Tony Juniper on how a fairer world will save our planet

'This is a moment for big ideas. We can see the crumbling of the old order.'

In our February xChange Paul Skinner interviewed ⁠Tony Juniper, CBE⁠, chair of Natural England and author, to explore the ideas in his latest book ⁠Just Earth: How a Fairer World Will Save our Planet⁠.

In the xChange and in his recent book, Just Earth, Tony made a very strong case for why power imbalances are becoming more visible in society and why inequality is the main obstacle to climate action and how the system needs to shift to achieve real, lasting change.

We learned about Tony's concept of Thrivalism, how 10 billion people can thrive on a living planet. We heard about his experiences working with everyone from smallholder farmers in Côte d'Ivoire to Vandana Shiva and even The King. And we discussed his campaigning efforts working with the government on the Climate Change Act in 2008.

He encouraged us to build collective action and change our consumerism culture.

In the audience Q&A Tony shared what 3 things he would do if he were in charge of the country:

1. Create a new measure for progress, instead of GDP the main metric would be a Genuine Progress Indicator

2. Recognise functioning natural ecosystems as critical national infrastructure and invest in them like we do with the power grid and motorways (see the recent report from the joint intelligence committee on the risks)

3. Legislate for a purpose-driven standard for businesses (PAS808) and find ways to incentivise the city to invest in companies that adopt it.

Tony also encouraged us to watch the King's documentary called Finding Harmony, which is out on Amazon Prime on February 6th. And the book Harmony, which Tony co-wrote with The King will be coming out in paperback later this month.

You can listen to the full replay on our podcast here or watch the replay below.