IoS Green List: Britain's top 100 environmentalists

The little-known John Stewart, who leads the onslaught against a third runway at Heathrow, soundly beats far more high-profile figures to take the top-environmentalist honour. He does so in the wake of an important breakthrough for his campaign – the announcement by the Conservative Party that it plans to scrap the runway in favour of high-speed rail links that would supplant short-haul flights.
So began The Independent on Sunday (IoS) Green List of Britain's top 100 environmentalists three years ago.

John Stewart was not a high-profile environmentalist if one were to compare him with Jonathon Porritt or Sir David Attenborough but he was the top of the first comprehensive list of Britain's most effective greens. The runners-up were also unconventional choices, not normally found heading such lists: Professor Robert Watson, the chief scientist at Defra; Jane Davidson, the Welsh environment minister; the broadcaster Monty Don; and the polar scientist Peter Wadhams.They, and other greens, were selected on the criterion of impact of their campaign/activity rather on the basis of fame.

Judges were bent on identifying environmentalists who really made a difference 'either directly or by altering public perceptions' rather than those who 'made most noise.'  So, naturally, it should not be a real surprise when the honor was bestowed on John Stewart.

"Mr Stewart, who is also chair of the Campaign for Better Transport, took up aviation and Heathrow more than a decade ago after winning a successful campaign – as head of the pressure group Alarm UK – against the then Conservative government's plans for a road-building drive hailed as the biggest since Roman times. Of an original 600 schemes, only 150 remained when John Major lost office in 1997, and the incoming Labour government cut those down to 50. By then Mr Stewart had presciently begun to switch targets, forming a group called ClearSkies, then merging with, and radicalising, the gentlemanly Heathrow Association for the Control of Aircraft Noise (Hacan). His campaign has been so effective in getting the third runway to the top of the agenda that the judges unanimously selected him to lead the list even before the Conservatives' announcement," to quote The Independent - Green Living.

Professor Robert Watson - the outspoken veteran campaigner against ozone-gobbling chemicals - clinched the number two slot. His gathering of scientists in his campaign-bid to save the ozone did prove efficacious that  he was a pivotal force behind the Inter-governmental Panel on Climate Change – too much so for the Bush administration, which had him removed as chairman – and to lead definitive, groundbreaking assessments of the state of the world's wildlife and agriculture. He was an inspired, if unexpected, choice last year to become chief scientist at Defra.

The judges were: Nicholas Schoon, editor, the 'ENDS Report', Britain's leading specialist environmental journal; Alex Kirby, former environment correspondent of the BBC; David Randall, assistant editor, 'IoS'; and Geoffrey Lean, environment editor at The IoS.

In the subsequent postings, I intend to reproduce The IoS' brief profiles of each of the top 100 environmentalists in Britain. Though the List was published in 2008, my idea of recollecting is to propagate the 'list' as knowledge resource in the domain of environmental care. In a way, the issues and personalities, not necessarily all would be known outside Britain except some, could make us understand the unifying connectivities that matter in our efforts to save the environment.