Annual Review of Sustainability in Higher Education

Every year, the Association for the Advancement of Sustainability in Higher Education (AASHE) publishes an annual review of sustainability in higher education. The 380-page report, available free from the AASHE website, includes over 1,250 stories that appeared in the weekly AASHE Bulletin last year. Initiatives from nearly 600 higher education institutions are organized into 24 chapters, spanning education and research, campus operations, and administration and finance. In addition, the publication contains over 110 new campus sustainability resources that were released in 2009. You can access the pdf directly by clicking here.

I also just learned about an initiative called the "World Sustainable Development Teach-In Day", which will take place this year on December 3, 2010. I will be posting more about this in the months to come, but for now, you might want to take a look!

World Ocean Day

World Ocean Day was officially on June 8. There is an official web site for the day, which I only discovered today. It would be great if this day was held during the regular University academic year, so that it could be shared with our students at SMU. Perhaps we can think about a SMU Ocean's day event that could occur during the fall or winter semester. I also came across the North American Environmental Atlas which, among many other fantastic resources,includes information about all types of marine protected areas in Canada, Mexico and the United States, offering details about protection status and those responsible to manage the sites.

Sustainability: Choices, Choices, Choices

I came across this article on Richard Black's BBC Earth Watch site, where he reports on a UN umbrella that has been taking a look at what aspects of our global society are the least sustainable; "which things are depleting natural resources fastest, which are causing the most environmental damage, and which are the biggest threats to the prosperity of future generations".

It is an interesting article and it made me think that this could provide a lot of fodder for many courses. In the article, Black links to the United Nations Environment Programme's Division of Technology, Industry and Economics (Sustainable Consumption and Production Branch). I didn't know there was such an entity until I read this article. Not only can you read summary and full reports from the site, there is also a presentation of 33 slides that can be used or modified for a lecture. I found this to be both a useful and interesting resource, from a perspective that I am not used to seeing. For example, did you know that a doubling of income increases carbon dioxide emissions by 80%?

Online environmental videos

There are so many good online resources for videos that can be shown in the classroom. I find that the full-length films are often too long and I don't have time to show the entire show during class time. That's why I like to pull relevant content from sites like TED Talks and Big Picture TV. The nice thing about these sites (beyond places like You Tube) is that they are content rich and always reputable. They also give you the option to search for content under a theme. In this case, I searched for content under the "environment" category on Big Picture TV. This then allowed me to search under sub-categories such as "activism", "business", "design" and "development". I was intrigued by the "education" sub-category because it indicated that there was a talk by David Orr, who I have mentioned as the author of several interesting books in previous posts. After clicking on his name, it took me to five videos that he has on the site. I was intrigued by "What should be the role of nature in education?" Here it is: only 4 minutes, and relevant to my interests with a minimal amount of searching. I hope you find this site to be a useful resource, whether in the classroom or for your own interest.