The Center for Humans and Nature is a

nonprofit A nonprofit organization (NPO), also known as a nonbusiness entity, nonprofit institution, not-for-profit organization, or simply a nonprofit, is a non-governmental (private) legal entity organized and operated for a collective, public, or so ...

, non-partisan organization with a mission to explore and promote human responsibilities in relation to nature. The organization is headquartered in

Libertyville, Illinois Libertyville is a village in Libertyville Township, Lake County, Illinois, Libertyville Township, Lake County, Illinois, United States. It is located west of Lake Michigan, approximately 40 miles north of the Chicago Loop. As such, it is part o ...

History

The organization was founded in 2003 by Strachan Donnelley, Ph.D. a philosopher and ethicist who began his career at the

Hastings Center The Hastings Center for Bioethics is an independent, nonpartisan bioethics research institute in Garrison, New York. Its mission is to address ethical issues in health care, science, and technology. Through its projects and publications and its pu ...

. Donnelley founded the Center to explore the role of ethical thinking—based in an

environmental ethics In environmental philosophy, environmental ethics is an established field of practical philosophy "which reconstructs the essential types of argumentation that can be made for protecting natural entities and the sustainable use of natural resourc ...

—for informing individual and political decision-making.

About the Center for Humans and Nature

The Center provides in-depth and diverse perspectives about what it means to be human in an interconnected world. Contributors and Editorial Fellows for the Center’s publications and projects have included

philosophers Philosophy ('love of wisdom' in Ancient Greek) is a systematic study of general and fundamental questions concerning topics like existence, reason, knowledge, value, mind, and language. It is a rational and critical inquiry that reflects on ...

biologists A biologist is a scientist who conducts research in biology. Biologists are interested in studying life on Earth, whether it is an individual cell, a multicellular organism, or a community of interacting populations. They usually specialize in ...

ecologists This is a list of notable ecologists. A-D * John Aber (United States) * Aziz Ab'Saber (Brazil) * Charles Christopher Adams (United States) * Warder Clyde Allee (United States) * Herbert G. Andrewartha (Australia) * Sarah Martha Baker ( ...

lawyers A lawyer is a person who is qualified to offer advice about the law, draft legal documents, or represent individuals in legal matters. The exact nature of a lawyer's work varies depending on the legal jurisdiction and the legal system, as wel ...

political scientists The following is a list of notable political scientists. Political science is the scientific study of politics, a social science dealing with systems of governance and power. A * Robert Abelson – Yale University psychologist and political ...

anthropologists An anthropologist is a scientist engaged in the practice of anthropology. Anthropologists study aspects of humans within past and present societies. Social anthropology, cultural anthropology and philosophical anthropology study the norms, values ...

artists An artist is a person engaged in an activity related to creating art, practicing the arts, or demonstrating the work of art. The most common usage (in both everyday speech and academic discourse) refers to a practitioner in the visual arts o ...

poets A poet is a person who studies and creates poetry. Poets may describe themselves as such or be described as such by others. A poet may simply be the creator (thought, thinker, songwriter, writer, or author) who creates (composes) poems (oral t ...

, and

economists An economist is a professional and practitioner in the social science discipline of economics. The individual may also study, develop, and apply theories and concepts from economics and write about economic policy. Within this field there are ...

.” The Center has co-hosted events with the

Chicago Botanic Garden The Chicago Botanic Garden is a botanical garden situated on nine islands in the northern Cook County Forest Preserves. It features 27 display gardens and five natural habitats including Mary Mix McDonald Woods, Barbara Brown Nature Reserve, Di ...

Lincoln Park Zoo Lincoln Park Zoo, also known as Lincoln Park Zoological Gardens, is a zoo in Lincoln Park, Chicago, Illinois. The zoo was founded in 1868 and is the second oldest zoo in the United States. It is also one of a small number of zoos to offer fr ...

Peggy Notebaert Nature Museum The Peggy Notebaert Nature Museum is a natural history museum located in Chicago, Illinois, United States, and operated by the Chicago Academy of Sciences. The museum traces its history to the founding collection of the academy in 1857. After a ...

