Climate Smart Forestry: Smart for Some

I have been a Chartered Forester for over 30 years. Forestry was my profession until I moved into sustainability roles over 15 years ago. I was more than curious therefore to attend, for the first time in over 20 years, the Institute of Chartered Foresters annual conference, which took place in Glasgow recently. The theme was climate smart forestry. With ...
Chocolate inspires Art

Cocoa and Poverty: Time for a New Framing

In the last two to three years multinational companies have been launching detailed costed roadmaps tackling some of the biggest challenges facing society – climate, plastics, regenerative agriculture... The investments are significant, typically running to several Billion Euros/US$/CHF over a four-to-five-year period. However, we have yet to see the game changing roadmaps and public commitments to tackle inequality and human ...

Net Zero becomes Not Zero

‘The world’s first net zero coal mine’ is the new corporate branding trick of West Cumbria Mining (WCM) for its proposed mine near Whitehaven. Launched on the first day of the public inquiry into the mine earlier this week, it attempts to align the investment with Government policy. But in attempting to reposition itself WCM has hastened the end of ...

A Coronavirus Diary

Introduction We head into a second lockdown in a few days. Somehow it feels less scary and more comforting than the first. I reach this conclusion after re-reading a diary I decided to write during the first lockdown. It was not intended for publication, but its actually worth publishing, at least as a memory of how much the world has ...

Rethinking the Conventional Sustainability Wisdom

José Lopez, who died recently, had a fantastic capacity for turning conventional wisdom on its head. He had the knack for inverting phrases in a way that shone a blinding light on the reality, provided a simplicity of vision, and pointed us all in the right direction. Once asked what was the factory of the future, as quick as a ...