As the natural world changes too quickly for comfort and with diminishing viable space for a burgeoning human population, there is a growing agreement that we need to restore damaged environments in a way that re-builds ecological integrity and offers viable socio-economic opportunities for the people associated with such places. This needs to be done rapidly and on a large scale, as recognised with the declaration by the UN of its Decade on Ecosystem Restoration, 2021-2030. 

In seeking to understand how this could be done, in 2011 Pete embarked on a two-month expedition, as a Travelling Fellow of the Winston Churchill Memorial Trust, through the Americas. The aim was to better understand what we mean by ‘world class landscape restoration’ and what lessons could be learned from real people doing this in real places, often with few resources, that could apply generically to projects in other places. In this webinar, he will relate some of his findings and how they may be applicable to environmental management practice today.

Our speaker

Pete Whitbread-Abrutat is a self-employed environmental consultant. His social enterprise consultancy, Future Terrains, works internationally to address damaged environments. He works mainly with the mining sector – particularly where it interacts with international and sustainable development.

Prior to his work as a consultant, he was part of the team that created the Eden Project in a 160-year-old china clay quarry in Cornwall, UK, where he then worked for 12 years. Prior to this he was a research scientist and PhD student at the University of Exeter’s Camborne School of Mines. Pete is a Chartered Environmentalist, a Churchill Fellow and a graduate of Cambridge University.

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