Stephen has co-founded a number of the UK’s leading environmental enterprises, including Argyll Environmental, Ashfield Solutions and Certa. His specialist areas are environmental insurance, environmental data and de-risking brownfield sites for clients around the world.
He is Chair of the UK Environmental Law Association, director of the Castle Debates and a Visiting Fellow at Birkbeck’s Centre for Innovation Management Research.
It is a wonderful thing to witness when the world shifts on its axis and a big idea takes hold and changes the agenda. Wonderful, but extraordinarily rare. Great ideas are often less convincing once they have been written up, when the practicalities of definition, scope and implementation are being figured out; and the demise […]
It is not only the job of the historian to remember what others forget. There are plenty of vital lessons which today’s environmental policymakers can extract from past successes and old failures of environmental regulation and enforcement. It is not only the job of the historian to remember what others forget. There are plenty of […]
1. Introduction Two successively dry winters mean the chalk aquifers of Southern and Eastern England have not refilled with water. Some of the reservoirs in these regions only have 40% of their expected volume of water for this time of year. A very serious drought is upon us. Hosepipe bans will be introduced on April 5th […]
The impact of certain chemicals and cocktails of chemicals on human health can be very gradual. Asbestos (mesothelioma) is the classic example – exposure to a single fibre can take decades to manifest as cancer. Another instance of the gradual impact of chemicals on human health was reported on March 14th by the BBC: see:http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-cornwall-11719398 […]
The oceans of the world are bearing much of the brunt of mankind’s hunt for resources and burning of fossil fuels. The damage being inflicted on the Oceans is out of sight and out of mind for most people, but when it is looked for, the evidence of environmental damage and our collective failure to […]
There needs to be a rebalancing of the sustainability debate. Sustainability is not just about carbon and the environment – it has economic and social dimensions. Matter such as cultural diversity, social cohesion and community wellbeing have been overlooked for too long. Such was the thought-provoking proposition at a round table forum organised by one […]
I am writing down these observations whilst on a family holiday in Germany. We are being taken on a guided tour up the top of Lüneburg’s stunning Saint Nicholas’s Church. The view from the tower in the traffic-free centre of Lüneburg, north Germany is, in every sense, far-reaching. On the horizon to the north, 40 […]
In the face of climate change and mankind’s unsustainable use of finite resources (potable water, nutritional food, fossil fuels, rare earth elements and so forth), the toughest of all challenges is upon us: just what do we have to do to bring about behavioural change? If we can’t change behaviours – and there are precious […]
Politics is the art of obfuscation, rather than perspicacity. It is best to keep things aspirational (and vague) rather than to announce dangerously practical, specific, measureable policies and aims. There are plenty of benefits from keeping ones options (and language) wide open – you can never be accused of breaking a promise (if it wasn’t […]
As I wrote in an earlier blog for ERIC, the 2000s and especially the 2010s present unrivalled opportunities for environmental entrepreneurs to develop new enterprises, goods and services, particularly in the areas of renewable energy, climate change and sustainability. There are also major opportunities to guide public, private and third sector national and international clients […]
