The How To Make a Difference Book is now available! It’s a beautiful coffee table format, with all the images and stories of inspiring people from this website.

I’ve entered it into a photobook competition and it would be great if you could vote for me by clicking the icon below.

Even better, the book would make a great gift for anyone who you think would like to make a difference. You can buy it here.

Coming soon is a post about Brigit Strawbridge of the Big Green Idea.

Tim Smit’s words really ring true to me and my life in an inner city borough of East London. I do know some of my neighbours to say hello to, but would like to get to know them better, without seeming like a weirdo, desperate for new mates. Plenty of others I don’t know at all, and wouldn’t know how to go about meeting them.

Fortunately, Tim  has an idea to help with the problem. The founder of the Eden Project in Cornwall is now promoting The Big Lunch. A country-wide push to encourage street parties on the 18th July every year.  Communities have to organise the parties themselves, but Tim and his colleagues at Eden are trying to give us the excuse we need to get to know our neighbours better. The Big Lunch started in 2009 with 8263 big lunches across the UK. Now in its second year, Tim has high hopes for the event: “Ideally, I’d like to turn it into the British equivalent of thanks giving.”
I met Tim on a sunny morning in a cul-de-sac in Highbury, North London. He was there with Kurt Wenner, a renowned street artist, promoting this year’s lunch with a huge chalk drawing of a picnic in the middle of the road. Tim, who admits to being “quite restless”, has been an archaeologist, worked in the music business, unearthed the Lost Gardens of Heligan and been a driving force behind the construction of two biomes in an exhausted clay quarry at Boldeva, that became Eden.

So why the Big Lunch now?  Tim believes there are many potential benefits, to the environment, society and for individual well-being. “We want to help communities become resilient. When people know each other, they start to do stuff together. For example, if you’re going to use fewer resources, one of the best ways of doing that is by sharing stuff.” Getting communities to know each other is a good way to prevent extremism, and allow “the good people to get organised”.

Tim says that they are just aiming to be a catalyst for people to do their own thing.  What a brilliant, and simple idea. I’d never thought of organising a street party before, but now I’ve already been in touch with my local council about getting our street closed. I’m still scared. Would anyone come? Would motorists get angry with us? What if someone comes and causes trouble? But so far the response from the neighbours I’ve spoken to has been great. I just think it might work for us and I hope lots of other people will give it a try too. Why don’t you?

One of the challenges I find with being both the writer and photographer behind How to Make a Difference is that moment when I have to switch between being interviewer and photographer. With James Cameron, I realised once again that the more interesting the conversation I am having, the more difficult it is to get a great photograph. James, who is a founder, vice chair and executive director of Climate Change Capital, has a truly impressive track record in the field of climate change. 45 minutes was barely enough to scrape the surface before we needed to dash outside for a quick few snaps (OK, excuses over!).

It was only just before the photographs that I discovered James role in instigating the Kyoto Protocol. In 1988, he co-authored an academic article which was the first to argue that an international negotiated agreement was the best way to use the law to resolve climate change. This article led on to a study into what such an agreement would look like: “We attached the research to an entirely made up group of countries: low-lying developing states. Then, we set about introducing ourselves to the governments of those countries and said ‘There should be an international climate change agreement. We could represent you and you won’t need to pay. It’s all pro bono.’” The Alliance of Small Island States was born and the negotiation of the Kyoto Protocol ensued. While we can’t yet look back and say climate change is resolved, the Kyoto Protocol has been a very important step on the path to controlling emissions. James’s ideas, followed by years of involvement in negotiations, have had a notable impact. I hope I didn’t miss anything else this significant in his past!

I met James in the library of Climate Change Capital, at the heart of the very impressive Norton Rose offices, just South West of London’s Tower Bridge. The view is over the Thames to the Tower of London and the skyscrapers of the City of London beyond. In this kind of situation, one realises that environmentalism has made huge steps towards the centre of how our society operates. James is quick to emphasise that much more needs to be done. “We’ve done a lot. Our capacity to make the revolutionary changes to our energy system and reorientate our economy is growing. But the things that we do are still very peripheral. The bulk of financial resources that are needed to make the transformation are still locked onto fossil fuels.”

