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Giving Days May 7 & 8
For those of you who were not able to join us for our 16th Annual Wild Side in Georgetown earlier this month, we want to share some exciting news.
SCELP has offered Dr. Pam Martin–this year's featured speaker–a one-year fellowship to help us build a new legal paradigm that accounts for Nature in our decision-making, and to find ways to promote it across South Carolina.
Dr. Martin’s research and public policy work are based on the premise that Nature is both fragile and resilient. Yet our current legal framework assigns nature no inherent value worth protecting. Our laws simply accept degradation as inevitable and fail to recognize humans’ absolute interdependence on natural ecosystems for the water we drink, the air we breathe, the food we eat, the jobs we hold, and our mental health and sense of well-being.
This deficiency in legal systems worldwide has led to a global movement to craft laws, policies, and processes that recognize Nature’s right to flourish, to exist, persist, regenerate and be restored. Dr. Pam Martin has been on the cutting edge of this work, researching and writing about the politics of the rights of nature for decades. As professor at Coastal Carolina University and a Fulbright Scholar of constitutional rulings on rights of nature in Ecuador, Dr. Martin is a leader in this growing field.
To advance our vision, SCELP will partner with Dr. Martin to take the imaginative leap and advocacy hike required to give Nature a voice in South Carolina’s legal system. Keith Bowers, founder of Biohabitats and SCELP Board member, has long embedded these ideas into his own work. He literally gave Nature a seat in Biohabitats’ new governance structure!
Keith and his wife Christel Cothran are enthusiastic about this new initiative and have pledged $25,000 as a matching gift.
Will you join them in supporting SCELP’s commitment to protect South Carolina’s natural heritage? Every dollar you donate by October 31, 2025, will be matched up to $25,000.
