Access to nature is beneficial to everyone, including persons with disabilities. Increasingly research shows that time in nature provides a range of physical, emotional and mental benefits and can enhance a sense of belonging. However, accessibility issues mean that the disability community is often excluded from the outdoors. This webinar will address the current environment of access, barriers to the outdoors, and how we can make nature more accessible.

• Jeremy S. Buzzell – Branch Chief, Accessibility Management Program, U.S. National Park Service

• Riss Leitzke – Program Coordinator, Wilderness Inquiry

• Kristine Perry – Staff Attorney, Environmental Law Institute

• Stuart Seaborn – Managing Director, Litigation, Disability Rights Advocates

Emily G. Bergeron (Moderator) – Assistant Professor, Department of Historic Preservation, University of Kentucky College of Design; Vice Chair, Environmental Justice Committee, ABA Section of Civil Rights and Social Justice

Register HERE.

Please join the Animal Legal Education Initiative at The George Washington University Law School as they host its Inaugural Spring Symposium on March 24, 2023, titled: Animals and the Anthropocene: A Legal Scholarship Symposium. The Symposium will be co-hosted by the GW Law Environmental and Energy Law Program and the GW Law chapter of the Student Animal Legal Defense Fund (SALDF). If you are interested in information submitting a proposal to be a presenter or discussant, please CLICK HERE.

The deadline for submissions is January 20, 2023, by 11:59 pm Eastern Standard Time. The Program Committee will review all proposals received by this date and respond by January 30, 2023.

This Symposium is free and open to everyone interested in attending. It will take place primarily in person at GW Law School in Washington DC, with limited options to attend or present remotely. The in-person Symposium will feature all-vegan catering, including breakfast, lunch, and light refreshments at an evening reception.

If you are interested in attending without being a presenter or Discussant, stay tuned: the registration page will be available in early 2023. At that time, we will provide information about travel and nearby accommodations. 

Questions? Email aleisymposium@law.gwu.edu

Philippe Sands and Jonathan Bate discuss climate change and biodiversity loss in this inaugural ASU-KCL Environmental Humanities lecture.

Register HERE.

Register HERE!

CONVERSATION: Dialogue with leaders of the movement on the approval of the #NatureRights at the Constitutional Convention in #Chile

Constanza San Juan, Alberto Acosta, Pablo Solón, Enrique Viale, Natalia Greene and Carolina Palma, with Henny Freitas as moderator, will be participating in this event.

Tuesday 29 March

11:30 am Ecuador time

13:30 Chile, Brazil, Argentina

Registration link: bit.ly/3DmgDhB

You will be able to watch live on the Facebook accounts of GARN, GARN Latin America and the International Court for the Rights of Nature.

CEJ's Director, Margaret R. Stewart, will be participating in the Twelfth Annual Dimensions of Political Ecology (DOPE) Conference entitled "Guiding Idea: Radical Imaginings & EcoFuturisms" on the "Ecocentric Governance: Earth Jurisprudence, Rights of Nature, and Shifting Legal and Policy Approaches (II)" panel.

The Conference will be taking place from March 24-26, 2022 and will include a variety of speakers and panels discussing the future of political ecology.

For more information and to register, please visit http://politicalecology.org/"

The International Committee of the Green Party US with The Green Party of Florida and The Green Party of New Jersey invites all to attend, Rights of Nature and Antarctica Rights on February 5, 2022, from 1 to 3:00 PM ET, online during the 2022 Global Greens Virtual Conference, Connecting For Green Action.

GARN's Cormac Cullinan will be participating in the event as a speaker.

The newest #RightsofNature initiative aims to protect the Antarctic and the Southern Ocean. A call for global input on the zero-draft, democratically-created, Declaration for Antarctica Rights, launching on Earth Day 2022, can be found at antarcticarights.org.

Register for the February 5th, 2022 Global Greens Virtual Conference, Connecting for Green Action, at connectingforgreenaction.org.

Conversation with Craig M. Kauffman and Pamela L. Martin, authors of “The Politics of #RightsofNature: Strategies for building a more sustainable future” book, hosted by GARN Youth Hub

Feb 3, 10 am EST

Sign up to the conversation: https://us02web.zoom.us/.../tZEtf--hrz8rHt1QqhBpUj02bSa...

Get the book today: https://mitpress.mit.edu/books/politics-rights-nature

Mary Evelyn Tucker PhD

The Interfaith Shared Scholar 2020

Lecture: “The Interface between Environmental Concerns & Spirituality”

Sunday, January 26, 2020 at 4:00 PM

Sanibel Congregational United Church of Christ

2050 Periwinkle Way

Sanibel, FL 33957

 Seminar: “Thomas Berry & the Rights of Nature”

Monday, January 27 from 9AM – 1PM

Sanibel Congregational United Church of Christ

Mary Evelyn Tucker, with co-authors John Grim and Andrew Angyal, has written the first biography about Thomas Berry, one of the 20th Century’s most prescient and profound thinkers. A former historian of world religions, his insights about humans’ relationship to the cosmos and our interdependence with a living Earth inspire and provoke a wider and deeper awareness of who we are.

