Protecting Nature and Ourselves

To protect our natural environment we must work for systemical cultural changes both big and small.  There are many things you can do to help.  No one can do it all, but each of us can do something. Here are some practical strategies for developing partnership relations with our natural world: at home, at school, at work, and in the community.

At Home

• Support CPS in its continuing efforts to spread partnership world-wide.
• Recycle and reuse when possible.
• Buy biodegradable soaps and pesticide-free produce.
• Use nontoxic methods of pest and weed control.
• Use energy-efficient light bulbs and drive a car that has fewer emissions and better gas mileage.
• Call phone-in talk shows and counter the lack of information in the media.
• Write editorials for the mainstream press.
• Vote for government officials who support funding for family planning both at home and abroad.
• Work to get those who oppose this funding out of office.
• Invest in stock from socially and environmentally responsible businesses.

At School

• Support Partnership Education that includes environmental education.
• Ask your school district to replace diesel school buses with natural gas, or better still, with electric school buses. 

At Work

• Adopt manufacturing methods to recycle materials and avoid waste.
• Join environmentally responsible professional and business organizations such as Businesses for Social, the Social Venture Network, Computer Professionals for Social Responsibility, and the World Business Academy.
• Encourage your workplace to conserve energy and water.
• Encourage your workplace to use recycled paper products.

In the Community

• Lobby for government regulations that protect our environment.
• Join groups such as Planned Parenthood International, Population Action International, Zero Population Growth, the Pathfinder Fund and the Population Institute that provide family planning technologies.
• Write legislators to support the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA), which mounted a massive educational campaign that links overpopulation with environmental and human rights issues.
• Join environmental organizations, for example, the Union of Concerned Scientists, the Sierra Club, and the Earth Island Institute.
• Write your representatives not to weaken the Kyoto Protocol, an international treaty to reduce emissions of the gases that cause global warming.
• Write the Environmental Protection Agency and ask that genetically-engineered products not be sold until tested for long term effects, and then clearly labeled.

Remember that you are not alone, that thousands of groups all over the world are working to restore our Earth. But more of us need to also work to change the values that are driving us to the brink of ecological disaster. We urgently need cultural values that support partnership rather than domination -- that teach us that we are part of a miraculous web of life interconnected with our Mother Earth. We need to strengthen partnership values and leave behind the old programming of conquest and control that has kept us from moving to more balanced and harmonious relations with ourselves, with others, and with Nature.

Adapted from The Power of Partnership: Seven Relationships that Will Change Your Life (2002) by Riane Eisler.