Speakers

Matt’s way with words has taken him from Totnes to Wimbledon via Saturday Live, the Edinburgh Festival and the Work section of the Guardian. He is the creator of superhero Empath Man and host of Radio 4’s Wondermentalist Cabaret. His latest book Where Earwigs Dare, with Green Books, contains celebratory verses on vegetables and vagueness, insects and alcohol, kippers, quantum physics and recycling. Expect wordplay and wistfulness, poignancy and po-faced cheek, plus leeks and Latin, streakers, superheroes and slugs.

Satish Kumar is the editor, since 1973, of Resurgence magazine which is, according to the Guardian newspaper, “The spiritual and artistic flagship of the green movement”.

When he was only nine years old, Satish Kumar renounced the world and joined the wandering brotherhood of Jain monks. At the age of eighteen, he left the monastic order and became a campaigner. Fired by the example of Bertrand Russell, he undertook an 8,000 mile peace pilgrimage, walking from India to America without any money. Along the way, he delivered packets of ‘peace tea’ to the leaders of the four nuclear powers.

In 1973, he settled in England, where he is the guiding spirit behind the Small School in Hartland, a pioneering secondary school, and Schumacher College, an international residential centre for the study of ecological and spiritual values.

His autobiography, No Destination, is published by Green Books, as are four other books: You Are, Therefore I Am – A Declaration of Dependence, The Buddha and the Terrorist, Spiritual Compass and the latest, Earth Pilgrim.

Polly Higgins is an international lawyer and advocate for her number one client, the Earth. She has devoted the past 7 years to examining the laws required to shift the imbalance of justice so that the Earth is restored to a place where humanity can live in harmony with nature. Her first proposal to the UN in 2009 was for Earth Rights to be recognised internationally. Her second proposal, the 5th Crime Against Peace, is the law required to govern the expansion of rights for the Earth.

Polly is author of Eradicating Ecocide, which has been nominated as a finalist for the Book of The Year Award, is a finalist of the People’s Book Prize and a nominee of the Beryl Bainbridge Prize. Polly has been Voted by the Ecologist as one of the “World’s Top 10 Visionary Thinkers.”

Caroline is leader of the Green Party of England and Wales and Member of Parliament for Brighton Pavilion. In 1999, she was elected as one of the Green Party’s first MEPs and served until 2010, when she was elected as the first Green MP.

Caroline is a Co-Chair of the All Party Parliamentary Group on Fuel Poverty, and Vice Chair of the Public and Commercial Services, Sustainable Housing, Animal Welfare, and CND All Party Parliamentary Groups.

She is also a member of the Parliament’s Environmental Audit Committee, scrutinising proposals such as the Green Investment Bank and the Government’s plans to embed sustainable development in every department.

Caroline continues to be an active campaigner on a range of issues and is Vice President of Stop the War Coalition and the RSPCA; a CND National Council Member; a Director of the International Forum on Globalization; a Matron of the Women’s Environmental Network; and a Patron of Action for UN Renewal and Martlet’s hospice.

Caroline has been voted the UK’s most ethical politician in 2007, 2009 and 2010 by readers of the Observer, and received Red magazine’s Woman of the Year Award 2010 in the ethical/eco category. She is in the Environment Agency’s Top 100 Eco-Heroes of all time.

After studying Economics, and helping to run one of the first organic food centres in the Netherlands, Peter Blom joined Triodos in 1980, the year they first opened for business. Having been with them since the start, he was appointed Managing Director in 1989, and has been CEO since 1997. He is Chair of the Global Alliance for Banking on Values and also a member of the Board of the Dutch Banking Association. He maintains his interest in food and farming, chairing the Organic Food and Agricultural Council of the Netherlands.

Bill McKibben is the author of a dozen books about the environment, beginning with The End of Nature in 1989, which is regarded as the first book for a general audience on climate change. He is a founder of the grassroots climate campaign 350.org, which has coordinated 15,000 rallies in 189 countries since 2009. Time Magazine called him ‘the planet’s best green journalist’ and the Boston Globe said in 2010 that he was ‘probably the country’s most important environmentalist.’ Schumann Distinguished Scholar at Middlebury College, he holds honorary degrees from a dozen colleges, including the Universities of Massachusetts and Maine, the State University of New York, and Whittier and Colgate Colleges. In 2011 he was elected a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.

