Science and Environmental Health Network
2014 Annual Report
“I do this work with SEHN because I hope to look future
generations in the eye and say we did everything we could to tend
the Tree of Life on your behalf.” –Carolyn Raffensperger
In 2014, our 20th year, the Science and Environmental Health Network took innovative,
creative and collaborative action to unite people to withdraw our consent from a toxic
future and to create a world that would be a worthy legacy for future generations. With
SEHN’s leadership, in 2014 individuals and communities challenged the economic,
scientific, and policy-making status quo, which allow for unconscionable risk to human
and environmental health and threaten the longevity and well-being of the earth and
future generations.
SEHN’s primary program efforts in Ecological Medicine and Guardianship of Future
Generations aim to reintegrate ethics with science and law. Though our efforts span
diverse fields, campaigns, and contexts, the ethical principle that we can prevent harm
and suffering guides us to reject the destructive misuse of science and the law for profit,
and to work towards justice and well-being for current and future generations.
Our work today is rooted in the core concepts emerging from our leadership on the
precautionary principle: (1) the recognition of time as a primary dimension of
environmental problems, along with the physical dimension of space/ place; (2) the
recognition of ethics as a necessary companion to science, in decision-making about
human health and well-being; (3) the recognition of ecological complexity, and the
cumulative and interconnected nature of environmental harms; and (4) the recognition
that we must harness the transformative power of storytelling, to effect lasting change.
Because of our long-standing work on ethics, science, and law and the depth of our
expertise in medicine, public health, and the law, SEHN has a unique niche in the
environmental movement. We work extensively in coalitions with partners who bring a
wide range of skills to the table, recognizing that together, we are much stronger than if
we were working alone.
In 2014, we worked towards a collective shift from a culture based on dominance and
exploitation of resources, to one focused on long-term collective well-being, partnership,
and a relational approach to the community of life.
In our Ecological Medicine program, we made a number of significant strides:
The Ecology of Breast Cancer. Dr. Ted Schettler’s new book-length report, “The
Ecology of Breast Cancer: the Promise of Prevention and the Hope for Healing,” released
in Fall 2013, is influencing public policy and scientific research agendas. In addition to
the breast cancer report, Ted serves on the advisory council of the California Breast
Cancer Research Program, advising on research funding decisions for the $8 million
program.
Collaborative on Health and the Environment. In 2014, Dr. Ted Schettler serves as the
Science Director for this international partnership of over 5000 individuals and
organizations in 79 countries and all 50 US states committed to improving human health
across the lifespan.
“Doctor on call” to the movement. Ted spends a significant amount of time, pro bono,
advising NGO colleagues, journalists, scientists, academics, and students nationwide.
This work leads the way in integrating the ecological model of health with efforts to
improve public health and the ethical requirement of preventing suffering.
Health Care Without Harm. In 2014, Ted completed the first edition of a white paper
entitled “Environmental Nutrition: An Ecological Approach to Food and Health,” which
serves as the basis for projects within the food workgroup, promoting healthy food in
health care. Ted participated in the Safer Materials work group, which is successfully
leading the health care sector toward purchasing products made of materials that reduce
risks to patients, staff, the general public, and environment.
Healthy Aging Initiative. With CHE, CalEPA, UCSF and ATSDR, Ted collaborated on
an e-book, "A Story of Health," housed at the Healthy Aging and the Environment
Initiative at CHE. Already incredibly well-received, the book incorporates the ecological
model -- chemical, nutritional, built, and psychosocial determinants of health -- across the
lifespan, on multiple levels.
Chemical Policy Reform. Ted participated in Health Care Without Harm’s Safer
Materials work group, the efforts of which include market reform through market-based
strategies as well as policy initiatives, including TSCA reform. Ted serves on the steering
committee of Safer Chemicals Healthy Families, a large coalition working toward
meaningful TSCA reform.
Cumulative Impacts. In 2014, SEHN co-leads the Cumulative Impacts Working Group,
with 141 members participating from community organizations, federal
environmental agencies, and state regulatory bodies. We manage the Cumulative Impacts
Project website, in partnership with the Collaborative on Health and the Environment, to
serve policy makers, journalists, students, and concerned citizens as a research and
education tool to promote strong law and science around cumulative impacts.
SEHN’s Guardianship of Future Generations work made significant strides this year,
with the successful production of the second Women’s Congress for Future
Generations.
