Search Results for: Tim elkington

In an op-ed in Scotland’s The Herald today, here’s what Scottish Environmental Protection Agency CEO Terry A’Hearn had to say about our work together:

In 1994, business sustainability leader John Elkington coined the phrase the ‘triple bottom line’ of people, planet and profit. Despite it entering the business lexicon, twenty-five years later Elkington wrote an article in Harvard Business Review announcing a ‘product recall’ of his triple bottom line concept.
 
The concept had become popular. It had helped bring environmental and social issues into boardroom deliberations. It sparked a series of actions by many businesses to improve their environmental performance and contribute to enhanced social outcomes.

Elkington had hoped it would help fundamentally change our economies. It helped us step forward, but not jump ahead. It led to improvements, but not transformation. Elkington had that rare vision to call time on an idea that had been successful, but needed replacing by something new.

Last year, Elkington and his team at Volans launched its ‘Tomorrow’s Capitalism’ inquiry. Alongside global companies such as Unilever, Aviva Investors, Covestro and The Body Shop, SEPA is participating as the only regulatory agency invited to join the project. We are bringing some of Scotland’s innovation into the project and learning with others as we debate and, importantly, test practical ways of creating the future economy and society that will serve us all well.

Last week, the Scottish Government announced an Economic Recovery Action Group. In doing so, the First Minster said “its role will be to advise government on actions to support economic recovery. And crucially it will consider how these actions can contribute to our aim of building a fairer, and a greener, and a more equal society as well.” 

SEPA will contribute our ideas from our One Planet Prosperity work with our partners in Scotland and from our participation in Volans’ Tomorrow’s Capitalism inquiry.

As we take a moment to reflect on this 50th Earth Day, it’s clear that the next period can’t be an alibi for inaction. The future is not what it was going to be. As Scotland’s environmental regulator, we will maintain our twin focus: regulating in a way that helps Scotland get through this public health emergency and regulating in a way that helps builds an even better, more inclusive and sustainable Scotland.

Delighted to see the wonderful Rakesprogress magazine featuring this shot of a long-time family friend, Marina Ritschel (Instagram: @marinaritschel). The theme: ‘Spring Awakening’. The flowers were chosen and styled by our eldest daughter, Gaia Eros (Instagram: @stormandgraceflowers).

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Ultimately, despite the disruption – and ultimately truncation – of the trip, we had a fantastic time. Our guides – Jeremy Paterson, George Terezakis and Bianca de Klein – were outstanding, constantly adapting in real time to the developing coronavirus crisis. We benefitted hugely from their knowledge both of the history of Ancient Greece and their intimate connections with today’s Greece.

Doors were opened that otherwise have been closed. And the Travel Editions team back in the UK sorted out our flights back to a London increasingly teetering on the edge of lock-down. We owe them all a huge debt of gratitude.

We also enjoyed ongoing conversations with a number of the other members of the group, though I’m very far from being a group person. On the ground, I’m typically far ahead, far behind or flanking any group. Scouting, I suppose. That’s how I see things that others miss, like the spray of bee-eaters launching almost from beneath my feet in the ruins of Dura Europa, Syria, and gliding down over the Euphrates.

Can’t wait to go to Greece again, including places we didn’t get to like Mystras and Sparta. But, first, notes on a few final stops we made along the way.

First, Mycenae. I think I first came across the Mycenians in my teens, through their role in the Trojan War. No way were we getting inside the fabled walls on this trip, with COVID-19 stalking the land, but we did have a wonderful prowl around the battlecruiser-shaped hulk of the ruined citadel, with a powerful wind thumping all around – and a fitful sun alternately shadowing and spotlighting the battlecruiser.

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Loved our visit to Nafplio’s (or, as we knew it, Nauplion’s) Palamidi fortress 50 years ago, back in 1970. At the time, Elaine, Rex and I sat for ages in an underground cistern, watching reflected sunlight from a high window scattering across the walls.

A natural form of the light shows in fashion at the time at places like the Middle Earth club in Covent Garden, which we haunted to see bands like The Byrds, Fairport Convention, The Incredible String Band, Pink Floyd and Marc Bolan’s Tyranosaurus Rex. Those were the days, my friend.

And here are some images from our return visit, when the town was gradually closing in on itself, because of COVID-19.

Altogether, we were four nights at the Amalia Hotel outside Nafplio, a great base for exploring the city and region. But very few other people were staying – and on the day we left to fly back early to the UK, they closed the hotel entirely.

Lovely to hear frogs in the landscape around the hotel – and to see bats flitting across the evening sky.

One less romantic memory surfaced, however, when George Terezakis, our Greek guide, pointed out the local open prison as we drove by. Near the Mycenian ruin of Tiryns.

That did it. We recalled pulling our Landrover off the road nearby back in 1970. Elaine and I were sleeping in the back of the vehicle, while the others slept around about in tents.

In the morning Elaine woke up from dream that someone was sawing off her feet, which protruded onto the Landrover’s tailgate. Lifting the tarpaulin backflap, she saw a man standing outside, with an axe.

We began talking to him, in French, I think. Turned out he was from the nearby open prison. We asked why he had been imprisoned. He said he had killed his wife’s lover. With an axe. Otherwise, a perfectly charming man.

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Finally made it to Delphi, 50 years after we arrived to find the site closed – as explained in a previous post. The site was simply humming with bees this time, though the sight of pine processionary moth cocoons in some of the trees was distressing. The museum closed before we could get to it – and not too long afterwards the site as a whole was closed. But we had moved on by then.

A truly wonderful visit, with relatively few other people visiting such sights as the temples of Athena Pronaia and, higher up, of Apollo. A fuller account of the site’s history can be found here. One bit of the recent story that Jeremy (Paterson) challenged was the idea that gases from a chasm under the site had helped induce a state of trance in the priestesses. I confess, though, that I still find the explanation seductive – even if many shamans can get there unassisted.

As we travel, with a fair number of books in our baggage train, I have been reading A Rising Man, by Abil Mukherjee. A wonderfully engaging portrait of Calcutta back in 1919, just after WWI, with a simmering independence movement that would take another 30 years to come to blood-spattered fruition.

And I find myself constantly wondering what it is about today’s world, apart from COVID-19, the gathering climate emergency and the exponential undermining of the natural world, that we ought to be paying more attention to as clues to the future in the present?