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Celebrating nature Bristol fashion

THE UK’s biggest festival of the natural world will be happening on 7 and 8 June 2008 in Bristol.

prone met the festival organisers at Bristol Zoo. It’s the fifth oldest zoo in the world (since 1835) and these days, one of the most well-loved.

The zoo’s part of the Bristol Natural History Consortium which includes the BBC Natural History Unit, WWF-UK, Bristol University, Wildscreen – including the world-beating ARKive project – and more.

At prone we also really love the Bristol Naturalists’ Society. It’s been going for 150 years as well, and still prints a little newsletter with sections in it about insects, spiders, flora and fauna. They have things like an Otter Group and organise walks where you can go into the woods and look for bats, or meet at dawn and watch the peregrine falcons. Awesome really.

Truth is, most people care about wildlife and want to preserve it.

But what’s the best way?

Are zoos the way forward? Or a digital ARKive?

Leave a comment in the box below and tell us what you think.

Renewable energy needs PR

Last March, EU leaders did something stunning.

They vowed to lead the world in the fight against climate change.

And they promised to cut greenhouse gas emissions by a fifth by the year 2020.

Their report tells us that the EU is already a world leader in renewable energy.

But it also admits that development is “uneven” across member states.

Sadly, that unevenness means Britain. A report on a leaked DBERR document in the Guardian today revealed that the UK’s way behind on renewable energy. Only Malta and Luxembourg have a poorer record.

Incredibly, we’ve installed only 270 solar photovoltaic (PV) systems on houses in 2007. That’s compared with 130,000 in Germany, say.

Overall, we produce only 2% of our energy from renewables. The EU has slapped our wrists and told us we’ve got to get that up to 15% by 2020.

So there’s everything to play for.

It’s not that people don’t care – they do. It’s just that we don’t know.

There are Government grants for putting photovoltaic panels on your house. They will pay you to do it! And then your electricity bills drop to nothing and if you’re lucky, you can even SELL ENERGY BACK to the National Grid.

How about that for eco-conscious?

Government grants DO exist to convert our houses to green energy. But they don’t get picked up because people don’t know about them. Department for Business grants for households to install solar, wind or hydro-power are expected to be underspent by £10m over the next year – more than half the £18m allocated for the three years to March 2009.

So they’re starting to be cut back.

Meanwhile, as revealed in the Daily Telegraph, our power bills are going to rise in the coming year by 10 to 15 per cent.

Where’s the sense in that? Let’s join up the dots, people!

If we get the Green message out there, and the woman in the street can see a real cost saving in going green, the whole of Britain could be soaking up the sun and selling the energy back to the grid by the summer.

Think of that. 50 million homes, all humming with Government-sponsored home power. Beaming energy back to the world. Cutting emissions and growing flowers. And all because they got the message and heard the call.

All because the Green cause was properly told. PR’d and promoted.

So who’s doing it? Who’s spreading the word, holding Government to account, letting people know, building the popular pressure?

This is what proper promotion can do.

It’s time to start.

Natural step for Whistler

prone went to Whistler in British Columbia, on the western edge of Canada in the Rockies not far from Vancouver, to take a look at how they’re preparing for hosting the 2010 Winter Olympics and Paralympics.

It’s a fantastically beautiful place, with huge mountains, undisturbed virgin forests, lakes, rivers, snow, miles and miles and miles of wilderness…unbelievable.

Canada has exploited its rich natural resources brutally in the past.

But now, Whistler’s showing the way to a different future.

As well as being a ski town and resort, it’s committed to becoming one of the most sustainable communities in North America.

prone spoke to David Udow of Ziptrek Ecotours in Whistler about eco-business and social responsibility.

While walking its customers along treetop platforms prior to launching them into space, Ziptrek tells them about the Natural Step, a sustainability model being adopted by countries, communities and businesses across the world (including, since September 2007, the EU.).

When you adopt the Natural Step, David told us, interesting things happen.

People get happier. Networks are strengthened. Profits rise.

And given that you’re out in the mountains ripping along a steel cable in a harness 200 feet above a glacial river gorge in 33 acres of a 10,000-year-old temperate rainforest paradise when you first hear about it, the environmental message tends to stick.

They take 20,000 visitors a year through this experience.

The ziplines work by gravity, and the A-frame cabin where you drink your hot chocolate at the end of the tour gets its electricity from a small hydroelectric arrangement, barely visible in the mountain stream below.

Sustainable. And unforgettable.

With the eyes of the whole world on the resort in 2010, little Whistler (pop. 10,000) has the chance to get its sustainability message out to the world in a big way.

New year, new home

On 1 January 2008, prone moved some of our operations to the Hub in Bristol.

It’s a good space: in the heart of the city’s old quarter by the docks, flexible, interesting, properly resourced, a buzz that gets you moving and friendly people who get where we’re coming from.

That’s no accident. The Hub is deliberately designed to flow, synergize, run the physical in and out of the virtual space. They say they’re a multi-sited network connecting social innovators who are striving to improve the world around them in new ways. There are Hubs in London, Rotterdam, Sao Paolo, Toronto, Soweto, elsewhere.

