Satish Kumar, founder of ecological college in Devon, says a brighter future requires compassion and long-term thinking.
For more than 50 years, Satish Kumar has been a prominent figure in the environmental movement. Last month, he and the Dartington-based educational institution he founded, Schumacher College, were awarded the RSA bicentenary medal and commended by the judges for “trailblazing ecological learning” and “quietly setting the global agenda”. He calls for more unity, compassion and long-term thinking in the green movement to address the nature and climate crises.
Born in India, you became a Jain monk at nine years old, made an 8,000-mile (13,000km) peace pilgrimage at 26, and later settled in Devon where you edited Resurgence magazine. Can you explain your intellectual journey from anti-nuclear campaigner to environmental activist?
I think we must be at peace with nature. But the way we are destroying rainforests, the way we treat animals in factory farms, and the way we degrade the soil are acts of war. After walking around the world for two and a half years, I realised that peace between people and peace with nature go together.
Right now, I feel the movement is not sufficiently united. There are many organisations – Extinction Rebellion, Friends of the Earth, Greenpeace, WWF, the Green party, Dark Mountain and so on – each focused on separate aspects and trying to build up their own memberships. We need to come together quickly because the climate and nature situation is catastrophic.
We would have more impact as one united front, like the independence movement in India under Mahatma Gandhi, or the anti-segregation movement in the United States under Martin Luther King.
