Sara Parkin

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  • Front Page
  • The Sustainability Literacy Project
    • What Does Good Look Like?
    • The Project
  • The Positive Deviant
  • About
  • Contact
  • Search

Sustainability Literate Leadership

Welcome to my website. Its purpose is to help people become sustainability literate. It includes tasters of my 2010 book The Positive Deviant and hosts its ‘sequel’ What Does Good Look Like? This will be written online and I’d welcome your feedback. The front page will offer a sustainability perspective on a range of topics, and will flag any new posts anywhere else on the site. Please do send in comments.

Marina Silva: will she show that principles and politics can mix?

hen I was in Brazil earlier this year to promote the Portuguese version of The Positive Deviant I had dinner with Marina Silva, then considering whether or not to join the Brazilian Socialist Party as running mate to its Presidential candidate Eduardo Campos in this October’s elections. Subsequently, she decided …

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BrazilGovernanceMarina Silva
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Down on Trill Farm

or the past few months I have taken a rest from ‘transmitting’, giving myself more time to catch up on reading, visiting friends and reflecting – a habit I like to talk about a lot but do less of than I should! One outcome of all this will appear on …

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Energy EfficiencyFarmingRomy FraserSocial Enterprise
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St Andrews Prize for the Environment

  • Aquaculture Business Training
  • Sea Cucumber farming
  • Community health client with her mother and baby
  • Landing Octopus
  • School Scholarship Recipient
  • Woman Gleaning octopus on reef flats

ne of the most interesting things I get to do is be a Trustee of the St Andrews Prize for the Environment. At the end of April, the prize, a joint venture between the eponymous university and Aberdeen based oil company ConocoPhillips, celebrated its 15th anniversary by selecting Blue Ventures …

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Blue VenturesClimate changeMadagascarPopulation
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Life is a bowl of Cherries

  • Andy Goldsworthy Lake District
  • Bowl of Cherries

r is it? On 1st May, Forum for the Future helped launch a new book by famous systems thinker Fritjof Capra. Co-authored with Pier Luigi Luisi, an Italian professor of chemistry, The Systems View of Life is what the authors call a unifying vision for living sustainably on earth. I …

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Fritjof CapraRelationshipsScienceSystems Thinking
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The meaning of life, the universe and everything

Andy Goldsworth

n May Fritjof Capra comes to London. He is launching his latest book The Systems View of Life co-authored with Pier Luigi Luisi with a lecture tour in Europe. As a serious Fritjof Capra groupie, I am delighted to be chairing the London event. The lecture takes place on Thursday …

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Fritjof CapraGood ReadLeonardo da VinciPier Luigi LuisiSystems Thinking
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Scotland: better together than alone?

  • Lossit Beach Islay

he wrong question is being asked. I blame that David Cameron. Less than two years ago Scotland’s First Minister and leader of the Scottish National Party, Alex Salmond, was trying to get extensive devolution – known as DevoMax – as an option for this year’s vote on Scottish Independence, due …

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Alex SalmondDevolutionGeorge RobertsonScottish Referendum
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A GOOD READ – Money: The unauthorised biography.

Dismal scientists are people too am grateful I read The Worldly Philosophers by Robert Heilbroner a very long time ago. It removed my fear of economists and economics.  Heilbroner talked about them as humans (with frailties like the rest of us) and showed that the ‘dismal science’ they practiced was …

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CapitalismFelix MartinGood ReadMoneyRobert Heilbroner
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More from The Positive Deviant in Brazil

  • The newly launched Brazilian version of The Positive Deviant
  • Portrait of Author Sara Parkin in Folha De S Paulo

Positive deviance makes sense in Brazil fter 17 presentations about O Divergente Positive, plus many interviews and meetings I have been bowled over by the reception for the basic message of the book – do the right thing for sustainability despite the perversity of the institutions, processes and wilfully uncooperative people around you.  …

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BrazilEducationPositive DeviantsStrategies for change
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The Positive Deviant in Brazil

  • Sao Paulo City

n Brazil to promote O Divergente Positivo the Portuguese language edition of The Positive Deviant. So far (just over a week) it has been one rather frantic round of talks, seminars, interviews and meetings. More in future posts. First some background. Looking out from my high rise hotel over the roof tops and …

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American Association of ScienceBrazilClimate changePositive deviant
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The original ‘Positive Deviant’ masters course is recruiting

Positive Deviants Master Students

orum for the Future is recruiting for its Leadership in Sustainable Development Masters. The course I designed to develop Positive Deviants, and on which I still teach. Full details are available on Forum’s website or on twitter @F4FMA If you have any more questions contact Carol Edwards or phone +44 (0)207 3243674.

EducationForum for the FuturePositive Deviants
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Sara Parkin

I’m Principal Associate of The Sustainability Literacy Project, and Founder-Director & Trustee of Forum for the Future. My 2010 book The Positive Deviant: Sustainability Leadership in a Perverse World is now a course book in many countries. By wide recommendation its sequel What Does Good Look Like? concentrates on an articulation of what sort of world we want to have. I owe many thanks to the Marmot Charitable Trust for their support and patience during the writing of this on-line book. Read more about me here.

Copyright © 2022 Sara Parkin