Search Results for: Tim elkington

My long-gone friend and colleague Max Nicholson would be shocked rigid to see what is happening with the Sixth Great Extinction, but at the same I suspect he would relish some of the news. Learned today that my long-standing colleague at SustainAbility, Kavita Prakash-Mani, now also a member of the Volans Board, has been appointed WWF’s new Global Conservation Director. My heart lifts.

Also in recent news on the conservation front, I have been asked to renew my term on the WWF UK Council of Ambassadors, and to join the Board of Conservation X Labs – delighted to accept in both cases.

Wildlife projected me into environmentalism and sustainability. Now it seems, conservation is becoming a real Thing in my life. Pay-back time?

One reason I have been quiet for a while has been the holidays – and the fact that I am working on my new book, my twentieth if all goes well. But another reason has been a form of purdah required by the negotiations, over quite some time, through which ERM acquired SustainAbility.

Have been receiving lovely messages since the announcement was made at 16.00 GMT today, from current team members at SustainAbility and alumni, and from others around the world.

As the press release note:

Founded in 1987, SA has helped define and evolve the sustainable development agenda and the role of business within it. Throughout its history, it has worked with business and stakeholders to enable a more just and sustainable economy.

I still had five years to run at SustainAbility when I began this blog back in 2003. But it has now been 32 years since Julia Hailes and I, with help from Tom Burke, founded the organisation – which spent its first 2.5 years in our family home in Barnes, before fledging and moving off to the People’s Hall, north of Notting Hill.

Some people say time flies by, but all that seems centuries ago. In fact it was in the last century, before the Internet and while the Berlin Wall was widely seen to be eternal.

Too soon to know how all of this will turn out, but I owe a huge debt of gratitude to my long-standing friend and colleague Geoff Lye, to other Board members and to Executive Directors Rob Cameron and Mark Lee, and to the literally hundreds of people who have worked with SustainAbility over the decades. I am proud to still call many of them friends – and am seriously proud of the work we have done together since 1987.

Lovely photos from Hania after she, Jake, Gene and Gaia trundled across to Hill House today to see Pat and Tim (now one week away from his 98th birthday), alongside my sisters Caroline and Tessa, and niece Lydia. Wonderful, despite various trials and tribulations along the way, to see the generations mixing it up in this way.

December has been such a frenzy that I haven’t managed any entries for a while, but am planning to catch up over the holidays. But was saddened to read of the death of James Erlichman in yesterday’s Guardian. Always liked him and admired his stances on major topics, among them antibiotic resistance and the BSE crisis. a lighthouse to steer by.

And I also recall a piece he did, I think for The Independent, on my role at the more commercial edge of environmentalism. It must have been in 1988 or 1989 – a big article, built around a large cartoon, either of a wolf wearing a sheepskin or vice versa. I genuinely can’t recall which way around it was. The cutting is probably in one of the boxes of cuttings in the summerhouse/garden shed.

But I have mightily appreciated the periodic challenges of such fair, honest and determined critics . While it’s comforting when one-time challengers, like the late Teddy Goldsmith, declare their growing grasp and support for a different line of attack, it’s more useful if lighthouses don ‘t drift over time. In my experience, James didn’t

Across to The Wilton Arms in Belgravia this evening for a 40th anniversary celebration drink with some of those who have worked for Environmental Data Services (ENDS) since we founded the cmpany in 1978.

Including myself, there were three (out of six over the decades) former Editors of the ENDS Report present. First double gin and tonic I have ordered in living memory.

Nice piece in the latest issue on the story so far, though if you read it without knowing the history you might conclude that Elaine (who found Marek Mayer through his partner, author Sue Gee, both Sue and Elaine involved with publishers Wildwood House on the floor below us at TEST in our Floral Street offices, now long-since demolished) had gone on to marry Marek.

Something of a surprise for Sue and I, were it true. Particularly since by the time Marek hove in view, Elaine and I had been together for well over a decade – having met in 1968.