Earth watching

For not only is Herschel Post busy looking after top people's money, he is also chairman of Earthwatch (Europe), an Oxford charity that systematically gets on with the job of promoting sustainable conservation far from the noisy world of confrontation tactics.

He said: "The point I try to make to large companies that work in partnership with Earthwatch is this: it is as important that they look after the environment as it is that they look after their shareholders, or balance sheets, or machinery.

"It is in their commercial interests."

The bank had thrown the party in the museum to celebrate the opening of a Coutts branch in Oxford.

We were surrounded by well-heeled Coutts customers, or people the bank thought might be persuaded to become customers, and it was heartening to gather that the term "Green Capitalist" was no longer a contradiction in terms in business circles.

As little as ten years ago it would have been accepted as a sad, but inevitable part of the human condition, of human progress on Earth, that if we wanted the good things of material life, the environment would suffer. As economic guru John Stuart Mill said in the last century, you cannot use finite resources infinitely.

It is the tackling of this conundrum, or to put it another way, monitoring exactly how much of the Earth's cake is being "had," and how much "eaten," that is the charity's stock in trade.

Earthwatch Institute, which to date has sent more than 50,000 volunteer team members on more than 2,000 projects in 130 countries, was the brainchild of American merchant banker Brian Rosborough.

Back in 1971 he was dining with scientist friends in Boston when he heard of a critical shortage of money for field research into the environment. More and more money from governments everywhere was being poured into space, defence and medical research, but the poor old field research scientist was being left out in the cold.

Earthwatch Europe was registered in England as a charity in 1985. It opened its headquarters in Woodstock Road, Oxford, in 1989. Now the office employs 18 people and has a turnover of £1.9m. This year it received a £1.5m grant from the UK Government Millennium Commission. The charity is now one of the largest private financial backers of scientific research. This year alone it will support over 140 projects in 55 different countries. It will send about 4,000 volunteers into the field and pay out some £22.5m in research grants.

One of the social plusses of the organisation is that it embraces lay people into the scientific community, thereby helping to fund serious research while at the same time educating the public at large.

Volunteers joining projects, who may or may not be drawn from the 45,000-strong worldwide force of Earthwatch members (individual membership £25 a year), pay an average of £980 each, plus their travel costs, per expedition undertaken.

They may then find themselves learning how to "finger print" a black rhino (actually its more "foot printing") in Zimbabwe; recovering treasures lost from St Petersburg in the Second World War; learning lessons of sustainability from an ancient Etruscan farm, or rescuing forgotten Hungarian seeds to feed the world. These are just a few of the expeditions listed in the 1998 catalogue of expeditions. Members include professionals 25 per cent, students six per cent, educators 16 per cent, administrators 14 per cent, technicians 13 per cent, retired people 14 per cent, and others 12 per cent.

Any doubt that the volunteers really can perform useful tasks as well as enjoying themselves in remote parts of the world tend to be dispersed by reading the Earthwatch catalogue. It becomes obvious that a lot of conservation work is labour intensive date gathering in exotic locations. Earthwatch director of development Mr Robert Barrington said: "One of our scientists studying Australian rainforest canopies estimates that he is 30 years ahead of where he would have been without our volunteers."

Prices may seem on the high side but Earthwatch says they cover food, accommodation and local travel costs with 50 per cent going directly to the field, 34 per cent to supporting the project at home in Oxford, plus the costs directly associated with recruiting team members, and the remaining 16 per cent going on administration. But how well does Earthwatch's scheme to work hand in hand with big business, perceived by many as the environment wreckers of the modern world, really work?

The charity has enrolled 35 top international companies, including Marks & Spencer, Glaxo Wellcome, NatWest Group, and most recently Seacourt Press, to join its Corporate Environmental Responsibility Group (CERG), established in 1990 specifically to bridge the perceived gap between business and the environmental movement.

Welcoming Oxford printers Seacourt to the Responsibility Group, Mr Post said: "I believe that every company has a responsibility towards the environment. The printing industry is the fifth largest manufacturing industry in the UK, consuming vast resources of energy and raw materials. I am delighted Seacourt is investing in the environment." As an example of how the non-confrontational approach that the Responsibility Group engenders has produced tangible results, Earthwatch quotes the case of the Baja loggerhead sea turtle. An international oil company altered plans to exploit a waterway off Baja California, in Mexico, after receiving detailed information on the creatures' habits - information gathered to a large extent by volunteers.

But the emphasis is always on non-confrontation. Possession of the full facts will always help conservationists reason with business people when there is a clash of interests.

The Earthwatch Centre for Field Research receives over 400 proposals each year from scholars and scientists who need both funds and help from volunteers.

Projects are selected by the charity's Scientific Advisory Group which includes such Oxford luminaries as Sir Crispin Tickell, warden of Green College, Sir Richard Southwood, Linacre professor of Zoology, and Prof Burley of the Oxford Forestry Institute. Other key personalities include business personalities such as executive director Simon Martyn, who spent 18 years with Shell International, or honorary treasurer Fergus Munro, former finance director of the Cookson Group. The inclusion of business people does much in itself to diffuse possible clashes of interests between the environmentalists and a company's shareholders.

But in the end it is Earthwatch's "Global Citizenship" idea that may pay the highest dividend. In its catalogue of projects, Earthwatch says: "Just as important as the published findings of the research is the change that you yourself go through. On an Earthwatch project, you get a broad, deep, and multifaceted view of global issues." It adds: "You develop a sense of personal responsibility that leads many people to change their careers, manage businesses differently, and influence others to change.

"We believe that creating this sense of global citizenship is one of the key accomplishments of Earthwatch and is fundamental to achieving worldwide sustainability."

Converted for the new archive on 30 June 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.