The Earth Circle was born at WDN's 2008 conference, when a number of members met informally over the weekend, shared their love and concern for the environment, and expressed excitement about meeting in community with other like-minded WDN members. Global climate change, our broken food and energy systems, and a cultural disregard for the earth and its inhabitants are issues that all WDN members care about and the Earth Circle will work to bring these topics into a place of prominence and passion within our organization.

What We Do

The Earth Circle is focused on addressing environmental issues and on understanding human activity as a subset of environment. This means that issues including environmental justice, human rights and health in the context of environmental issues, indigenous rights, worker safety, public health in relation to environmental toxins, etc. will be considered along with issues of sustainability, waterways and drinking water, global warming, food systems, species extinction, preservation of cultural knowledge regarding medicine, healing, agricultural practices, and the relationships between and among human entities and the rest of the biosphere.

We are working to provide important resources, organize educational calls, build dialogue, advocate for issues, and create community within WDN around the critical and urgent issues that we all face.

Our initial activities as a circle have included educational teleconferences with Winona LaDuke, on the topic of Climate Change, Indigenous Peoples, Communities of Color and Children, and Oran Hesterman, on the topic of Feeding our Future: Eating Our Way to Personal and Planetary Healing.

In May 2009, we organized a two-day convening on Climate Change in Washington, DC to learn from an array of innovative thinkers about how climate change is transforming our planet.

Other calls, events, and resources will address the following areas of concern:

Food and water justice and security

Pollution and toxics

Human rights and environmental and social justice

Biocultural diversity

Species extinction and animal rights

We are especially interested in looking at systemic solutions, studying the particular orientation, knowledge and skills women leaders are bringing to address the environmental challenges that we face.

The Earth Circle reflects WDN’s key issue area of Environment and Food Justice: Fighting for the right for all communities and people to a decent, safe quality of life regardless of race, income or culture in the environments where we all live, work, play, and learn. This is one of our seven key areas of work and study.