Dear Sustainable LA Grand Challenge community,
Welcome to a new era of the UCLA Sustainable LA Grand Challenge with the launch of our new website at www.sustainablela.ucla.edu!
News and Events
More than 20 UCLA faculty and researchers have entered into a $2.6 million agreement to conduct research for the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power to help the city achieve its goal of producing all of its energy from carbon-free and renewable energy sources by 2035 and doing so in ways that benefit all Angelenos equitably.
UCLA hosted the Climate & Wildfire Institute's inaugural convening workshop on June 27 and 28, where more than 100 stakeholders met in person and virtually to help set the agenda for the institute now and into the future.
In the fall of 2020, much of California and the Western U.S. was dealing with, or had already dealt with, the dire effects of a record fire season. The urgency to act and to act quickly had never been greater. Experts in the disparate fields relating to climate change and wildfire research saw an opening.
In the backdrop of a tumultuous 2020 that saw life transformed by the COVID-19 pandemic and the murder of George Floyd, the UCLA Sustainable LA Grand Challenge (SLA GC) committed to placing an even greater emphasis on equity, diversity and inclusion as it relates to the initiative’s goals, and sustainability as a whole, because we can and must do better.
The Sustainable LA Grand Challenge collaborated with the City of Los Angeles and other partners to secure $1 million of funding to implement 200-plus cool blocks — community-specific climate resiliency plans — across Los Angeles.
The Los Angeles City Council has passed a motion setting the ambitious goal of achieving carbon neutrality, without offsets, by 2030, a move supported by the Sustainable LA Grand Challenge (SLA GC) as it continues to leverage UCLA research to push public policy forward in urban sustainability.
The Daily Bruin highlighted the work of the Sustainable LA Grand Challenge (SLA GC) and its executive director, Cassie Rauser, in an article about various sustainability organizations and initiatives housed at UCLA.
Wildlife corridors connect areas of habitat and provide a vital pathway through human development that could otherwise impede biological life of all kinds. Over time, structures like buildings, roads and fences can be barriers to wildlife movement and survival as they fragment the habitat into smaller and smaller pieces.
The 2019 Los Angeles Countywide Sustainability Plan — of which 16 UCLA researchers contributed — was honored at a June 17 virtual ceremony with the Award for Excellence in Sustainability by the American Planning Association (APA) Sustainable Communities Division. The awards honor projects, plans, policies, individuals and organizations whose work is dedicated to supporting sustainable communities.
As society’s dependence on plastics continues, global production is expected to triple to 1,124 million tons by 2050, according to the World Economic Forum. Robin Frohardt, a New York artist, is highlighting the cost of plastic consumption in a new art installation titled, The Plastic Bag Store. Presented by the UCLA Center for the Art of Performance (CAP UCLA), the installation resembles a normal grocery store, except everything is made of thrown-away plastic collected from the streets or landfills.
