About thirty years ago I tried to explain the concept of commercial recycling to a Kenyan wildlife activist. Although he understood what I was saying he was shocked at the idea of throwing precious resources away in the first place. Simple wisdom – something I fear many of us in developed countries have already lost. I have travelled most of my adult life, working for EIA in parts of the world most people never think of visiting. Within many countries I have often found myself well out of my urban comfort zone, such as tromping through a forest at night for hours in West Papua or bumping along a dirt road in upriver Gambia in a Renault 12 rented from a nervous “can’t use it off-road” empl
On July 10th 1985 a small group of us from the Environmental Investigation Agency (EIA) were in the Faroe Islands preparing to launch inflatable dinghies to interrupt a drive hunt of pilot whales. Returning from a road patrol to identify in which bay a hunt would occur, I was met by ashen faced colleagues. News had reached us that the Rainbow Warrior had been bombed and Fernando Pereira, the photographer had been killed. I was the photographer on board the Warrior on the 1979 anti-whaling campaign in Iceland and a few of my EIA colleagues that day were regular Warrior crew members. It hit us hard. Faroe Islands 1985 by Dave Currey/EIA Fifteen years later in 2000 my phone rang. “We’ve been
My first visit to Indonesia in 1998 was just before the fall of the dictator Suharto. For 30 years he had believed as long as he kept his people fed he could remain in power. Indonesia, having been hit hardest by the Asian economic collapse in 1997, plunged many poor into hunger and the cost and availability of rice contributed to his dramatic downfall. It was a privilege to be there during the ten years that followed and see the uprising and slow birth of a democracy, however flawed. Food of course depends on our climate and with rapid and extreme changes already occurring some people have already been forced to abandon their land. A short France 24 documentary airing this week on their e
Brixton in South London may not be famous for its underwater world, but it was where, during evening classes in 1982, I first learned to Scuba. There is no doubt that the sense of weightlessness, propelled by a gentle flip of your fin, elevated by a deep breath, is something I would hope everyone could experience. It is quite simply the closest you can ever get to feeling as if you can fly. Work filled my time and I rarely had an opportunity to dive in the decades following, except for moments in Thailand, Spain and on the Great Barrier Reef. My partner Gary has never been confident in water so I didn’t have a regular diving companion, always meeting up with complete strangers to share some
