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John Elkington

John Elkington

A world authority on corporate responsibility and sustainable development.

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Journal

Good News On Elvers And Eels

John Elkington · 10 September 2024 · Leave a Comment

Glass eels: Baby eels, a vulnerable species, reaches the fresh waters of the inland via the European coasts and grows into adult eels in 3 years (in the south) to 15 years (in more northern parts of Europe).

Can’t really express how proud I am to have supported the Sustainable Eel Group for the past 15 years-plus. This media release gives a sense of the impact they have had on one of the defining issues of my own life.

The Y In Dorset

John Elkington · 29 August 2024 · Leave a Comment

Last week, we took our Tesla Model Y for an outing in Dorset, probably my favourite county. Any range anxiety was quickly and entirely relieved by recharging points at a car park at Corfe Castle, one of my favourite castles in the world – though I’m not sure that the energy was from renewable resources, as it is at home in Barnes. One key interest for me, as we explored Portland Bill, was the story of Portland Stone. Now what follows is less of a travelogue than a photo essay on a glorious week away.

Corfe Castle from a distance, over the cemetery
A glory of wasps (wopsies locally) haunt our cream teas – result of a local biodiversity project
A wonderfully hazy walk around the Arne Nature Reserve, despite my broken foot
Could almost be a T-Rex in the bracken
Joyous perspective
Ditto
And ditto again, with heather
One of the things I recall most vibrantly of my time at Bryanston – and in Dorset – is the trees
The skull of “Sea-Rex” at The Etches Collection in Kimmeridge
Dinner time for Sea-Rex – and for its prey
Back to Corfe for a proper visit
Further along
Higher still
At our B&B, a rainbow lit up the sky just as I had what I thought was rather a good idea
Anyone for cricket?
Apples on trees at Owermoigne Cider Museum
Horse-powered cider apple press – renewable, but not sure about the ethics
Chesil Beach from Portland Bill
The Memory Stones
I will rise/come again, linking to the theme of regeneration
Overview of part of Tout Quarry, recovering from stone working
Detail
Elaine as I walk back from Tout Quarry
Glimpse of Chesil Beach through Memory Stones, with ammonite (far right)
Ammonite
Mown maze in the grounds of Lulworth “Castle”
A view from the “battlements”
Looking upwards in one of the towers
The Bear in Wareham
A Jersey Tiger moth spotted in Shaftesbury – like the one that appeared in our own garden in Barnes
Sherborne Abbey was a delightful surprise
Sustainability was in the air near the altar…
…as it was in the High Street (“Cheap Street”) outside
Still life along the way
Slightly different spirit en route home, at a foundry, but chimes with the new book I’m working on
Gentler mood at Plumber Manor, where we stayed for several days, near Sturminster Newton
The Manor viewed
Welcome bouquet
Ceramic fragments and marbles in paving at Nick and Anne Hildyard’s
Nick beats the bounds
Anne Hildyard’s cushion (top) ends up in our kitchen as a memento of a week immersed in other times

Fast Company Runs Three Posts

John Elkington · 8 August 2024 · Leave a Comment

Fast Company’s online platform have run two of my three posts linked to Tickling Sharks: the second today, reflecting on the SG backlash, and the first last week, drawing out the theme of how to persuade powerful people to change their minds and act. The third post is due out next week.

Leaving Belo Horizonte

John Elkington · 8 August 2024 · 2 Comments

Propaganda for my session
Dinner on the first night
Preparing for the event
My guardian angels

Flew into Belo Horizonte, via São Paulo, on Tuesday – to speak at the 15th CONCRED conference for credit unions, organised by Confebras. Some 3,000 people attending. As ever, loved the spirit of the thing, and was guided through the days by Claudia Luciane Leite, on the left of the last photo.

The plenary session began with a stunningly good Brazilian band, with orchestra, playing a series of Beatles songs. Made me feel right at home. And one highlight was a really interesting talk with Gabriel Galípolo, who some see as being groomed to become Brazil’s central bank head.

Have been hobbling through the proceedings, after somehow cracking a foot bone last week. My left foot has been heavily bandaged for a week now – and have also been wearing new support shoes to get me through all the walking around airports and the like.

Spent much of my spare time in the Radisson Blu hotel working on a long article on the impending next stage of the sustainability revolution. Seemed to make good progress.

