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5th Annual Keeping Nature Alive Symposium announced: “Implementing the Biosphere Ethics Initiative in the Indiana Dunes Region”

Global Program, City Creatures: Rediscovering Human-Animal Relationships in Chicago’s Urban Wilderness

October 29th, 2009

The CHN North American Global Responsibilities Program will work closely with its regional partners to develop a local Biosphere Ethic for the Indiana Dunes Region, leading to the 5th Annual Symposium in September 2010. The purpose of the local ethic will be to influence local governance structures and organizations to take biodiversity conservation ethics into consideration when planning. It will be the first local implementation of the global Biosphere Ethics Initiative, a soft law programme based in the social movement theory that pragmatic, justicial change occurs “from below.” Planning meetings have begun with the Save the Dunes Council and the Lake Michigan Coastal Program of the Indiana Department of Natural Resources. For 10,000 years, water, wind and sand have worked to make the Indiana Dunes a place like no other on Earth, and for more than a century, civil society organizations and government leaders have been struggling to keep the humans and nature of the Indiana Dunes region alive. The Indiana Dunes are located on the banks of Lake Michigan, and with the other Great Lakes (found between the United States and Canada), they make up 20% of the world’s freshwater resources. International oil and steel companies have already found a home here, and there are new global threats daily, such as mining and pipelining. If you would like more information on this project, please contact the CHN lead staff for the initiative, Kathryn Kintzele.

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