In our Guardianship work, SEHN collaborates with grassroots leaders to generate and test
legal frameworks – including new applications of traditional legal instruments, as well as
entirely novel approaches – that articulate our obligations to future generations, in order
to help ensure their survival. Our work encourages and empowers communities to
withdraw consent from and mount creative responses to government-sanctioned
environmental destruction. Through comprehensive advocacy materials, innovative
convenings, and community-specific support, we support individuals and groups to claim
the moral and legal authority to protect the living systems upon which the lives of future
generations depend.
The Women’s Congresses for Future Generations represent important inflection points in
the growing movement to protect the earth on behalf of Future Generations. At the First
Women’s Congress in 2012, and the Second Women’s Congress in 2014, SEHN and
allies equipped women with ideas to change the terms of the debate about our current
economic and legal systems, and connected isolated activists to each other to encourage
collaboration around the protection of the earth.
The Second Women’s Congress for Future Generations was held in November 2014, in
Minneapolis, MN, as a collaboration between SEHN and its “daughter organization”
Future First. With a special emphasis on the protection of the waters, the event focused
on the role of economics in either undermining our future or providing a sustainable
foundation for the perpetuation of life. Nearly 500 diverse participants, representing
constituencies far beyond traditional environmentalism, gathered to:
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Examine the Rights of Nature as a viable framework for policy-making, one that
mandates the protection of natural resources because their rights to exist and
flourish are inherent and co-equal with our human rights.
Participate in a Caucus of All Waters, out of which we developed and ratified
the Declaration of Rights of All Waters, articulating the innately-held rights of
the oceans, lakes, rivers, aquifers, and clouds, as well as the related
responsibilities of humans to protect these waters.
Explore the tenets of the Owl Economy, a wisdom-based approach to economics
calling for a recognition that the Earth is the source of our life and the
foundation of our economy – therefore, in order to achieve a truly healthy,
robust economy, we must respect the Earth’s gifts and capacity.
Weave music and the arts into the proceedings. With song, we invoked the living
rights of nature. With music, we grieved the earth’s losses and celebrated our
power to make change. We sang the new forms of law and policy into being.
Leading up to and following the Women’s Congress, SEHN developed collaborative
relationships with innovative legal advocacy and community organizing groups, such as
On the Commons, a citizens' network that highlights the importance of the commons in
our lives, and promotes innovative commons-based solutions. Carolyn Raffensperger and
Kaitlin Butler’s piece, "Economics As If Future Generations Mattered," – featured
originally in On the Commons Magazine -- was republished by Common Dreams
News; Resilience; Guernica News; Counter Currents; Connexions.org; NYC StartUp
News; Olduvai; Aid News; and more.
In 2014 we also launched collaborations with grassroots organizations fighting pipelines
and fracking in their communities. We began work on our Companion to Political
Engagement, a comprehensive document intended to support Women’s Congress
participants and other community activists’ political engagement as guardians for future
generations. Companion readers explore numerous critical concepts underpinning the
rights of future generations, for example: withdrawing consent from activities that harm
the health and wealth of our shared commons; the role of government as protector the
commons; and more.
We also joined the Bakken Pipeline Resistance Coalition, and offered legal expertise to
anti-fracking and anti-mining organizations throughout the Midwest.
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2014 was a year of significant accomplishments for SEHN. Moreover, in 2014 we
continued to interweave our efforts in medicine, law and science into SEHN’s signature,
holistic approach to environmental problem solving. At its core, our work recognizes the
cumulative, interlinked nature of environmental harm across dimensions of time and
space, and elicits key, science-backed, wisdom-rooted principles to guide our societal
decision-making on behalf of current and future-generations. Join us in 2015 and beyond
as we both articulate and act upon the ecological framework of health and justice.
SEHN Staff & Board
2014 Staff
Carolyn Raffensperger, Executive Director
Ted Schettler, Science Director
Sherri Seidmon, Finance Director
Katie Silberman, Associate Director
Board of Directors
Madeleine Kangsen Scammell, President
Boston University School of Public Health,
Dept of Environmental Health, Boston, MA
Bhavna Shamasunder, Secretary
Urban & Environmental Policy, Occidental College, Los Angeles, CA
Rebecca Gasior Altman, Treasurer
Sociologist, Arlington, MA
Dianne Dumanoski, Author, Newton, MA
Benno Friedman, Photographer/Activist, Sheffield, MA
Tom Goldtooth, Indigenous Environmental Network, Bemidji, MN
Peter Montague, Environmental Research Foundation,
New Brunswick, NJ