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There are few positions in society more rarified than that of a FTSE 100 CEO. The financial rewards are staggering, and out of all proportion to the task in hand, however successfully that task may be prosecuted. The power they have is not limitless, but it is so far-reaching as to seduce far too…

A good friend of mine emailed me recently to tell me that ‘burnout’ felt imminent, and that she was intent on doing something about it before it was too late. This has become an all-too-familiar narrative, and every time it makes me feel just a little bit more apprehensive for all my colleagues –…

I’ve had a really odd summer – with a knee replacement operation that went badly wrong. And this somehow blocked my creative juices, both in terms of campaigning stuff and blogging. So I decided it was time to put things right on Thursday last week! First stop: Sheffield. For some time, I’ve been…

Through the partnership that Forum for the Future has with Sime Darby (the world’s largest palm oil company), I visited Liberia back in May. To see some of their ongoing development work there. I haven’t really been able to get many of the thoughts and images arising from that visit out of my mind…

When I was Director of Friends of the Earth, many, many years ago, I picked up a lot of knowledge from someone called Andrew Lees, who died, tragically, out in Madagascar in 1994. Andrew was a serious scientist (a zoologist, I think) but he was also very big on instinct. Before taking on the role…

I’m just reading ‘Confessions of a Recovering Environmentalist’, Paul Kingsnorth’s collection of essays written over the last 15 years or so. It’s a good read – and very challenging for someone like me as a fully signed-up, still enlisted environmentalist. Or, rather, sustainable development…