A qualified barrister, James was a practicing legal professional until he set up Climate Change Capital in 2003. His work with the small island states was one of the first projects of the Centre for International Environmental Law (CIEL) which he helped to found. Later in his career James set up the climate change practice at the law firm Baker and Mckenzie. “I could not have imagined creating Climate Change Capital if I hadn’t done it before with CIEL, FIELD (CIEL’s UK offshoot) and the specialist practice in Baker and McKenzie.”

About ten years ago James, along with other climate change “pioneers”, saw the potential of a commercial enterprise which would invest in the global transition to a low carbon economy. A chance meeting with Mark Woodall, a former investment banker with considerable environmental expertise, led to Climate Change Capital taking off as a separate entity. “Mark had the clarity and wanted to start something new. Without him we wouldn’t have got going.”

Climate Change Capital now manages funds with over US$1.5 billion of commitments. They have funds which are directly targeted at reducing greenhouse gases, as well as more traditional investments, like property, which aim to invest with a “climate change lens”. James is proud of the team that he has around him: “We cannot deliver on the mission ‘creating wealth worth having’, unless everyone here is of a very high standard, whether they’re investing for environmental purposes or not.” On his own role: “They look at me and know that I’m not a professional investor but I am the creative force behind the business.”

James muses that it was probably the news of the Chernobyl disaster in 1986, while he was studying for a post graduate degree in international law at Cambridge, which inspired him to pursue a career focused on international environmental issues. “It was a perfect example of transboundary harm, which needed to be addressed through legal systems that crossed boundaries.”  Growing up as an expat in Lebanon and then Singapore was formative too: “All of my idealism and excitement about politics was fixed on power and abuse of power, and ultimately how to you reconcile competing interests where the state has a fundamental role, but where individual liberty is at risk.”

For now things are good. The business is going well and James is pleased to note that the new Lib Con coalition deal includes some elements that Climate Change Capital have been proselytizing: “I’m very happy at the minute with the space that I’ve got to be me, and the people I’ve got to depend on. When you see the potential of what you’ve created, and you reset your ambitions, then you have to work out when to let go, but that time hasn’t come yet.”

I’m talking to Nigel in his office which adjoins the current MSc students’ common room. Nigel is definitely not an academic who is isolated in his ivory tower. “I love being in the heart of things, where the students are.”

When the MSc took in its first students in 1977, it recognised that the resolution of environmental problems required a multidisciplinary approach rather than relying solely on science and technology. Social sciences like environmental management, law, policy and economics are critical. “It was really quite a heresy in those days because Imperial College was almost entirely science and engineering,” Nigel tells me. The MSc drew upon specialists who were often somewhat marginalised in their own departments by virtue of their interest in the environment. Nigel’s research interests were in, and remain, the influence of air pollution on plants. He was then in the botany department, but the chance to work with others across departments with interests in environmental issues was very attractive.

To this day, one of the reasons why students from the MSc course are so effective at tackling environmental issues is because of Nigel’s enthusiasm for networking across disciplines and occupations. Environmental problems are so complex that these links are essential. Take for example the resolution of stratospheric ozone depletion in the late 1980s. It took scientists, politicians, international lawyers and negotiators, manufacturers, retailers and consumers working together to achieve the successful phase out of CFCs. Nigel and his colleagues are educating people in all of these fields to resolve the even more intractable issues we now face.

Nigel is palpably proud of his ex-students’ “devastating success” in such a wide range of occupations. All bringing their environmental expertise with them. “When the course started we didn’t know what jobs people were going to get. There weren’t very many truly environmental jobs and most of them were in the public sector.” In the late 80s the private sector started showing an interest in environmental issues and EU legislation started driving things forward. Now, 40% of the students go into consultancy: “environmental consultants, energy consultants, carbon management consultants, consulting engineers, management consultants etc”.

I came to talk to Nigel at this time because I want to explore making a difference to one of our generation’s most incredible challenges: Climate Change. Climate change is now a major element of the MSc course and Nigel tells me that 20 students annually move into professions which are specifically aiming to tackle the problem: They become carbon traders, or work for energy related NGOs, charities and consultancies. These are some of the people who I plan to talk to over coming months. “Climate change is hellish important”, Nigel confirms, but then he’s quick to caution me: “The trouble is that it ain’t the only problem. Over population and over consumption are equally worrying.” I take the point, but let’s start somewhere.

