Connecting our personal lives to local and global sustainability has always been a major concern for the Schumacher Society. Our three eminent speakers all have their own vision of how to make the connection between health of people and planet. Together they offered a comprehensive overview of this vital theme.

Dr. David Abram is an anthropologist and ecologist, and author of the award winning 'The Spell of the Sensuous: Perception and Language in a More-than-Human World'. He argues that what we "know" comes to us through our senses, through physical, earthly experience. At the root of the ecological crisis and our current profound sense of dis-ease is a flawed view of reality, spawned by our tendency to be distant observers. For most of us life no longer resides in the living landscape. David Abram found in his field work with tribal people that they engage with nature as intimate participants. We lost this vital connection when we invented writing, but this need not be so. Falling in love with the living nature again induces a profound sense of vitality. A passionate spokesperson for wild nature, David maintains a strong interest in interspecies communication, and in the rejuvenation of oral culture.

Romy Fraser is the founder and chair of Neal's Yard Remedies, the leading natural medicines company. She will suggest that we need a clearer view of health and the connections between our own health, the health of the community and that of the world. She sees holistic approaches to healing and being healthy as vital for us all. Through using natural medicines it is possible to reconnect us to our own power to heal. Romy proposed that we can all be involved in this process. Learning about the healing power of plants and about the importance of healing 'from the inside out' will benefit young and old. Young people, in particular, currently have little understanding about what will keep them healthy and vital. Working to change attitudes through education we can also redirect our energy to healing the earth. Romy is now in the process of setting up the educational NYR Foundation for Health.

Dr. Vyvyan Howard is a medically qualified toxico-pathologist at the University of Liverpool, and a major concern of his has been the introduction of the precautionary principle in policy making. Much of his research has been on fetal and infant growth and the negative effects associated with toxins. Children, in particular, are very vulnerable to exposure to pesticides and other toxic chemicals: they are smaller and their immune and nervous systems are not fully developed. He is concerned about the chronic low dose exposure to these mixtures of chemicals. Up to 500 man-made chemical residues can now be found in everybody. We have no way of measuring the toxicity of such complex mixtures, or of GMOs. Precaution and reduction are, therefore, the principal options that society should take.

Vyvyan discussed new strategies to prevent the global discharge of toxic chemicals into the environment.

For availability of Transcripts, Tapes, CDs & Videos please refer to the
Lecture Archive