The University of New Mexico
AC-7: Center for Sustainability Research

 

 

Transformation Network (TN): The TN aims to build resilient communities and ecosystems throughout the Intermountain Western United States. Research at UNM includes wildfire and watersheds, food sovereignty and regenerative agriculture, and water futures. The TN is supported by a grant from the National Science Foundation’s Sustainable Regional Systems Program, which aims to support convergent research and education that will advance sustainable regional systems science, engineering, and education (NSF Grant # 2115169).

Center for Environmental Arts & Humanities (CEAH): The CEAH fosters research-based creative practices and scholarship in environmental humanities to address—what many people consider—are the two most consequential planetary-scale crises in human history: ‘biological annihilation’, which includes species extinctions and population declines; and ‘climate breakdown’, variously called, climate change, climate emergency, and global warming. Its students, undergraduate and graduate, and faculty collaborators come from a number of colleges, departments, centers, and institutes from across the UNM, including the College of Fine Arts, School of Architecture and Planning, College of Arts & Sciences, Indigenous Design + Planning Institute, and the Center for Regional Studies.

Just Transition Grand Challenge: This university research Grand Challenge is developing inclusive, just solutions to climate change at the speed necessary to prevent catastrophic harms. Policy measures to reduce greenhouse gas emissions are well known, but policymakers in New Mexico and at the federal level are only beginning to grapple with how to ensure that this transition will be equitable for all people. The Just Transition Grand Challenge seeks to identify and evaluate the opportunities, challenges, and policy options for achieving this inclusive and equitable transition, with a focus on creating economic opportunities for members of disadvantaged communities—particularly Hispanic, Native, and Black communities and fossil fuel worker communities. This Grand Challenge brings together a diverse team from the disciplines of political science, population health, business, engineering, and law, as well as external community partners, to develop the foundation for an institute to be housed at UNM that can support the state of New Mexico in this important transition. 

There are a number of research units at UNM focused on subjects other than sustainability, but that produce sustainability research:

 

The Center for Fire Resilient Ecosystems and Society (FiRES) is an interdisciplinary center at UNM that was developed to improve ecosystem and societal resilience to wildfire. It conducts fundamental and applied research to develop next-generation fire and vegetation models, quantify the economic costs and benefits of managing for fire resilience, and quantify and mitigate the effects of air quality and public health.

The Center for Responsible Entrepreneurship hosts a research center that blends context, culture, and history into new ways to lead within the intersections of business, society, environment, and governance. It also convenes environmental, social and governance changemakers – collaborating on mutual goals and initiatives in New Mexico. New Mexico for Good is a complementary effort that combines research, teaching, and convenings focused on certified B Corps, Benefit Corporations and other businesses that have or are interested in institutionalizing responsible business practices such as through Fair Trade, 1% for the Planet, Conscious Capitalism and others.

Sevilleta Long-Term Ecological Research Center (LTER): A Long-Term Ecological Research program in New Mexico that expands the understanding of biological processes in drylands through addressing big questions in ecology, centered on environmental variability.

 

METALS Superfund Research Center: Studies the toxic effects of mixed metals and uranium exposure on tribal communities in the Southwest.

 

Center for Health Equity: Organizes and establishes opportunities for infrastructure and collaboration on research projects that focus on social justice in nursing and public health emergency preparedness in the field of planetary health and informed through the Planetary Health Education Framework (PHEF).

 

Center for Pedestrian and Bicycle Safety: CPBS's goal is to eliminate pedestrian and bicyclist fatalities and serious injuries. CPBS pursues this goal through research, education, technology transfer, and workforce development.

 

The TREE Center: Based in the College of Population Health, this center leads transdisciplinary academic-community team science that highlights the social determinants of behavioral health, including Adverse Childhood Experiences, historical trauma, and intersectional effects of poverty and discrimination to improve conditions and outcomes related to youth suicide, alcohol and drug misuse, depression, and access to behavioral health services. 

 

Center for Social Policy (CSP): An initiative within the College of Arts and Sciences that is charged with integrating the work of the UNM Cradle to Career Policy Institute and the UNM Native American Budget and Policy Institute (NABPI). CSP is also sustaining the mission of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Center for Health Policy by continuing to engage in research focused on racial and ethnic inequalities across health and well-being outcomes, and health policy more broadly. The CSP research and administrative teams continues to work at bridging applied policy and academic research in our approach to help advance our mission to improve social policy outcomes.