Jonathon Porritt

Jonathon Porritt, Co-Founder and Programme Director of Forum for the Future, is an eminent writer, broadcaster and commentator on sustainable development. Established in 1996, Forum for the Future is now the UK’s leading sustainable development charity, with 70 staff and over 100 partner organisations, including some of the world’s leading companies.Jonathon was appointed by the Prime Minister as Chairman of the UK Sustainable Development Commission in July 2000. This is the Government’s principal source of independent advice across the whole sustainable development agenda. In addition, he has been a member of the Board of the South West Regional Development Agency since December 1999, and is Co-Director of The Prince of Wales’s Business and Environment Programme which runs Senior Executives’ Seminars in Cambridge, Salzburg, South Africa and the USA. In 2005 he became a Non-Executive Director of Wessex Water, and a Trustee of the Ashden Awards for Sustainable Energy. He is also Vice-President of the Socialist Environment Resources Association (SERA).

He was formerly Director of Friends of the Earth (1984-90); co-chair of the Green Party (1980-83) of which he is still a member; chairman of UNED-UK (1993-96); chairman of Sustainability South West, the South West Round Table for Sustainable Development (1999-2001); a Trustee of WWF UK (1991-2005).

A Vision For Our Forests

January 11th, 2012 by Jonathon Porritt

We set up Our Forests in 2011 not just to keep the pressure up on the Government in terms of its disastrous sell-off proposals for the Public Forest Estate, but also to create some kind of a vision as to a better way of doing it. We felt that was important right at the start in order to encourage th...

FROZEN PLANET FURORE

December 15th, 2011 by Jonathon Porritt

The final programme in the Frozen Planet series was broadcast this week – David Attenborough’s personal take on climate changeread more

RSPO Coming of Age

December 12th, 2011 by Jonathon Porritt

I’ve followed the story of the Round Table on Sustainable Palm Oil pretty much from its inception ten years ago. It was high risk for all those involved at that time (particularly WWF, Unilever and the Malaysian Palm Oil Association), and it’s still high risk today, ten years on.read more...

Occupying Our Minds

December 2nd, 2011 by Jonathon Porritt

It’s stark, but dividing the world up into the 1% (the self-perpetuating elite currently laying claim to the lion’s share of the world’s wealth) and the 99% (everybody else) is certainly focussing people’s minds.read more...

Trees In The Blood

November 25th, 2011 by Jonathon Porritt

I often wonder how trees get into one’s blood. Neither of my parents had the remotest interest in trees, and my mother would endlessly wax lyrical about the landscapes of Lincolnshire (where she grew up) which for me border on the god-forsaken precisely because they are so tree-less.read more...

Ideology Trumps Good Planning

November 23rd, 2011 by Jonathon Porritt

Mischievously, I can’t help imagining what life must be like for that lucky bunch of officials in DCLG charged with the responsibility of processing responses to the Government’s consultation on its draft National Planning Policy Framework (NPPF).read more...

Keele University Chancellor

November 10th, 2011 by Jonathon Porritt

Big development for me this afternoon (10 November 2011), when Keele University announced that I would be installed as its next Chancellor in February next year.To be honest, I am still a bit taken aback by this, not really having seen myself as ‘Chancellor material’ before now.read more...

Third Industrial Revolution

November 9th, 2011 by Jonathon Porritt

A big day for the Forum yesterday. Together with the Energy Institute at UCL and the wonderful WHEB Partners (cleantech investors and fund managers), we helped launch an important new book, The Third Industrial Revolution by US author and campaigner Jeremy Rifkin.It’s a catchy title. With nifty politic...

Feed-in Tariff Fiasco

November 4th, 2011 by Jonathon Porritt

I know some people think I’m obsessed about the malign role of the Treasury, but the debacle over Feed-in Tariffs demonstrates yet again how powerful the Treasury is in blocking any serious moves towards a more sustainable UK. read more...

Green Heroes Filling the Void

October 28th, 2011 by Jonathon Porritt

We don’t hear much about “The Big Society” these days. The Big Freeze has frozen out everything else; austerity is the order of the day, and the cutting is now well underway - “ahead of schedule”, in fact.These cuts have already had a massive impact on the capacity of both local government and civil soci...