Mary Evelyn and John were not only Berry’s students for over thirty years, they were editors and most importantly, dear friends. These dynamic and insightful scholars are all engaging story tellers.

You won’t want to miss hearing about Berry’s wisdom, Earth Jurisprudence,

“The Journey of the Universe”, and opportunities for the 21st Century.

 Read “Thomas Berry & The Rights of Nature” 

 KOSMOS Magazine 

https://www.kosmosjournal.org/kj_article/thomas-berry-and-the-rights-of-nature/

Mary Evelyn Tucker is a Senior Lecturer and Research Scholar at Yale University where she has appointments in the School of Forestry and Environmental Studies as well as the Divinity School and the Department of Religious Studies. She teaches in the joint MA program in religion and ecology and directs the Forum on Religion and Ecology at Yale with her husband, John Grim. Her special area of study is Asian religions. She received her Ph.D. from Columbia University in Japanese Confucianism.

Tucker’s concern for the growing environmental crisis, especially in Asia, led her to organize, with John Grim, a series of ten conferences on World Religions and Ecology at the Center for the Study of World Religions at Harvard (1995-1998). After the conference series she and Grim founded the Forum on Religion and Ecology at a culminating conference at the United Nations in 1998. They now direct the Forum at Yale where they also teach religion and ecology. http://fore.yale.edu/

The Shared Scholar programs are an interfaith offering sponsored by the Captiva Chapel by the Sea, Bat Yam - Temple of the Islands, Saint Michael and All Angels Episcopal Church, Christian Science Church of Sanibel and SCUCC, as well as the Leo Rosner Foundation.

For more information, call 239-472-0497 or visit www.sanibelucc.org

IF YOU ARE COMING TO OUR KICKOFF IN HIGH SPRINGS, PLEASE BRING YOUR OWN CHAIR! I just heard that there are not many seats at the brewery. I'll post this on the event page, too. Please share this info with others who might be planning to come. Thanks!

Santa Fe River Bill of Rights Campaign Kickoff Set for Aug. 27th and 29th in High Springs and Gainesville

The public is invited to back-to-back SAFEBOR kickoff events, beginning at 6 p.m. on Tuesday, Aug. 27th at the High Springs Brewing Company* in downtown High Springs at 18562 NW 237th St.

(*Note change in venue location. This alternate location is across the street from the previously scheduled North Florida Springs Environmental Center.)

The Gainesville event begins at 6 p.m. on Thursday, Aug. 29th at the Millhopper branch library at 3145 NW 43rd St.

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The Santa Fe River Bill of Rights (SAFEBOR) campaign to enact new legal safeguards for the beloved river bordering Alachua County officially kicks off with events on Aug. 27th and 29th in High Springs and Gainesville.

If the ballot initiative is approved by Alachua County voters in the 2020 general election, the county’s home rule charter will be amended to recognize the right of the Santa Fe River to naturally exist and flourish as an ecosystem, and the river’s right to be free of activities or practices that infringe upon those rights.

Existing regulatory laws have failed to protect Florida waters, organizers say, and falling aquifers and slime-filled rivers and springs with diminished flows increasingly are the focus of news stories and citizen concern. Since the Santa Fe River springs are the top layer of groundwater that provides our drinking water, another serious concern is the health of that drinking water.

In order to secure a spot on the November 2020 ballot, campaign organizers and volunteers are poised to gather more than 18,000 petition signatures from registered Alachua County voters in the next six months. With voter approval, Alachua County will be legally positioned to elevate the rights of communities and nature above the claimed “rights” of corporations to harm public waters within the Santa Fe rivershed in Alachua County.

“The effort to grant legal rights to natural systems is part of a visionary new movement being adopted within the United States and internationally because people recognize that we need to fundamentally change the ways we are living with Mother Nature,” says SAFEBOR steering committee member David Moritz, who is also chair of the Alachua County Environmental Protection Advisory Committee.

The voters of Toledo, Ohio made headlines earlier this year when they overwhelmingly passed the Lake Erie Bill of Rights in the wake of a 2014 emergency shutdown of their city's municipal water supply, rendered unsafe to drink for three days by toxic algae and impacting more than half a million residents.

Ballot language and informational literature will be available and attendees will be encouraged to take home petition gathering kits. Donations to cover expenses for the all-volunteer campaign will be welcomed.

The other SAFEBOR steering committee members are nature photographer John Moran; writer Lu Merritt, who has worked with several springs defender groups in North Florida; and Merrillee Malwitz-Jipson, a founding member of Our Santa Fe River.

Be sure to join our friends at AELA for this informative symposium that can be attended in person or online. For more information click here!