From our Southwest home to the ocean: pathways to a thriving future

Given the many extremes we have witnessed in 2023 — including a new global temperature record close to the 1.5 degrees Celsius mark considered by the Paris Agreement as the level that should not be exceeded — the year 2024 poses questions about what lies in the near and distant future. For those residing in the Southwestern United States, the challenges imposed by human-induced change, including climate change, are experienced daily.

Water security, for example, has become an increasingly pressing issue. In Arizona, a surge in population growth and land development has increased the demand for water while at the same time the allocations from the Colorado River, a lifeline of the Southwest, are decreasing. Major water reservoirs such as Lake Mead and Lake Powell have reached record-low levels and are approaching dead pool conditions, or conditions that won’t allow the release of water downstream. This situation requires exploration of all possible water sources including a desalination plant in Mexico that extracts salt from seawater before being piped to Phoenix.

Extreme temperatures are observed more frequently and over longer periods, thus compounding the existing challenges facing the Southwest. Take for instance the 31 consecutive days of temperatures above 110 degrees Fahrenheit (43.3 C) Maricopa County experienced last July. This extreme heat placed so much stress on the environment that some native plants, including the iconic saguaro, succumbed to it and simply tipped over. Extreme heat also heightens power demand. A power outage at the height of a heat wave would threaten the health and well-being of the city’s population, especially those already living under challenging conditions, from being unsheltered to having inadequate cooling in their homes.

We must also consider the cascading effect of extreme heat in a region susceptible to drought, dust storms and wildfires. Higher temperatures lead to higher levels of evaporation that create drier conditions and transform landscapes, such as the desertification of Utah. Like the Colorado River, the Great Salt Lake has experienced a significant drop in water levels over the past few decades. This is partly due to climate change, which has decimated mountain streams that feed into the lake, and partly due to increasing development, agriculture and industry to the region. This shrinkage not only contributes to Utah’s expanding desertification, it also threatens to upend ecosystems, including disrupting the migration and survival of 10 million birds, including ducks and geese.

While the Southwestern United States is a region susceptible to environmental extremes, it is also a place where innovative technological advancements are shaping the future of sustainability. Earlier this year, the U.S. National Science Foundation announced it had selected ASU’s Julie Ann Wrigley Global Futures Laboratory to lead a multi-institutional project addressing critical issues of the Southwest as part of its Regional Innovation Engines Award Program. The Southwest Sustainability Innovation Engine will unite academic, community, nonprofit and industry partners across Arizona, Nevada and Utah to establish the Southwest as a leader in carbon capture, water security and renewable energy. It will also positively impact our communities by attracting high-wage industries and creating robust job markets that advance regional economies. Most importantly, this project will position the Southwest as a hub for sustainability-based innovation and create a national and international model for regional sustainability.

Given the precarity of water both in and outside of the Southwest, designing solutions that directly address this challenge remains a long-term priority. On this year’s World Water Day, March 22, the Global Futures Laboratory launched the Water Institute under the direction of Upmanu Lall, Global Futures Professor in the School of Complex Adaptive Systems. Drawing from existing academic capacity across ASU, the Water Institute is a new center for scholarship and action designed to address global water challenges from community to national scales. Among its many projects, the Water Institute will build a Global Water Collaboratory, a U.S.-focused consortium, as well as a coalition across the Western states for learning and collective action that will be a living laboratory for higher education and workforce development in a systems context.

As we continue to develop ways of protecting our desert landscape, we are also evolving the institutions educating the next generation of innovative thinkers in coastal and marine sciences. Since humans began burning increasing amounts of fossil fuels at the end of the 19th century to mark the beginning of the Industrial Revolution, the ocean has continued to protect us from the worst effects of climate change.

This is done through the absorption of about a third of the carbon dioxide released into the atmosphere by human activities while also trapping approximately 90% of the excess heat resulting from increasing concentrations of greenhouse gases. While these services provided by the oceans are keeping global warming at lower levels, they also have significant side effects such as ocean acidification and warming of the ocean that lead to sea level rise and affect the functions of critical ecosystems. Thus, protecting our oceans and their ecosystems remains vital to the health and habitability of our planet.

The ASU Bermuda Institute of Ocean Sciences, the Center for Global Discovery and Conservation Science and the College of Global Futures’ newest school — the School of Ocean Futures — are each dedicated to addressing these issues. The School of Ocean Futures expects to begin enrolling students in academic programs focused on the future of our oceans and coastal and marine science and management for the fall 2024 semester. Its programs will provide training in many aspects of ocean sciences and will include the social and economic aspects of ocean stewardship, ocean partnerships and Indigenous knowledge and value systems.

Introductory courses will address ocean futures, ocean communities and ocean conservation, with proposed electives offering opportunities to travel and study in Baja California, Bermuda and Hawaii as part of the curriculum’s experiential learning approach. Hands-on learning such as these prepares students to conduct work of significant impact. Arizona might be a landlocked state, but because the Global Futures Laboratory operates across our entire ocean with a focus on the North Atlantic and Hawaii, our impact is able to reach across regions, landscapes and time zones.

As we navigate the challenges facing our planet, we must remember that the decisions we make today play a significant role in designing a future where Earth’s life-supporting systems can thrive in equilibrium with all its inhabitants. From advancing water and renewable energy technologies through the Southwest Sustainability Innovation Engine to addressing local and global water challenges through the Water Institute to evolving how we teach the next generation of innovative thinkers at the School of Ocean Futures, the individual and collective actions at the Julie Ann Wrigley Global Futures Laboratory are designed to make a lasting impact, both here in the Southwestern United States and around the world.

Peter Schlosser Vice President and Vice Provost, Julie Ann Wrigley Global Futures Laboratory, Arizona State University