John Elkington

Three extraordinary days in Eden.

Through the recent lockdowns, one of the projects I was working on was Anthropy 2022 – which took over the Eden Project site between 2nd and 4th November. Together with David Williams, CEO of Impact International, I had co-chaired the ‘Place Pillar’, one of four.

The other pillars were People, Prosperity and Britain’s place in the world. In the event, it turned out to be an exceptional convening – and, happily, it looks as if it will go into further iterations.

Louise and I were both chairing sessions, but we also took two colleagues: George Hopkins, who has been developing our video content for some time, and Cami Daeninck, a young Canadian who had joined our team a day or two before, after completing her master’s degree at Imperial College London. The idea was to film our panellists, but we soon extended the net.

My main session, on Wednesday afternoon, featured: David Goodhart, five years after the publication of his book The Road to Somewhere; Jane Davidson, former Minister of Education and Environment, Sustainability and Housing in Wales; and David Williams.

Each day we also filmed a short exchange between Louise and I, summarising the events of the day. The four short videos can be found here. We plan to release edited video content in the coming weeks.

Flew out yesterday from LHR T2 to Dublin, c/o Aer Lingus. Only wrinkle was a 6-hour delay at T2, which meant Josh and I got to our hotel towards 02.00 in the morning. But the session with the top team at ESB (Eire’s Electricity Supply Board) went very well indeed.

Impressed by the ESB HQ building. And an interesting side conversation around the impact of the Ardnacrusha Dam on migrating eels. More on that story here. Then back out to airport for a flight that, happily, behaved itself. Turned on my heel at T2 to take in Slipstream, which captures some of the early excitement of powered flight.

This interview by Joe Kornik of Protiviti strikes me as one of the clearest statements of how I see the next 10-15 years evolving, but happy to hear your views : )

Lovely autumnal weather as I flit between commitments. Today it involved being vaccinated with the latest COVID booster at Essex House, hard by Barnes Pond, then back in time to welcome Gaia and Adam to continue work on our wildlife pond. Gaia brought three mongrel goldfish to start cleaning up the mosquito larvae in the pond. Other than that, October has included such things as:

Have also been working on the new book in fits and starts, realigning the content to the new title: Running Up The Down Escalator: How We Failed To Save The World – But Still Could.

After breakfast with Charlene (Cranny, from Volans) and Christian (Scarf), Marie (Sauvignon) and Sophie (Öberg) from IMS, Charlene and I worked for several hours, then made our way across to the Forum venue, Luxexpo’s ‘The Box’. Made some wonderful connections at and around the Forum today. Some fairly deep conversations with everyone from Environment Minister Joëlle Welfring to a psychology student from Germany, Joanna Krupp, in what she told me was her her first properly public speech. A number of invitations to come back, which I am very inclined to do.

Then flew home, dropping off to see Louise on the way, to discuss our Neste session in Finland from Sunday, before heading Barnes-ward to carry out one of the Zoom interviews for our new Crown Estate project – and another with Dean Hand, Chief Research Officer at the Global Impact Investing Network (GIIN), finalising my presentation for their upcoming conference in Den Haag.