The Center for Political Ecology is an independent 501(c)3 nonprofit based in Santa Cruz, California. Incorporated in 1989 with an endowment from its founder, economist and social theorist James O'Connor, the Center produced newsletters, discussion papers, books and the journal Nature, Capitalism, Socialism (CNS) with input from an international editorial board; editorial groups in Toronto, New York, Boston and Santa Cruz; and collaboration with sister journals in Italy, Spain and France. In 2004, we turned over responsibility for the journal and other publications to the New York editorial group.

Today, while continuing to serve as one of CNS’s fiscal sponsors, we support local and global efforts to examine the inter-relationships between economic activity, politics, culture, human rights, and the environment, especially the genesis and social consequences of environmental crises; help incubate environmental action, agroecology, and sustainability groups at UC Santa Cruz and in the Monterey and San Francisco Bay areas; and, we do critical environmental and social justice action-research with other civil society partners that informs United Nations, international agencies, and other government policy processes.

We are a transdiscplinary, international cyber-collective whose varied interests and actions revolve around a common concern for environment, health and human rights. We work in alliance with diverse partners and communities in the varied places our members call home, and in the broader regions and world that we all share. We document the conditions that structure human and environmental crises and the consequential damages of environmental and human rights abuse; facilitate efforts to define and secure meaningful remedy; and, demonstrate the crucial role of biocultural sustainability in charting a sustainable path for the future.

Our action-research has been commissioned by the Marshall Islands Nuclear Claims Tribunal and the World Commission on Dams; conducted at the request of Guatemala’s dam-affected communities as part of the Chixoy Dam Reparations Campaign partnership (CPE, International Rivers, Reform the World Bank-Italy, and Rights Action with support from the Ford Foundation, Global Greengrants Fund, Grassroots International, Global Fund for Human Rights, Moriah Fund, Sigrid Rausing Trust, and the Swedish Society for Nature Conservation); accomplished through partnerships with UNESCO-IHP and the United Nations University Advanced Studies Institute Traditional Knowledge Initiative; and, supported by private donors and grants from the Patagonia Foundation, Joseph & Sally Handleman Charitable Foundation, Vanguard Foundation, Threshold Foundation, The John T. & Catherine D. MacArthur Fund, and The Christensen Fund.