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EcoLiterateLaw is a new website that provides information about issues related to the environment, technology, population growth and access to food and water, among other issues.

EcoLiterateLaw, a new website containing a textbook and other materials on topics with a global focus, has been launched by a University of Arizona law professor. 

Robert A. Hershey of the James E. Rogers College of Law initiated the site to explore the global “transformation of cultures and humanity."

Thought to be one of the first freely available curricula of its kind in the country, EcoLiterateLaw uses modern technology as a platform for viewing the effects of globalization from an interdisciplinary perspective.

Hershey said the site is both a “curriculum and a toolkit” for understanding the frequently dismissed consequences of globalization and even challenging assumptions as basic as its definition.

The site is meant to promote ecological literacy in both legal and business education. 

Broadly speaking, the site covers topics such as food and water access, the population explosion, the environment, technology and the special impacts of globalization on indigenous peoples.

Legal, philosophical, economic, sociological and anthropological points of view are included in the book's chapter-by chapter format.

In addition to the full textbook, Hershey also maintains a blog, is developing an attorney camp for oppositional law, and provides information about the Indigenous Peoples Law and Policy program at the UA law school.

The materials were many years in the making and have already attracted a following in the human ecology community.

“Professor Hershey masterfully informs us of the inanity and accelerated inhumanity of the forces of globalization as he reminds us of the countervailing potentials of optimism, resilience, empathy, the poetics of culture and strengths of community," said Andrew Weil, an author and icon of the natural health and wellness community. 

Robert Williams, a UA law professor who has authored books about the history of racism in the U.S. within the context of the law, particularity related to American Indian populations, applauded the site.

“Professor Hershey’s EcoliterateLaw website is an essential resource for anyone seeking new approaches to knowledge and fresh insights into the multiple intersections among globalization, law and cultural conflict in a post-modern, post-colonial and still colonized Indigenous world," said Williams, the E. Thomas Sullivan Professor of Law and American Indian Studies. 

Partially an eco-literary tour, the site provides "the essential literatures of protest and provocation produced by contemporary writers and theorists of the subaltern in critical theory and practice," said Williams, also the Indigenous Peoples Law and Policy Program director.

Williams also said the site is a great resource for educators, students and practitioners who are interested in the design and implementation of legal, business-related and public policy curriculum that promotes ecological literacy.

Hershey's interest in developing the site was sparked at an interdisciplinary conference and "teach in" sponsored by the International Forum on Globalization and held in 1996 at the University of California, Berkeley. 

"Many speakers were opposed to looking at globalization as progress without questioning the inhumanity and inanity that it often produced,” Hershey said.

“I thought that the material could become a great class and developed a course curriculum that took into account the environmental and cultural impacts of this ‘progress,'" he added. 

Throughout his years in teaching the course and related classes, Hershey conducted more research and began to outline a free or inexpensive way to balance what was being taught in legal and business schools.

Ultimately, he hopes EcoLiterateLaw is used by both academic and consumer groups, and has seen interest among non-governmental organizations for similar materials.