Rob Hopkins is the co-founder of Transition Town Totnes and of the Transition Network. He has many years experience in education, teaching permaculture and natural building, and set up the first 2 year full-time permaculture course in the world, at Kinsale Further Education College in Ireland, as well as co-ordinating the first eco-village development in Ireland to be granted planning permission.

He is author of ‘Woodlands for West Cork!’, ‘Energy Descent Pathways’ and most recently ‘The Transition Handbook: from oil dependence to local resilience’, which has been published in a number of other languages, and which was voted the 5th most popular book taken on holiday by MPs during the summer of 2008. He publishes www.transitionculture.org, recently voted ‘the 4th best green blog in the UK’(!). He is the winner of the 2008 Schumacher Award, an Ashoka Fellow, is a Fellow of the Post Carbon Institute, served 3 years as a Trustee of the Soil Association, and was named by the Independent as one of the UK’s top 100 environmentalists.

Tim Jackson is a leading international expert on sustainability. Since 2000 he has been Professor of Sustainable Development at the University of Surrey – the first such chair to be created in the UK. Recently his work has focused mainly on consumption and lifestyle change. In 2006 he founded the research group RESOLVE which brought economists, psychologists and sociologists together for the first time to explore the complex links between lifestyles and the environment. Prof Jackson also directs the newly-awarded Defra/ESRC Sustainable Lifestyles Research Group.

Tim has written extensively about the relationship between economy and sustainability. In 2004 he was appointed as Economics Commissioner on the UK Sustainable Development Commission where he led a five year project called Redefining Prosperity. This ground-breaking work culminated in the publication last year of his controversial book Prosperity without Growth – economics for a finite planet (Earthscan, 2009).

In addition to his academic work, Tim is an award-winning dramatist with numerous radio–writing credits for the BBC. His most recent play Variations won the Grand Prix Marulič and was long-listed for the 2008 Sony awards.

Barbara Wood is the third of E. F. Schumacher’s eight children and his eldest daughter. She is a graduate in Economics and History from Bristol University, and also holds degrees in Theology. Before she married, she worked for the Intermediate Technology Development Group (now Practical Action, and founded by her father) and the Voluntary Overseas Association. The mother of six grown children, she and her husband live in Kew Gardens.

Barbara is the author of “Alias Papa – a life of Fritz Schumacher” – first published in 1984, but with a new edition just published, in June, by Green Books.

Marketing and Communications Director, Practical Action
Margaret joined Practical Action in 2000, where she has established a successful marketing and communications area including overseeing the rebranding from ITDG to Practical Action. Her team lead on communications, campaigning, impact through knowledge sharing, education and fundraising. She also oversees the development of Practical Action Publishing.

Margaret is the former Vice Chair of BOND (British NGOs for Development) and is a former Trustee of the YWCA.

Margaret is interested in the potential of global movements to deliver sustainable change. She began her career in commercial marketing – working for the 80s giants Coloroll and Lonrho. In the 1990s Margaret decided to align her work more fully with her principles and moved to the UK’s leading fair trade organisation Traidcraft, working extensively across Africa and Asia, to develop Traidcraft’s Market information and market access services and providing capacity building to businesses and their support organisations internationally.

Passionate about social justice and community, she continues to be excited by the role technology can play in poverty reduction, and ambitious for Practical Action’s work.

Stephan was born in Venezuela in 1953. He came to England at the age of six. Since childhood Stephan has had a deep fascination with the natural world, and his scientific cast of mind lead him to do a degree in Zoology at the University of Durham and then a doctorate on the behavioural ecology of the muntjac deer at Oxford University. After Oxford Stephan was appointed Visiting Professor in Wildlife Management at the National University in Costa Rica, where he lived for two years before becoming a founder member of Schumacher College in 1990. Stephan lives on the College campus with his wife Julia Ponsonby and their son Oscar, and is the author of Animate Earth: Science, Intuition and Gaia published in 2006 by Green Books. He is also the editor of a new book – Grow Small, Think Beautiful – just published by Floris Books.

Today, Stephan is Resident Ecologist and MSc Co-ordinator at the College.