The Covid 19 pandemic, ongoing climate change challenges and the demand for racial justice and equity has resulted in a renewed interest on sustainable development and global sustainability. Progressive organizations are integrating environmental, social and governance (ESG) impact investments, disclosures and reporting into their management for purposeful stakeholders (employees, customers, investors, and other stakeholders) results. Organizations consists of the investors and employees who work effectively with other stakeholders to deliver service to their customers. Employees represent the culture and values of organizations. For any organization to meet their ESG targets, employees must be incentivized to demonstrate sustainability values and behaviors. Bucknell University for instance is integrating diversity, equity; and inclusion (DEI) along with sustainability acumen into employee’s performance appraisal processes.
What behaviors will enable organizations to meet ESG targets and contribute towards global sustainability? This paper presents a framework of behavioral values that will help organizations contribute for equitable global sustainable development (EGSD) and overall sustainability consistent with the people, planet, progress, peace and partnerships (5Ps) of the UN SDGs. The framework will help organizations to drive global sustainability behaviors. It is focused on Reducing consumption, Recycling materials, Reusing assets, Restoring treasures, Replenishing the ecosystem and Resourcing supplies (6Rs). The first three of the 6Rs (reducing, recycling, and reusing) are primarily focused on preservation and waste elimination. The last three (restoring, replenishing, resourcing) are critical to equity and overall EGSD – social sustainability, technological sustainability, and environmental sustainability. Technological sustainability which has to do with the culture of tools, infrastructure, and knowledge utilization to optimize limited global resources for decarbonization with digitalization and decentralization processes will enable implementation of the 6Rs behavioral framework for social sustainability (behaviors and people) and environmental sustainability (planet earth). Continue reading Technology Enabled 6Rs Framework for Global Sustainability

For cities looking to create more sustainable food systems, utilizing urban agriculture is an attractive prospect. With the myriad of approaches to urban agriculture, however, understanding the distinct qualities of different agri-food approaches is imperative when deciding which approaches to prioritize and how to conceptualize their respective assets. The literature on urban food security often focuses on urban agriculture without adequate attention to the larger systems in which food is produced and consumed. I build upon existing literature that critiques the urban food movement and draw upon political ecology approaches that look at the deeper patterns and modalities of inequality in urban food systems. This paper contributes a novel typology of the approaches to urban food production and distribution through a critical political ecology lens. It examines the underlying forces of inequality with regard to how those approaches impact across racial and economic lines and considers time scales of those impacts. After establishing the typology of urban food production and analysis, this paper offers a case study of Washington DC The city has been heralded internationally for its approach to addressing food justice (Milan Urban Food Policy Pact, 2019) and still, DC has room for improvement. Centrally, this work argues that innovation and system level change is being achieved in the Washington DC context through individual and organizational initiatives, while significant policy gaps remain.  Continue reading “Beyond Food Deserts: Urban Agriculture for Social Justice and the Case of Washington, DC

At the end of the 20th Century, industrial loss, social changes, and moving to the suburbs had led to small town decline across rural America, including in the Pennsylvania rivertowns. In Williamsport, a major rivertown of the Susquehanna River, we brought people back to town, enhanced community and created a renaissance through art and design. The Main Street Program was the revitalization method we used. Main Street is a program of the National Trust for Historic Preservation designed to save America’s little downtowns and their history.  The Main Street Program consists of four areas of focus: Organization, Design, Economic Restructuring and Promotion. What happened in Williamsport, what our Main Street Program fostered, is part of a national trend of the regionalization of the arts in America. This national trend is helping to create more sustainable communities throughout our nation. Regional arts are participatory. Instead of consuming, we create and we share what we create with each other and the community. Less consumption and more community is creating lifestyle changes that will help us to face the 21st Century challenges of technology, globalization, and climate change. Continue reading Williamsport: Rivertown Renaissance

In this final project for Geomorphology (GEOL316) I used field and lab analysis techniques in combination with peer-reviewed literature to analyze the Soil Organic Carbon% (SOC%) and carbon sequestration found across varying locations on Bucknell’s campus as a result of different types of land management techniques (LM) as well as how they can be adjusted to help the university combat climate change/ carbon emissions. Geomorphology (GEOL316) is an upper level geology class that studies physical processes shaping the Earth’s surface and the evolution of resulting landforms. Soil cores were taken at 0m and 50m along a 50m transect at 4 locations on Bucknell’s campus and a Public Farm with 0m at a higher elevation and 50m at a consecutively lower elevation. These 8 core samples were then analyzed in a lab to calculate Soil Organic Matter% (SOM%)→ SOC% using an approximated conversion factor of 1.72 (DPIRD, 2020). It was found that the highest SOC% found was the 50m core on Bucknell Farm at 5.97% and the lowest SOC% found was the 0m core on the Public farm at 2.97%. The cores taken at the other two field sites (Lawn, Grove) were found to contain SOC% on the lower end of the above range. Bucknell Farm produced the highest SOC% with a LM portfolio of organic N-based fertilizer, deep rooted conscious planting, no-tillage, and winter cover cropping. The Lawn, Grove, and Public farm (P-farm) produced lower SOC% with LM practices of inorganic pellet N-based fertilizer use (Lawn, Grove, P-Farm), non-native monocultured grass lawns (Lawn, Grove), tilling (P-Farm), and overall soil depletion without regenerative or mitigative efforts. The implementation of new LM practices such as the introduction of earthworm populations, reforestation/ agroforestry, conversion from inorganic fertilizer to organic N-based fertilizer, no tillage or reduced tillage, and the replacement of nonnative grass monocultures to native grass polycultures are all suitable and practical methods to increase SOC% across campus and further combat climate change on a University and community wide scale not commonly considered . Continue reading Soil Organic Carbon at Bucknell University: Land Management Controls for SOC% and Carbon Sequestration