Goodall Institute, U.N. Messenger of Peace and ASU partner in research, education and conservation
Through ASU Changemaker, students participate in thousands of community service hours. The program is a successful hub for cultivating future global leaders.
This is our
moment to change the future
The health and longevity of the planet is in our hands
By partnering with organizations like the Desert Botanical Gardens in Arizona, ASU creates a hands-on environment where students begin to unpack challenges like food insecurity and loss of biodiversity.
By acknowledging and prioritizing our mutual dependency with the Earth, we are taking important steps toward a more sustainable relationship with the planet we call home.
With advances in ocean health, water security, food systems and sustainable economic development, ASU has been repeatedly ranked No. 1 in the United States and in the top 10 globally for its progress in addressing the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals, according to Times Higher Education Impact Rankings.
“We have to grow out of what I have called ‘the Stone Age,’ where we have a simple, unrealistic set of understandings about our relationship with the planet,” says Michael M. Crow, president of ASU. “We know how things work. We know what we do. We know how to solve these things. And so we have to build this new and greatly enhanced relationship, and what that’s going to produce for us is a new, massive, positive economic opportunity.”
From requiring all incoming students to take courses in sustainability to developing new technologies to overcome challenges with current renewables, ASU is building a better relationship with our beloved planet. We will continue working tirelessly to ensure that its health is strengthened by our presence and that our natural world can thrive.
Working together to protect nature and train the next generation of conservation leaders
Collaboration within and beyond the university has long been the key to success at ASU, and this extends to our work to protect the planet. Since 2017, ASU has partnered closely with Conservation International, a leading nonprofit organization that has helped protect more than 2.3 million square miles of land and sea across more than 70 countries. The impacts of this partnership have been profound: Conservation International benefits from the remarkable resources of ASU, and our students gain access to some of the world’s leading researchers and practitioners in conservation.
Together, we are collaboratively researching critical environmental issues to drive progress on a global scale, seeking nature-based solutions to mitigate carbon emissions and educating the next generation on conserving global marine resources. Through proposed programs like the Global Institute for the Future of Energy at ASU’s Thunderbird School of Global Management and the Desert Health for Planetary Health energy initiative at the New College of Interdisciplinary Arts and Sciences, ASU will engage with local communities to design relevant solutions with impact.
“We need to think differently about energy conservation,” says Charla Griffy-Brown, dean and director general of the Thunderbird School of Global Management at ASU. “Those who are most affected by energy systems and those who are really suffering from the impacts of climate change: We need to have them around the table to find solutions together to our energy future.”
A group at ‘lole practices the traditional art of lei making — just one example of cultural education and preservation that takes place at the nonprofit, research-based center and living laboratory.
ASU students collaborate with the community for immersive agricultural research, urban farming and sustainability projects at many ASU-housed locations. These spaces include the ASU Swette Center for Sustainable Food Systems and the Polytechnic campus sustainable farm.
Pioneering sustainable food systems for Arizona and the world
Faced with climate challenges and water scarcity, Arizona provides fertile ground for exploring innovative approaches to sustainable agriculture. Transforming leading research into applied solutions, learners and researchers at ASU’s Swette Center for Sustainable Food Systems have illustrated the efficacy of drip irrigation, hydroponics and urban agriculture — practices that have the potential to change food production across the globe.
“When we talk about food systems, we’re referring to how everything is interconnected,” explains Kathleen Merrigan, the center’s executive director. “You can’t just look at the farm. You can’t just look at the grocery store. You have to look at everything in between and what consumers do in their homes. It’s that interconnectivity.”
At ‘Iole, a living scientific laboratory in Kohala on Hawai‘i Island, government leaders, Native Hawaiian practitioners, community members, students and academic experts from ASU and the University of Hawai‘i are leveraging local expertise around food security, energy security and place-based learning to develop models that can be scaled around the world.
Reversing the consequences of our changing climate
Led by Arizona State University and spanning Utah, Nevada and Arizona, the Southwest Sustainability Innovation Engine is elevating the Southwest as a regional hub of economic development driven by sustainability innovation. A university, industry and community collaboration, this effort leads to positive climate impacts, high-wage jobs, economic growth and technology-based startups and investments. These types of collaborations allow us to rapidly address climate challenges along with economic growth.
Currently, ASU’s Julie Ann Wrigley Global Futures Laboratory®, in partnership with leading collaborators, is advancing a groundbreaking Department of Energy project to establish a regional Direct Air Capture Hub. This initiative will harness new technologies to remove over 1 million metric tons of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere annually. The multi-site hub in the Four Corners region will anchor carbon capture infrastructure for at least 12 years, with plans to scale solutions that benefit both the environment and the economy.
These ambitious efforts are not just addressing climate change—they are creating a blueprint for a sustainable, prosperous future.
Air Capture is a concept pioneered by Klaus
founding director of the ASU Center for Negative Carbon Emissions in the Global Futures Laboratory.
Direct
Lackner,
Cody Friesen is an associate professor at ASU and the founder of Zero Mass Water. SOURCE Hydropanels and rechargeable metal-air batteries, Friesen’s inventions, are addressing two of the biggest challenges in the developing world: access to fresh water and reliable energy.
A more sustainable, more equitable future for all
The most sustainable solutions are often the most equitable solutions for people. Take, for example, the work of Cody Friesen, associate professor in the Ira A. Fulton Schools of Engineering and senior global futures scientist at ASU’s Julie Ann Wrigley Global Futures Laboratory.
Through his company SOURCE Global, Friesen is using water and energy technologies to help address the global water crisis. He invented SOURCE® Hydropanels®: solar panels that generate drinking water from sunlight and air. The technology can make drinking water in conditions with relative humidity as low as 5% and requires no electricity. The result is clean, affordable water with less reliance on bottled water, offsetting the use of more than 3.6 million plastic water bottles in a year. Thanks to Friesen and his team, clean drinking water is available in refugee camps, hospitals, schools and homes around the world.
“Ultimately, the goal of this work is to democratize access to drinking water and deliver water equity for all humans. We’re just getting started,” says Friesen, SOURCE Global founder and CEO.
Changing Futures
A member of ‘Āko‘ako‘a Reef Restoration Program observes new growth on a coral fragment. The program is a collaboration between ASU and other core partners in Hawai‘i — the largest coral reef nursery of its kind.
“For us, the biggest challenge is to recognize that we have pushed the limits and to make another set of choices that will get us out of the trajectory we are on, which is strictly nonsustainable. And that means we really have to understand: What do people see as their future?”
—Peter Schlosser
Vice president and vice provost Global Futures Laboratory
Join us
Changing Futures represents an opportunity to not only develop groundbreaking solutions but also to scale them locally, nationally and globally, ensuring a thriving future for humanity and the planet.
Your support for this campaign is an investment in a world where humanity and the planet exist in harmony. Together, we will empower the next generation of problem-solvers to drive transformative change and bring bold, actionable ideas to life—solutions that our world urgently needs.
Your investment builds a legacy of solutions that will resonate for generations not yet born.
ASU is a comprehensive public research university, measured not by whom it excludes, but by whom it includes and how they succeed; advancing research and discovery of public value; and assuming fundamental responsibility for the economic, social, cultural and overall health of the communities it serves.