Makes sense to us. New ways for new worlds.

The day after we joined, it was shortlisted as one of the six top social entrepreneurs in the UK by the Independent newspaper.

Social enterprises aren’t just charities or campaigns, says the Indy. They “identify opportunities for market creation and in the process change systems and practices that have excluded millions from benefiting from advances in information education technology, health technology, full employment, and the like…[Their] role is also that of a transformational catalyst, spinning off models that can be replicated for wide adoption in many settings.”

Congratulations to Mike, Ceri, and all the other people who have held on over the past 15 months and believed in the vision. It’s a well-deserved accolade.

We’re glad to be there.

Walk your Talk

prone was invited deep into the heart of Wales to witness the leading edge in sustainable business practice for a post-peak-oil world.

We’ve looked on the face of the future, and seen the joy of a child and the wisdom of an adult.

Looks like we might need both.

Fifty investors and financiers, entrepreneurs and creative artists gathered on 4th to 7th November at Buckland Hall near Brecon, a place of unsurpassed natural beauty (anyone who hasn’t been to Wales yet should go there immediately).

From Harvard to Hebden Bridge they came. And having got there, from all parts of the UK and from abroad, at personal cost and in working time…they played.

They put their wellies on and rambled around the lanes and woods. They said they were butterflies or bumblebees. They built wood fires and set off fireworks. They freely followed their interests.

They posted discussion ideas on walls. prone led a session on talking your walk. Who’s going to get the message out, and how?

This is the technique of ‘Open Space’, designed to allow genuine, real connections and truthful discussions. Happiness, it turns out, can be a sophisticated way of achieving, in just three days, a step change in thinking about how business can become more sustainable to face the climate crisis ahead.

“Is our action congruent with our intention? That’s the founding principle of Walk your Talk,” organiser Mike Zeidler told me. “We’re making a change in the way we do business and the way we relate to each other. What does sustainability really mean to each of us?

“The point of Walk Your Talk is to leave us feeling re-energised, with more people to call on, with fresh ideas and challenges. Some will draw on that and start expanding their initiative or work. Others will leave with new understanding or convictions.”

It all started when Dame Anita Roddick founded the New Academy of Business to put sustainable business ideas into practice.

But now it’s a mighty movement, pushing for social change.

Groups are springing up to face the challenge. The Social Venture Network; the Association of Sustainability Practitioners; Pioneers for Change; Ethical Junction. Huge numbers, tens of thousands of us walking our talk every day.

“What you’re seeing is the visible edge of a phenomenal and powerful movement of people. It’s real and it’s out there,” Mike said.

It’s fantastic to be on the crest of this wave. To be using your business to build a more just and sustainable world – could there be anything better?

The future’s here.

Polska - Flying Tonight

We went to the Polish Embassy in London to hear about business and investment in the old country and to talk about PR and promotion, Polska-style.

prone’s association with Poland reaches back countless generations. Some pronites have very aristocratic roots indeed. Scout’s Honour. (a clue)

But we don’t like to talk about that, no, no no … not unless there’s some cherry vodka and roast wild boar to tempt us. And, I kid you not, that is exactly what I have in hand now. (see photo) Well, minus the wild boar.

But I, I’m sorry to say, have no such Eastern European connections, although I do like vodka. (see photo again)

I snuck into beseiged Warsaw back in ‘82 posing as a sports reporter. A couple of captured Brit hacks were in various stages of decomposition in some lubiyanka or another. My old Fleet Street Cricket Club chum Greg Miskiw was one.

The Communists had been forced to allow the English Under 21 footie team into the country under martial law, at pain of being kicked out of world soccer sine die.

The proles were revolting and to lose Matchski of the Day could have really brought the wall tumbling down.

So in we go undercover. Meet Michael of Solidarity in the third cubicle to the right in the airport loo, sign the forms, swap a tenner for eight trillion blackmarket zlotys and Lech’s your uncle.

I’m an honorary member of the most romantic outlawed political movement in the world running on a bent visa and I could be banged up for life if I get caught. Another wódka please.

I’m in. Quick chat with Archbishop Glemp, a word with Wałęsa through the prison fence, some in-depth briefing from the so-Solidarity crew around Old Town hostelries and a sleigh ride back to the Inter-Continental before 8pm or face instant incarceration.

The game was drawn. A couple of world exclusives rattled the headlines (I was working for the Reuters organisation, so the reality of life under the jackboot went out globally on the wires to every media outlet on the planet).

Mission to inform accomplished. And lifelong relationships and love for the country and its heroic people established.

I will always remember knocking back tumblers of the colourless stuff at Stansted airport with a couple of hearty Poles while waiting for clearance to depart to the dark heart of the closed country. Legless take off. Painless.

Tannoy: “Would our friend in seat 34B pliz come to the cockpit.” It was my friends from the bar. Pilot and Co-pilot. And we had another drink.…

The Poles have always been great pilots.