Polite, posh and problematic: does the UK environmental movement have a class problem

Speaker

Jane Reeves, Visiting Professor CES

Abstract

In 2015, Craig Bennett, the then CEO of Friends of the Earth, controversially described the UK environmental movement as a 'middle-class ghetto'. A decade on, does that description still hold?

Using her own and others' research and her board-level experience in UK environmental NGOs, this lecture will explore whether the UK environmental movement has a class problem and, if so, what its impact might be at a time when the environmental consensus is becoming increasingly frayed.

Biography

My background is as a lawyer; Senior vice president for Thomson Reuters until 2018, taking on a wide range of corporate and commercial work and running their global compliance and regulatory programmes. After Thomson Reuters, I combined a consultancy role with the law firm, Taylor Wessing, with a portfolio of non-executive roles. I have been a governor for the College of Law, the Legal Education Foundation and the University of Lincoln. More recently, I have taken on appointments in the environmental sector, and I am currently a trustee for the RSPB and Chair of their England Advisory Committee and trustee for the Green Alliance and the Foundation for the Royal Botanical Gardens, Kew.

Contact

Email ifs@surrey.ac.uk for the Teams link and with any questions.