I wonder what this man, who has probably influenced more people wanting to make a difference than most, thinks is the best way for an individual to have an impact. “ Get right into the heart of it. I think you can argue that the solution to the world’s major environmental problems lie in the self-interest of big business. You’ve got to be able to talk the language of big business and the City.” Personally, I found trying to change things from inside Shell International very tough, but hopefully there are plenty of other MSc graduates out there having more success than I did. I’m planning to put Nigel’s network to the test and write about the most inspiring examples for you here.

.

I met these entrepreneurial sisters at their warehouse in Leicester. The three storey former printing press looks almost derelict from the outside and I wandered around for some time trying to find an entrance that was in use. In the end I had to resort to my phone and after a couple of minutes Rama Bhalla appeared from behind a peeling green painted door.

On the top floor of this mainly unused building is a room filled with boxes of medical equipment, toys, books, computers, a whole range of unwanted goods. In the corner of the room, a small office is walled off. This is where Rama and Sujata do their business. “Actually most of the goods don’t come to this warehouse anymore,” Rama explains to me. “We arrange for the equipment to go straight from the business to the charity; directly from waste to want.” In 2009, GWO prevented 66 tonnes of waste from going to landfill. They have rescued about £1.5 million worth of goods since they started 8 years ago.

The idea came to the sisters when a friend of theirs bought a warehouse in the outskirts of Leicester that was full of paper and said that he planned to throw it all away. The pair were horrified and said that they would find places where it could be used. Nurseries and schools around Leicester took the paper with pleasure and the seed of an idea was sown. Word spread about what they had done and further offers of goods from businesses came in. The women spent their evenings and weekends finding charities who needed what was otherwise going to be wasted and started to call themselves Konnect9. In 2003, someone offered some medical supplies which could not be given away in the UK. Rama and Sujata linked up with a charity in Mumbai and organised a container to get the materials there. “It was going to take four weeks to ensure that the supplies made it to their intended recipients. So I reached a turning point. No-one was going to give me four weeks off work without knowing if I’d be back.” Rama decided to take the plunge and quit her job with the Local Authority. Luckily, family support made this possible: “I live with my family so I was OK.” Also, when she got back home, Sujata managed to fundraise a part-time salary for her.

They carried on working like this, Rama on a part-time salary and Sujata working in her spare time, until 2007. It is so impressive to hear how people give up their time to work tirelessly on something just because they believe it is the right thing to do. That’s exactly what Rama and Sujata were doing when a donor who they had approached phoned them and said “You’re asking for £500, wouldn’t you like more?”. They replied that they certainly would. So the donor gave enough to pay Sujata full-time for two years and it was her turn to give up the day job. “Having Sujata working full-time made a huge difference. We have the space to think a bit more strategically.”

They realised that the internet could really help them with what they were doing and so worked towards launching Giving World Online. “We went on whatever course we could to learn about the internet, so that we were able to direct our website developer as well as possible.”  The website is still evolving, but right now, businesses can go on there and advertise what they are trying to give away. Then the charities, which are screened by Rana and Sujata, can say that they have a need for particular goods. If the business agrees to give to that charity (they will receive a brief profile about them) then the transaction goes ahead. Usually the charity will then pick up the goods, or pay for the transportation. The aim is to make the process as simple as possible for the businesses.

Rana and Sujata are on the cusp of a big expansion. They are planning to employ 4 more staff members to fuel their growth. They have a charity song written for them by a chart topping, Swedish pop star and Discovery TV have offered to make a TV advertisement for them.  I’m so impressed with their innovation and drive. These women have worked for many years now on reducing waste and reducing deprivation. When I ask them if they enjoy what they do, the smiles that cross their faces speak for themselves. Their role models? “Our family spirit is one of service to the community.  Our mother would do anything to help others.”

The two women themselves are incredibly modest about their achievements but if all families could say that in the last 8 years they had diverted 200 tonnes of waste going to landfill into the hands of those that need it, just imagine what a different world we would live in.