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Environment, Culture and Conservation at The Field Museum  Diversity: Where would we be without it? Research reveals that its value goes far beyond the aesthetic pleasure of flashing reef fishes or the multicultural delights of a city like Chicago. Diversity is Earth's lifeblood, the source of resilience in wild nature and human culture. Forces of homogenization—from the global spread of chain stores to the gutting of ancient forests —threaten to leave us with an impoverished and vulnerable world. In 2004, The Field Museum took a significant step to confront this specter: the creation of Environment, Culture, and Conservation (ECCo). This new division unites and strengthens the Museum's existing departments of Environmental and Conservation Programs (ECP) and the Center for Cultural Understanding and Change (CCUC). Within and outside the Museum, in landscapes as different as urban Chicago and rural Peru, ECCo mobilizes scientific inquiry for action on behalf of diversity. More information...ECCo Annual Report The ECCo Annual Report from 2008 is now available online:
ECCo News  With support from Exelon, ECCo is working in Peru's Cordillera Azul National Park to develop an avoided deforestation protocol. The goal is for the avoided deforestation carbon market to finance management of the Park for its long-term protection.Standing forests are crucial in mitigating climate change: Deforestation, primarily in the tropics, accounts for roughly 20% of global greenhouse gas emissions each year. Avoided deforestation could become a major financial incentive for tropical countries to invest in standing forests. Besides preventing the release of greenhouse gases, these enormous expanses of living forests conserve extraordinary biodiversity. They also provide crucial ecosystem services—like prevention of erosion and clean water—and livelihoods for neighboring villagers. Exelon's ongoing support helps ECCo's scientists to conduct rapid biological and social inventories in the headwaters of the Amazon. These inventories have been powerful in translating science into the legal protection of vast, intact landscapes, including Cordillera Azul. Find out how you can help The Field Museum and Exelon's efforts to protect our environment through the Take One Step Program. Learn more. ECCo links: Read more information about ECCo |
ECCo Links • Environmental and Conservation Programs • Cultural Understanding and Change |
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