Foundation for Global Sustainability Inc

This outreach program seeks to educate the general public about environmental issues in Southern Appalachia and the Upper Tennessee Valley. We at the Foundation for Global Sustainability who work to defend and heal had long been frustrated at our inability to communicate the depth, breadth, and multiplicity of the assaults our region faces. Legislators, policymakers, educators, citizens have a fragmentary awareness of some of the problems, but few have the interest or patience to develop a long-term synoptic ecological understanding. Yet ecological deterioration is systematic; a piecemeal approach misses the interrelations and cumulative impacts that give it urgency. What was needed was a deep, broad, long-term, multidimensional, multidisciplinary understanding -- an understanding large enough to match our predicament.

The State of the Bioregion Program attempts to bridge this gap by providing educational information. The program focuses on three components:

1) What Have We Done? The Foundation for Global Sustainability's State of the Bioregion Report for the Upper Tennessee Valley and the Southern Appalachian Mountains -- This one-volume narrative compiles information from academic researchers, environmental organizations, and government agencies. Released on Earth Day, 1997, What Have We Done is a comprehensive guide to understanding the social and environmental issues and efforts faced by the Bioregion. The first volume has been well-received in academic and scientific circles around the country.

2) A Land Imperiled: The Declining Health of the Southern Appalachian Bioregion. Published 2005 by the University of Tennessee Press, Knoxville.

3) The State of the Bioregion Speakers Bureau welcomes requests for presentations.