In a recent letter to the G20 heads of state, the Centre for Human Ecology was one of 11 signatories, alongside the United Nations Environment Programme, the International Union for the Conservation of Nature, the International Trade Union Confederation, WWF International, etc.

Fellow Alastair McIntosh writes: The letter points to the common nature of both the credit crunch and the climate crunch, and urges that the Global New Deal that the G20 will be developing in London must be a Green Global New Deal. This letter is also expected to be published in the International Herald Tribune - the daily newspaper that's widely read by the diplomatic set - and it is expected that the IHT will run an editorial around it.

What good do such letters achieve? The significance, as the major participating agencies saw it, is that this signals to the politicians that the big environmental agencies, organised labour and the CSR-aware end of the business spectrum are all united in pressing the same message to the world.
 
The reason why the the rather small CHE is incuded with agencies of global consequence is that when the coalition met to draft the letter near Geneva earlier this month, it was me that was invited to deliver the keynote address. This followed from the research that a dozen of us with CHE links have undertaken with WWF funding in the past, as published in the recent Schumacher Briefing, Rekindling Community. WWF arranged to have both Rekindling Community and Hell & High Water given out at the meeting. I suggested that to have such a small agency as CHE as a signatory to the letter diluted the clout of the big ones. However, they were very keen to have us there which, I must say, puzzled but delighted me.

A copy of the letter may be found here: www.che.ac.uk/downloads/ coalition_letter_to_G20_heads_of_state.pdf. Photo above from the London Permaculture gallery, a project of CHE student James Taylor.