Page 32 - BBC Wildlife Volume 36 #04

talkin g

CREATING EDENS

China is the future of global conservation, according to Tim
Smit. Patrick Barkham meets the maverick businessman-

environmentalist who created the Eden Project.

orget those hoary myths about
China building a coal-fired
power station every week, says
Sir Tim Smit, the man behind
the Eden Project in Cornwall. In
fact, he predicts, the country
F will soon lead the global
environmental movement. “China is the
most extraordinary example of development
in the history of humankind. Their
achievements are shockingly underplayed
in the West. In my view, the repair of
the environment is seen as one of the
cornerstones of China’s self-confidence and
its emergence into its next phase – being
the dominant civilisation in the world.”
Such statements usually come with dire
warnings for the West. But Smit, 63, is that
most endangered breed of environmentalist:
an incorrigible optimist. He’s also fairly
convincing proof that businessman-
environmentalist is not an oxymoron. And, everyone else too, and the £86 million Smit – incessantly curious, fizzing with
as well as being a provocative talker, he Eden Project opened in 2001. This challenging ideas and magnanimous if
undertakes an unusual amount of doing. environmental beacon has rewritten the proved wrong – is willing to explain.
He doesn’t just tell stories but propels them rules of attractions and received more than
into reality. “You can do amazing things 19 million visitors in its first 16 years. useums, exhibitions, zoos
at amazing speed if you’ve got a story Smit is currently talking more about – all the great scientific
that others buy in to,” he says. China than Cornwall, though. He has institutions – are failing to
For the past two decades, Smit has been long pondered creating ‘Edens’ on save the world, he argues.
best known for the Eden Project. Born in the every continent but worried about such M If these organisations
Netherlands, he studied at Durham intending ‘themeparkery’. This year, he’s taking the were “even half as good as we all claim
to become an archeologist but instead made plunge, developing projects in China, to be – and I include ourselves – the
his million as a composer/producer for the Costa Rica, California, Dubai, New world would be a different place, because
likes of Barry Manilow and The Nolan Sisters. Zealand, Tasmania and the Seychelles. the education messages that we think
After “retiring” to Cornwall and restoring the As the latter is a member of the African we’re so successful at transmitting
Lost Gardens of Heligan, he set his sights on Union, Eden will soon span every would’ve changed people’s behaviours.”
creating a “great green cathedral” to plants in populated continent. Uncomfortable truths about the sixth
an old china clay pit near St Austell. That’s a lot of air miles for an avowed great mass extinction, runaway climate
Smit was convinced that “a lost world in environmentalist. Sceptics may wonder change, air and marine pollution and
a crater would appeal to anyone who’s ever how Eden’s involvement in Dubai’s potentially catastrophic soil erosion
Eden Project been 12”. More remarkably, he convinced Expo 2020, say, can save the planet. But are not getting through.

32 BBC Wildlife April 2018