News Bites

“By far the biggest boundary we have to transcend today is our compulsion to keep on transcending boundaries!”

This is the opening remark of the latest contribution to our Transcending Boundaries series from Jonathon Porritt CBE, Founder Director of Forum for the Future. He goes on to make the case for treating Planet Earth as if it were planning to live here forever, and challenge the ‘resource gobbling’ status quo.

Jonathon argues that “we have saturated the system; the Earth has taken all the abuse it can cope with”. In order to fix this, he explains, we must transition away from the ‘old story’ of business-as-usual growth, and into a ‘new story’ of growth within a safe operating space, provided only by a stable and resilient planet.

Jonathon Porritt, is Co-Founder of Forum for the Future and 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. The Forum has a growing presence in the United States, India, Hong Kong, Singapore and Malaysia. In addition he is a Non-Executive Director of Willmott Dixon Holdings, a Trustee of Ashden, and a Director of Collectively (an online platform celebrating sustainable innovation).

He was formerly Director of Friends of the Earth, co-chair of the Green Party and as Chairman of the UK Sustainable Development Commission until 2009, he spent nine years providing high-level advice to Government Ministers. Jonathon was installed as the Chancellor of Keele University in February 2012. He is also Visiting Professor at Loughborough University and UCL. Recent books are ‘Capitalism As If The World Matters’ (2007) and ‘The World We Made’ (2013) – which seeks to inspire people about the prospects of a sustainable world in 2050. Jonathon received a CBE in January 2000 for services to environmental protection.