Urbanization can negatively affect residents’ health and wellbeing. Green stormwater infrastructure (GSI) is increasingly advocated as a win-win strategy for addressing multiple urban problems. Literature quantifying GSI benefits is growing, but it is unclear how it performs in arid and semi-arid cities. This study, co-designed with practitioner partners in Phoenix, Arizona, evaluates the current state of knowledge on GSI performance with respect to hydrologic, water quality, urban heat, and air quality benefits. Our systematic literature review confirms a lack of research quantifying GSI performance in arid and semi-arid cities. Our findings, which we summarize in the paper and present in a searchable, online database, suggest that GSI is beneficial in mitigating runoff, urban heat, and air pollution in the surrounding area to some degree. Results for water quality are more mixed. This points to the need for more GSI monitoring and research, especially of air and water quality benefits.

Jewish observance of shmita (alternatively spelled shemitah)—the sabbatical year, or seventh (sheviit) year—is changing. Historically rooted in agriculture, modern Jewish environmentalists are seizing upon the long-ignored environmental and social justice (tikkun olam) aspects of shmita as originally described in the five books of Moses, the Torah in the Hebrew Bible, the basis of Jewish law. Primary research was conducted through key-stakeholder interviews with leading American and Israeli Jewish environmentalists and thought leaders. They see shmita as a core Jewish value—one that, like Shabbat, the Jewish sabbath, has the power to transform society. Their work has brought shmita from an obscure law dealt with mainly by Israel’s Orthodox to a new Jewish ethos being discussed across the United States, Europe, Israel, and even on the floor of Knesset, Israel’s parliament. This article also describes shmita as delineated in the Torah and through the rabbinic canon of halacha (Jewish law), and explains shmita practice from biblical times to the present day.

How much is religion quantitatively involved in global climate politics? After assessing the role of the Conference of Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change from a normative perspective, this descriptive, transdisciplinary and unconventional study offers the first comprehensive quantitative examination of religious nongovernmental organizations that formally participate in its annual meetings, the largest attempts to solve the climate crisis through global governance. This study finds that although their numbers are growing, only about 3 percent of registered nongovernmental organizations accredited to participate in the conference are overtly religious in nature—and that more than 80 percent of those faith-based groups are Christian. Additionally, this study finds that religious nongovernmental organizations that participate in the conference are mostly from the Global North. The results call for greater participation of religious institutions in the international climate negotiations in order for society to address the planetary emergency of climate change.

After Hurricane Maria, Puerto Rico experienced the second-largest blackout in modern history, with parts of the island left without power for up to 18 months. Because the problems of Maria are multifold, this case study and review presents the historical, political, social, economic and cultural context of Puerto Rico, including a review of post-Maria solar interventions, along with two novel unconventional hybrid approaches to solving the problems of Maria: (i) Solar de Autogestión, a solar-energy racking that permits panel removal and storage in advance of a storm’s arrival and reinstallation after the storm passes—a system that was developed through (ii) collaboratory-action parachuting, a novel community-interaction method developed as an oral history-based applied-scholarship hybrid of conventional parachuting research and community-based participatory research. This paper finds that addressing the problems of Maria involves understanding the holistic context of a place and its people; working in partnership with communities to form collaborations; and providing disaster response, addressing climate change, and expressing allyship and solidarity with communities through hurricane-resilient solar energy to help create energy citizenship and an energy community. Befitting its unconventional methodologies, this transdisciplinary paper—which by its nature may not fit neatly into any single discipline—also takes an unabridged, critical and hybrid descriptive-normative approach to subject matter and style, coupling academic sourcing and discourse with quotes, narrative details and fluid writing in order to be accessible to academics, policymakers and practitioners alike.