Search Results for: Tim elkington

Windows Geoffrey Halina Supported Border 1 Tim Border 2 Ian Border 3 Kate Malcolm Ian 2

By train down to Newdigate, near Dorking, for a meeting of the Trustees of the Environment Foundation – hosted by Sir Geoffrey Chandler, a former Trustee, and his wife Lucy. Wonderful to deliberate the shift of focus of the Foundation as it morphs into the Foundation for Democracy & Sustainable Development under its Director, Halina Ward, as woodpeckers, nuthatches and tits queued to feed on the pergola outside the kitchen. An extraordinary proliferation of butterflies as we worked. Halina and her sister are working on a revamp of the Foundation’s website, which will reposition us in a pretty major way later in the year.

Not all the Trustees could make it: we had Malcolm Aickin, Ian Christie, Kate Burningham, Tim O’Donovan and myself, as Chairman.  Later, as I waited at Dorking station with Halina, my phone went and it was the news I had been hoping from our C21 meeting last Monday. Invigorating.

Then back to London for the third birthday of Chinadialogue, held at the Institute for War & Peace Reporting in Gray’s Inn Road, which I attended with Sam, and where I took the picture below on the top floor, which captures some of my love of wood grain.

 

Floor

 

Flag: it must be Sweden Hotel

Just in from 4-5 days at the Tallberg Forum in Sweden. much better than last time I was there, a couple of years back. Met a fair few people I knew, and many I didn’t – including Leif Utne of Zanby, who seemed to Twitter non-stop.  We mutually mentored. I took a couple of lovely walks down by the lake, one with Wouter van Dieren and his wife Jeanette.

I took part in a closed session on planetary boundaries, with the outputs confidential until Nature publishes the related story in September.  I also spoke at a parallel session of entrepreneurship and scale, with Alejandro, and moderated a plenary session on the last morning, with speakers like Ray Anderson of Interface, Iqbal Qadir of the MIT Legatum Center for the Entrepreneurial Development and Mia Horn af Rantzien, Deputy Director General of the Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency. We managed to get a good dynamic going with the participants in the tent, which was a strong positive as far as I was concerned. Session topped and tailed by Carl Mossfeldt.

Stand-out sessions by people like Charles Handy and by John Liu, the latter on the ecological restoration of China’s Loess Plateau. Great conversation on the 3-hour bus back to Arlande airport with Nicky Gavron. Later addition: My mother was taken seriously ill while I was away – and was shipped off to hospital in Moreton-in-Marsh. Very sadly, the mother of another of my panelists, Emmanuel Dennis Ngongo, who plays a key role in developing the YES Campaign across Africa, died while he was away.

Lake 1, around 23.30 Lake 2 Lake 3 Camera and sitting posts Cameras

Patrin and Sam @ work

After breakfast with colleagues from Singapore’s Economic Development Board, who are a strategic partner of ours at Volans, I walked back to the office to finish off some writing, do a couple of meetings and then begin tidying up ahead of Monday. One of the things I did was to pin up all the painting and drawings that an American teacher, Vicki Wade, had sent me – done by her class in Alexandria, Virginia, on the basis on our long-ago book for children, Going Green. Fabulous images, thoughts and sentiments.  She and successive generations of her students have done this each year for absolute ages.

Patrin (Watanatada) came over to help pinning up the pictures – and, by accident, I got a glimpse of something Sam and others had been working on for me with The Value Web. Six Value Web artists had conspired together to produce an extraordinary rendering of my life and character, though I have to say that when Ale and Sam took the wraps off the analysis seemed to be unduly forgiving of my foibles. But enormously moving, even so.

Sam captions James Parr, Sam and I Sam reflects Patrin and Ale With one of the paintings done by Vicki Wade’s children in Alexandria, VA The great unveiling Drinking it in

Hotel Bellechasse 1 Hotel Bellechasse, in the lift

A fairly energetic day in Paris, where I arrived last night, staying again at the Hotel Bellechasse. Then around the corner to an advisory board meeting with EcoVadis, before heading across after lunch to UNESCO for a meeting with Liz Longworth and colleagues. Delighted to see such things as a Calder mobile outside and a large photograph of a whaleshark in the lobby. Jonah Goldstein also took me to see the Picasso mural, which he noted hadn’t been signed by the artist – I said I wasn’t surprised, the painting didn’t strike me as that wonderful. But then I spotted the central figure as we rounded a pillar – and exclaimed that, given my interest in flight and Homo volans, this was perfect, a falling angel. Icarus, Jonah explained.

Remarkable clouds on the way back to London by Eurostar, which I’m spending more time studying now that Elaine has joined us both up for the Cloud Appreciation Society.

Amputee, as I walk garden before EcoVadis meeting Facade Curtain in meeting room Whale shark at UNESCO Calder mobile Kalashnikov as praying mantis

Shadow shot

A slight double-take when an EDF promotional flyer came through the letterbox this morning, shown above right. Given that 17 books – including 1984’s Sun Traps: The Renewable Energy Revolution (Pelican Books) – and SustainAbility were all conceived and incubated in our smallish Barnes home, I have sometimes thought of putting a green plaque on the back wall of the house, to commemorate all the people who have been part of the extraordinary journey. Will certainly give EDF a call, but unsure whether we’ll get to the point of installing solar panels just yet. Builders have been a constant here over the decades – and Elaine is always nervous about giving them another foothold in our lives.