Anthropy 2023 Blossoms In Eden

In very late last night, with train services severely disrupted by Storm Ciaran, from Anthropy23 at The Eden Project. A significantly easier ride though, at least for me, than we had with Anthropy22. The Volans team was further augmented, contributing to at least four sessions (Louise’s on leadership, mine on securing peace and sustainability, a Bankers for NetZero event and the launch of Sacha Dench’s film ‘Flight of the Swans‘), along the way we hosted lively dinners in the Rainforest Biome and at the Cornwall Hotel & Spa.

My session ran for an hour on 3rd November, with three panellists: Scilla Elworthy of The Business Plan for Peace, Lt-General Richard Nugee of the Ministry of Defence, and Colonel Rosie Stone, Human Security Advisor at the MOD. Many thanks also to my friend and colleague Thammy Evans, with whom I did a Carnegie Europe paper on the future role of the military in relation to the climate and biodiversity emergencies, for her help in hooking in Rosie.

I worked up a draft summary of the session earlier today and circulated it to our panellists and team members, with an agreed version due to be submitted to the Anthropy team shortly. Also plan to post a summary once we have an agreed version. Part-way through the session I asked the 200-plus strong audience three questions:

1. Who had served in the armed forces? Perhaps a dozen hands went up.
2. Who was working for the defence industry? One or two diffident hands went up.
3. Who thought the theme of our session was relevant for future Anthropy events? Virtually every hand in the huge room shot up.

With the help of team member George Hopkins, we did another series of video appreciations of the event. The first can be found here, the second here. We will be posting summaries and assessments on the Volans website and through various other channels in the coming days. But here are a handful images that capture some of my own experience of this latest iteration of an extraordinary event.

Heartfelt congratulations to Anthropy founder John O’Brien and his team.