« CHN Chicago Office Has Moved!
CHN continues its work on water ethics »

4th Annual Keeping Nature Alive Symposium brings the Biosphere Ethics Initiative back home to Chicago

Global Program, The Biosphere Ethics Initiative

September 20th, 2009

Biosphere Ethics Initiative 2009Each year, the North American Global Responsibilities Program of CHN convenes cross-disciplinary leaders from around the world to build local and international alliances to address pragmatic, locally prevalent, globally relevant issues in conservation ethics. The focus of this year’s meeting, co-sponsored by the Center for U.S.-China Arts Exchange and the Ethics Specialist Group of the IUCN Commission on Environmental Law, was to continue to develop the draft documents of the Biosphere Ethics Initiative, and in the spirit of the living program, convene the fourth Relato on the Yunnan Province of China. The Symposium opened with background presentations on the Biosphere Ethics Initiative and the current draft document. The meeting then took the shape of Roundtable discussions, intermitted by presentations on core topics, as well as the Relato process. The Roundtables included: BEI and the Earth Charter; BEI and the International Conservation Movement; BEI from the Perspective of Global Ethics and World Religions; BEI from the Perspective of Climate Change; International Cooperation for Protecting Biodiversity through Protected Areas in China; and A New Philosophy for Protected Areas. Presentations on core topics included: Governance for Integrity? A Distant but Necessary Goal; Right Relationship: Economics for a Flourishing Earth; Governance and Earth Democracy; and Humans, Nature and Democracy: Ecological Political Economy. The group also viewed a video on integrity, Jim Karr’s “Salmonweb,” courtesy of Laura Westra (Global Ecological Integrity Group); as well as an excerpt from the film, “Journey of the Universe” with Brian Swimme, inspired by “The New Story” of Thomas Berry, courtesy of Mary Evelyn Tucker and John Grim (Forum on Religion and Ecology at Yale). Participants came from across North America and the globe, and included: Gerald W. Adelmann; Teri Allendorf; Patrick Blandin; Donald Brown; Peter G. Brown; Anja Claus; Nigel Dower; Jane Elder; J. Ronald Engel; Joan Gibb Engel; John Grim; Ken Hao; David Harmon; Brooke Hecht; Bruce Jennings; Kathryn Kintzele; Brendan Mackey; Jeff McNeely; Karla Monteiro Matos; Curt Meine; George Rabb; Michael Schröter; Kun Tian; Mary Evelyn Tucker; Laura Westra; Robert Wild; Brandon Whitney; Yuming Yang; and John Zinda . The full meeting report with key conclusions and full participant references is in its final drafting stages and will be made available on the CHN website.

Bookmark and Share

More posts about Chicago, IUCN, biodiversity, ethics

This entry was posted on Sunday, September 20th, 2009 at 10:14 am and is filed under Chicago, IUCN, biodiversity, ethics. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.