Xavier Basurto, Truman and Nellie Semans/Alex Brown & Sons Associate Professor of sustainability science, studies community-based marine conservation. Basurto discusses how fishers can help us understand the effects of climate change by listening to their experiences.

This year’s global Earth Day theme is “planet vs plastics”, and calls for the rapid phase out all single-use plastics.

Xavier Basurto is broadly interested in how people in small communities successfully organize themselves for collective action. His recent talk described his work in advancing the understanding of non-colonialist sustainability science: the prospects and limitations of self-organization, or self-governance, for social-ecological sustainability, particularly in the Global South.

PhD student Renata Poulton Kamakura has been working with Duke Landscape Services and undergraduate students in the Theory and Applications of Sustainability (ENV 245) course to determine how the more than 17,000 trees on the Duke University campus benefit sustainability—including their effect on carbon sequestration and stormwater mitigation.

When it comes to making communities and businesses greener, re-thinking the “little” stuff we often take for granted—like zoning, logistics and cement—can yield big benefits.

New research finds nearly 75% of the seafood exported to China is processed there and ‘re-exported’ to global markets as Chinese products, making it hard to track its sustainability and verify it’s labeled accurately, but also gutting the economies of small fishing communities worldwide that can no longer compete.

McDonald’s CEO and Duke alumnus Chris Kempczinski (AB’91) spoke with Toddi Steelman (PhD ’96), Stanback Dean of the Nicholas School of the Environment, about ways the corporation is working to drive climate action, create circular solutions to reduce waste and further its commitment to our planet.

The Duke Aquafarm is Duke’s other “campus farm,” where students grow oysters instead of produce and learn how the tasty bivalves could help take a bite out of coastal pollution.

Duke University researchers have created a new online resource designed to help local governments, conservation groups, businesses and other stakeholders identify the best technologies to clean up plastic pollution in our oceans or prevent it from getting there in the first place.

When Deborah Gallagher and her students began working on a study for the UN Global Compact about business leadership for planetary health two years ago, she never dreamed she’d end up sharing the stage at one of the biggest climate events in recent history.

This Nicholas School multimedia feature focuses on the important ongoing research of Elizabeth Shapiro-Garza, associate professor of the practice of environmental policy and management, with a small nonprofit organization in Oaxaca that works to protect threatened ecosystems by empowering local rural communities to find new ways to benefit from and be compensated for their traditional environmental management practices.