Feature: The Gaia Foundation - building alternatives to a modern industrial system
Published: 24 June 2010
by JOSH LOEB
IF one day, wandering on Hampstead Heath, you happen across a group of Amazonian warrior chiefs in their full robes, don’t be surprised; they are probably guests of Liz Hosken and Edward Posey of Well Walk, Hampstead.
The couple co-founded The Gaia Foundation charity with a group of like-minded ecologists in the 1980s. They regularly host tribal hunter-gatherers from the jungles of Latin America in the belief that these visitors can teach us lessons about living in harmony with the Earth.
The foundation’s 25th birthday was marked last week at a party at the house in Well Walk where it was established.
Named after the ancient Greek goddess of the Earth, its purpose is ambitious: to build alternatives to our modern industrial system with its exploitation of natural resources and associated disasters – even as the birthday celebrations were under way, hundreds of thousands of barrels of oil continued to spew into the Gulf of Mexico.
Despite operating internationally, the foundation’s focus is hyper-local. It gives financial aid to organisations that are cutting their reliance on finite fuels like oil. In London, that means supporting Transition Towns, a group of activists who grow vegetables to be less reliant on food flown in from overseas. In South America, the foundation helps tribes-people secure land rights in territories threatened with deforestation by biofuel corporations or those growing soya, a component of animal feed used in factory farms.
“We very much like that quote from Einstein: ‘You can’t solve the problems of today with the mindset that created them’,” says Edward, who made his money in the aviation industry before “shifting mid-life” after he started questioning the ethics of the world he was involved in. In the 1970s he threw himself into environmentalism and philanthropy.
Edward’s money helped kick-start the Gaia Foundation, but in order to keep going, the organisation must raise funds. It is now redoubling its efforts to recruit new supporters. “The Gaia Foundation has to wash its face, so to speak,” says Edward. “There’s a lot of time and pressure put on us for that. I think that’s a dynamic tension. It makes us more careful about how we pick our projects.”
While the skills Edward learnt in business proved useful in providing the foundation with a secure footing, Liz helped furnish the vision. An activist in the anti-apartheid movement in South Africa, the country where she grew up, she was no stranger to pushing for political change. In the 1980s she was “virtually exiled” to the UK because of her activism.
“At that time there was a gathering of people here who were concerned about the state of the world,” she says. “We had experienced 40 years of development – poverty was growing, environmental destruction was growing, species extinction was growing.”
Ecological issues were a niche area, but with Gaia: A New Look at Life on Earth – the landmark book by maverick scientist James Lovelock which advocated seeing our planet as a single living organism – having been published the decade previously, these were exciting times for the fledgling green movement.
A quarter of a century on, climate change and peak oil are now widely known about, and Liz says the economic crisis has caused a greater recognition of the dangers of excess.
“When the economy collapsed, what was interesting was to see how many people, journalists and readers writing to the newspapers, were saying it was a good thing because everything was too excessive, too much. This business of the growth economy had become a fanatical religion. The market, consumption – it’s a belief system. But when we saw the economic collapse, we saw how many people knew in their gut it was an illusion.”
The post-war boom is, say Liz and Edward, on its last legs, but the couple fear increased plundering by big corporations as the decline accelerates.
“It’s a race against time,” says Edward, “between, on the one hand, people’s shift of consciousness – and there are quite a few lights at the end of the tunnel – and this consumptive madness which is still continuing.”
With so much bad news about the state of our planet, it can be easy to lose hope. So does Edward ever feel like throwing in the towel in his battle against big corporations?
“No,” he replies. “I’m an optimist.”
• For more on the Gaia Foundation, or to make a donation, visit www.gaiafoundation.org or call 0207 428 0055
Picture: Liz Hosken and Edward Posey with a colleague from the Brazillian Amazon