The Liz Claiborne and Art Ortenberg Foundation is a private body devoted to the conservation of nature and the amelioration of human distress. The Foundation seeks to redress the breakdown in the processes linking nature and humanity. It concerns itself particularly with matters of species extinction, habitat destruction and fragmentation, resource depletion and resource waste. It favors solutions that directly benefit local communities and serve as exemplars for saving species and wildlands. It recognizes the imperative to reconcile nature preservation with human needs and aspirations.

The Foundation devotes a substantial portion of its funding to developing countries. It therefore recognizes the destructive connection between poverty, over-population, high infant mortality, cultural traditions that dehumanize women, inequitable land distribution and the subsequent degradation of the land and the systems the land supports.