But extremely unwelcome news as our driver Marcos dropped me at Belo Horizonte airport for the trip to São Paulo. This afternoon another plane bound for SP crashed, killing all 61 people on board. Got in touch with Elaine to say that it wasn’t my flight, to find Gaia had already told her the same. But startling to think how quickly these things can happen.

Talking to Gabriel Galípolo, monetary policy director at Brazil’s Central Bank, at Tickling Sharks launch
Doing an interview where I had to hold the microphone
Another interview, this time for a channel for cooperatives

Harvesting Seagrass Seeds With WWF

John Elkington · 24 July 2024 · Leave a Comment

In my waders, ready to go, the whole process being painted by a local artist
Haroon Mota films proceedings
A good deal of social media going on
One of hundreds of sea “jellies” that caught my eye
Trying to work out what they are
This is what seagrass seeds feel like
Found some!
Karen’s photo of Kedar and I
Some of the team as the tide comes in behind

Went across to the Isle of Wight yesterday afternoon with Elaine, shepherded by Karen Bearman who runs the WWF UK Council of Ambassadors, for a WWF event – involving harvesting seeds from a seagrass meadow hard by the bridge across from the ferry dock.

This was my first face-to-face contact with some of the Project Seagrass team. For more on the seagrass story, see here, with the explanation helpfully rendered in multiple languages. And further discussion of seagrass’s many ecological benefits can be found here, via the Smithsonian.

The first time that I think I saw seagrass was in the Red Sea back in 1958, when I was nine or so. Looking through the glass bottom of a small boat, I remember the forests of sea snakes and, at least one seagrass grazer, a sea turtle.

Gathering the seed proved a lot harder than I had imagined, partly because of the turbidity of the water and partly because the seagrass leaves were coated in so many epiphytes – making it hard to work out what was seed and what wasn’t.

Had been given a large bag for the harvest, but the only four strands I got were each given to me by different people who apparently (and correctly) felt I needed help. All of them women. Also got distracted by numerous floating gelatinous objects, clear jelly blobs, that may have been some form of salp.

In any event, a great picnic on the beach and I really appreciated the chance to talk to younger influencers now involved with WWF, including Sam Bentley, Haroon Mota of Active Inclusion Network and Kedar Wiliams-Stirling, the actor.

Elaine stayed on the beach while we waded and harvested, where a passing retired fisherman opined that if it comes to a clash between people and planet, people should always win. Elaine’s response was along the lines that this can work – until it doesn’t. another passer by noted that tourists complain that the seagrass washing up “spoils” their image of what a beach should be, in effect all sand.

Clearly, we have a fair amount of work still to do.

And in the background, on the western horizon, stood Esso’s Fawley Refinery, which I visited solo back in the late 1970s when developing early corporate case studies as the first editor of the ENDS Report. Little did I realise then that Esso’s parent company, Exxon, would become the arch-enemy in terms of climate change.

Among many other things, my latest book, Tickling Sharks, covers the very public collision I had with their then Chairman and CEO, Rex Tillerson. Though in that case it was a bit more like trying to whack a corporate shark on the nose with an oar…

Then back onto the train, getting home around midnight – with an intensified urge to learn more about seagrass and do more to help ensure its conservation and regeneration. Meanwhile, the Chief Pollinator part of me loves the idea that, at least as far as I understand it, they are the only sea plant that pollinates underwater.

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Introduction

I began this blog with an entry reporting on a visit to the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution on Cape Cod, on 30 September 2003. The blog element of the website has gone through several iterations since, with much of the older material still available.

Like so many things in my life, blog entries blur the boundaries between the personal and the professional. As explained on this site’s Home Page, the website and the blog are part platform for ongoing projects, part autobiography, and part accountability mechanism.

In addition, my blogs have appeared on many sites such as: Chinadialogue, CSRWire, Fast Company, GreenBiz, Guardian Sustainable Business, and the Harvard Business Review.

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About

John Elkington is a world authority on corporate responsibility and sustainable development. He is currently Founding Partner and Executive Chairman of Volans, a future-focused business working at the intersection of the sustainability, entrepreneurship and innovation movements.

Contact

john@johnelkington.com  |  +44 203 701 7550 | Twitter: @volansjohn

John Elkington

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