School of the Art Institute of Chicago The School of the Art Institute of Chicago (SAIC) is a Private university, private art school associated with the Art Institute of Chicago (AIC) in Chicago, Illinois. Tracing its history to an art students' cooperative founded in 1866, which gr ...

American Museum of Natural History The American Museum of Natural History (AMNH) is a natural history museum on the Upper West Side of Manhattan in New York City. Located in Theodore Roosevelt Park, across the street from Central Park, the museum complex comprises 21 interconn ...

Western Colorado University Western Colorado University (WCU or Western) is a public university in Gunnison, Colorado. It enrolls approximately 3,000 undergraduate and 450 graduate students, with 25 percent coming from out of state. Western offers more than 100 undergradu ...

Wisconsin Public Radio Wisconsin Public Radio (WPR) is a network of 38 public radio radio station, stations in the state of Wisconsin. WPR's network is divided into two distinct services, the ''WPR News Network'' and the ''WPR Music Network''. History Wisconsin Publ ...

Point Reyes Books
an
New School at Commonweal
The Center has also partnered with the nationally syndicated public radio show

To the Best of Our Knowledge ''To the Best of Our Knowledge'' (also known by the acronym TTBOOK) is a weekly public-radio interview program produced by Wisconsin Public Radio and distributed by PRX. It is broadcast on more than 180 public radio stations in the U.S. and it a ...

on a podcast series. Event and podcast participants have included

Robin Wall Kimmerer Robin Wall Kimmerer (born September 13, 1953) is a Potawatomi botanist, author, and the director of the Center for Native Peoples and the Environment at the State University of New York College of Environmental Science and Forestry (SUNY-ESF). ...

David Abram David Abram is an American ecologist and philosopher best known for his work bridging the philosophical tradition of phenomenology with environmental and ecological issues. He is the author of ''Becoming Animal: An Earthly Cosmology'' (2010) and ' ...

Jane Goodall Dame Jane Morris Goodall (; born Valerie Jane Morris-Goodall; 3 April 1934), formerly Baroness Jane van Lawick-Goodall, is an English zoologist, Primatology, primatologist and Anthropology, anthropologist. She is considered the world's foremo ...

Kathleen Dean Moore Kathleen Dean Moore (born 1947, Berea, Ohio) is a philosopher, writer, and environmental activist from Oregon State University. Her early creative nonfiction writing focused on the cultural and spiritual values of the natural world, especially sh ...

, Sharon Blackie, Enrique Salmon,

Suzanne Simard Suzanne Simard (born 1960)Cori Vanchierim'An ecologist’s new book gets at the root of trees’ social lives,' Science News 28 June 2021 is a Canadian forestry scientist and conservationist who is best known for her research on forest ecology ...

Gary Paul Nabhan Gary Paul Nabhan (born 1952) is an agricultural ecologist, Ethnobotanist, Ecumenical Franciscan Brother, and author whose work has focused primarily on the plants and cultures of the desert Southwest. He is considered a pioneer in the local foo ...

, and

Julian Agyeman Julian K. Agyeman is a professor of Urban & Environmental Policy & Planning and Fletcher Professor of Rhetoric and Debate at Tufts University. He is a co-founder and the editor-in-chief of the journal '' Local Environment''. During his career, Ag ...

Publications and Media

The Center for Humans and Nature publishes stories and ideas online and in print that explore our relationships and responsibilities to nature and provide in-depth and diverse perspectives related to arts, humanity, and nature.

Stories & Ideas

The Center for Humans and Nature's online digital publications are housed under Stories & Ideas. These “Stories & Ideas” are featured in a diversity of forms—essays, art, interviews, poems, reviews, and videos—with a variety of contributors sharing their diverse perspectives on themes such as: Animals & Plants, Care, Climate Change, Community, Cosmos, Culture, Healing, Justice, Land & Water, Language, Practice, Reciprocity, Sacred, Sovereignty, and Urban Nature. Contributors have included

Rebecca Solnit Rebecca Solnit (born 1961) is an American writer and activist. She has written on a variety of subjects, including feminism, the environment, politics, place, and art. Solnit is the author of seventeen books, including '' River of Shadows'', whi ...

adrienne maree brown Adrienne Maree Brown, often styled adrienne maree brown (born September 6, 1978), is a writer, activist and facilitator. From 2006 to 2010, she was executive director of the Ruckus Society. She also co-founded and directed the United States Leag ...

