I recently participated in a lively and well-organized student-run conference on the environment and human rights at Northwestern University in Chicago. The students wanted to demonstrate that the right to live in a healthy and safe environment, free from harm to air, water, and soil, are intricately intertwined with pressing social and economic rights. They see the right to a healthy environment as a fundamental right that precedes all the others. 

We focused on the human aspect of climate change, pollution and declining resources. We heard from well-known activists and changemakers, including Winona LaDuke, American Indian activist and two time US vice presidential candidate on the Green Party ticket, and Njoki Njoroge Njhu, grassroots organizer, ecological activist and women's advocate from Nairobi, Kenya. 

I was on a panel exploring solutions at grassroots and institutional levels. I shared the stage with Vu Thi Bich Hop, Executive Director for the Center for Sustainable Rural Development in Vietnam, and Alaka Wali, curator of North American Anthropology in the Science and Education Division at The Field Museum in Chicago where she works through a participatory action research model in neighborhoods throughout Chicago. My presentation focused on eco-citizenship and our rights and responsibilities as beneficiaries of Nature's ecosystem services and society's socio-cultural offerings and opportunities.

By the end of the conference, Vu Thi Bich Hop, Alaka Wali and I had become friends and collaborators. Alaka Wali's participatory action research framework is a perfect fit for the EcoCitizen World Map Project. And so Ecocity Builders and The Field Museum are now working together to deepen each other's impact by sharing resources and information. 

I tell this story because it shows in a very simple way the power of forming positive relationships and sharing. When information and resources are shared, the value of goods and services can be increased, for the business, for individuals and for the community. 

During a lunch break at the conference I was chatting with some Northwestern students, asking them questions about their lives, hopes and expectations. They replied that it is frightening to be coming of age in a world that seems to be coming apart. The university system is grooming them for jobs that might not be available or applicable in the world they are entering. They told me that it's difficult to think about how they could afford to start families and have children when the future seems so uncertain. 

These were students from all over America who were spending their free time largely learning about the problems of people in developing countries who lack access to clean water, clean air, clean soil, energy, adequate jobs or decent housing. But similar problems already do or soon will apply to many of them. 

The students are 100% correct: the right to live in a healthy and safe environment, free from harm to air, water, and soil are intricately intertwined with pressing social and economic rights. These rights are fundamental and all other rights are predicated on the right to a healthy environment. As ecocity advisor Paul Downton points out: "No ecology, no economy - no planet, no profit." 

That's about as basic as it gets. But what to build?

The ecocity/ecocitizen approach focuses on key actions cities and citizens can take to rebuild our human habitat in balance with living systems, and, in the process, slow down and even reverse global warming, biodiversity collapse, loss of wilderness habitat, agricultural lands and open space, and social and environmental injustices.

Bottom line: We want to unite people around a new way of living on the planet that provides the best possible cities for people to live in while enhancing, not destroying, the biosphere. We think that the ecocity model can help guide us in the direction we need to go -- moving towards the ultimate goal of cities in balance with nature and culture. 

There is a new ecocity-supportive economy emerging through the cracks. It is based on sharing, establishing local roots and building community capital and capacity. The information networks and sharing are global; the implementation and benefits are local. The foundation and goal is the healthy and complete human ecosystem. Welcome to the Ecozoic Era - a time of mutually enhancing relationships among humans and the larger community of life.

As we build, so shall we live,