Stephanie Mutz was on track to becoming a professor. She earned a bachelor’s degree in marine biology from the University of California, Santa Barbara, and a master’s degree in tropical marine biology from James Cook University in Australia. But while her thesis was being reviewed she took a job as a deckhand and didn’t look [Full Story] →
Editor’s note: Antone Minthorn has served on the Ecotrust Board of Directors since 2002. For most of his life, Antone Minthorn has served his people and his community. Raised on the Umatilla Indian Reservation by a Cayuse grandfather and a Nez Perce grandmother, Antone learned about the Nez Perce War of 1877 from some of [Full Story] →
On August 9th, 1945 the United States dropped an atomic bomb named “Fat Man” on the city of Nagasaki, Japan. The plutonium used in the bomb was produced in southeastern Washington at the Hanford Nuclear Site. A multi-disciplinary exhibit called Particles on the Wall (POTW) explores the human and environmental legacy of nuclear technology, specifically [Full Story] →
Just days after the public launch of a successful New Markets Tax Credit-supported project, Ecotrust has learned that its subsidiary, Ecotrust CDE, was awarded $45 million of additional New Markets Tax Credit allocation. Ecotrust will put the new federal financing toward innovative initiatives that create economic, social and environmental benefit in rural and disadvantaged communities [Full Story] →
Ecotrust Forest Management has been named one of the top 67 companies in the world for overall social and environmental impact by the nonprofit group B Lab. B Lab chose this “Best for the World” list from over 700 Certified B Corporations worldwide. With the release of the second annual “Best for the World” list, [Full Story] →
Editor’s Note: Oil and gas development proposals are rampant across British Columbia, punctuated by Enbridge, Inc.’s plan to build a pipeline across the province, to carry bitumen from Alberta’s tar sands to the Pacific. In an excerpt from a piece that appeared March 17 in the Toronto Star, former Ecotrust leader Ian Gill looks at why Canadians and, especially B.C. First Nations groups, are saying: no way. And in the extended piece, he suggests that indigenous people lead the revisioning of economic development for this century. By Ian Gill One week before Christmas, 2012, the B.C. government announced a permanent [Full Story] →
As the swing states of Pennsylvania and Ohio decided the White House race this fall, another drama — perhaps of greater long-term importance — was playing out on the ground on election day, well below the national media radar. Communities in those two states, joining a growing number across the country, cast a vote for self-determination, by passing local laws that establish inalienable rights of nature and the community, and ban dangerous practices such as hydraulic fracturing for shale gas. It’s part of a growing nationwide movement, inspired and encouraged by a little-known, forward-thinking Pennsylvania-based group called the Community Environmental [Full Story] →
Imagine the essential transformations necessary to live well in the years ahead — the progress we must make toward healthy, local and diverse sources of food, water and energy, meaningful jobs, lively cities, and functioning ecosystems. The goal is enormous, but the steps are clear. We must start by asking: Is there a way to encourage an ethical, social movement in these directions and make money at the same time? Might there be a more natural model of development that generates competitive financial returns to workers and investors while actually improving social and environmental conditions? How do we find financial [Full Story] →
In this world of broken economies, broken climates, and broken institutions, it’s an opportune time to ask: what if native people were in charge? On Haida Gwaii (the Islands of the People) off northern British Columbia, an area one-third the size of BC’s lengthy Vancouver Island, native Haida are back in charge. They don’t just oversee a pittance of a government-defined reservation. They own and co-manage the whole place, as a matter of sovereignty and inherent rights, part of a series of hard-won stands, court cases, alliances, negotiations and the occasional reconciliation agreement over the last two decades with the [Full Story] →
It would be perfectly alright for Landry Ndriko Mayigane to celebrate normalcy. He could clock in and out at his government job monitoring diseases and expansion in the Rwandan poultry industry. He could sit back and marvel at how Rwanda’s capital city of Kigali, his home, is becoming liveable — expanding and cleaning up, as President Paul Kagame aggressively pushes modernization. He could find a wife and settle down. And given his country’s past, that would be enough. Instead, Mayigane, 31, is in constant motion. A trilingual veterinary doctor whose passport is thick with stamps, he has ambitions to be [Full Story] →