Tommy Orange Tommy Orange (born January 19, 1982) is an American novelist and writer from Oakland, California. His first book, '' There There'' (2018), was a finalist for the 2019 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction and received the 2019 American Book Award. Orange ...

Mary Midgley Mary Beatrice Midgley (' Scrutton; 13 September 1919 – 10 October 2018) was a British philosopher. A senior lecturer in philosophy at Newcastle University, she was known for her work on science, ethics and animal rights. She wrote her first b ...

David Sloan Wilson David Sloan Wilson (born 1949) is an American evolutionary biologist and a Distinguished Professor Emeritus of Biological Sciences and Anthropology at Binghamton University. He is a son of author Sloan Wilson, a co-founder of Evolution Institu ...

Benjamin Barber Benjamin R. Barber (August 2, 1939 – April 24, 2017) was an American political theorist and author, perhaps best known for his 1995 bestseller, '' Jihad vs. McWorld'', and for 2013's ''If Mayors Ruled the World''. His 1984 book of political ...

, Robin Kimmerer,

Maude Barlow Maude Victoria Barlow (born May 24, 1947) is a Canadian author and activist. She is a founding member and former board chair of The Council of Canadians, a citizens' advocacy organization with members and chapters across Canada. She is also the ...

Herman Daly Herman Edward Daly (July 21, 1938 – October 28, 2022) was an American ecological and Georgist economist and professor at the School of Public Policy of University of Maryland, College Park in the United States, best known for his time as a ...

Bill McKibben William Ernest McKibben (born December 8, 1960)"Bill Ernest McKibben." ''Environmental Encyclopedia''. Edited by Deirdre S. Blanchfield. Farmington Hills, Mich.: Gale, 2009. Retrieved via ''Biography in Context'' database, December 31, 2017. is a ...

Sharon Olds Sharon Olds (born November 19, 1942) is an American poet. She won the first San Francisco Poetry Center Award in 1980, the 1984 National Book Critics Circle Award, and the 2013 Pulitzer Prize for Poetry.

Nalini Nadkarni Nalini Nadkarni (1954) is an American forest ecologist who pioneered the study of Costa Rican rain forest canopy (biology), canopies. Using mountaineering, mountain climbing equipment to make her ascent, Nadkarni first took an inventory of the can ...

, Hans Joachim Schellnhuber,

Vandana Shiva Vandana Shiva (born 5 November 1952) is an Indian scholar, environmental activist, food sovereignty advocate, ecofeminist and anti-globalization author. Based in Delhi, Shiva has written more than 20 books. She is often referred to as "Ga ...

, and

James Gustave Speth James Gustave (Gus) Speth (born on March 4, 1942) is an American environmental lawyer and advocate who co-founded the Natural Resources Defense Council. Early life and education He was born in Orangeburg, South Carolina in 1942. He graduated ...

, among others.

''Minding Nature''

The Center publishes ''Minding Nature'', formerly a tri-annual journal (2008–2021), and currently an annual journal that “explores ecological responsibilities, values, and practices.”

Center for Humans and Nature Press

The Center for Humans and Nature Press is the Center's independent publishing wing—exploring themes of human interconnection with nature and human responsibilities to the whole community of life. The Center for Humans and Nature Press print publications include the five-volume book series, ''Kinship: Belonging in a World Relations''. Edited by Gavin Van Horn,

, and John Hausdoerffer, ''Kinship'' is a five-book anthology that explores humanity's deep interconnections with the living world. The five Kinship volumes—Planet, Place, Partners, Persons, Practice—offer essays, interviews, poetry, and stories that highlight the interdependence that exists between humans and nonhuman beings. The Kinship book series is part of a larger project that also includes the Making Kin online art exhibition and the Kinship with the More-Than–Human World podcast in partnership with To the Best of Our Knowledge.

References

External links

* https://www.humansandnature.org/ {{Authority control Environmental organizations based in Chicago