Conversations with Green Gurus: The Collective Wisdom of Environmental Movers and Shakers

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Sir Crispin Tickell

Sir Crispin Tickell has had a long and distinguished career as a diplomat, academic and environmentalist. As author of the influential Climatic Change and World Affairs, he explored the relationship between climate change and international politics in the 1970s. He has many interests, including climate change, population issues, conservation of biodiversity and the early history of the Earth.

He was educated at Westminster School as a King’s Scholar, and Christ Church, Oxford, graduating in 1952 with first-class honours in Modern History. He went on to do his national service in the Coldstream Guards as a second lieutenant (1952-1954).

On leaving the Guards he joined the British diplomatic service, where he was at the Foreign and Commonwealth Office in London until 1955, and then at the British embassies in The Hague, Mexico and Paris. He later became Chef de Cabinet to the President of the European Commission (1977-1981), British Ambassador to Mexico (1981-1983), Permanent Secretary of the Overseas Development Administration (now Department for International Development) (1984-1987) and British Ambassador to the United Nations and Permanent Representative on the UN Security Council (1987-1990).

He was appointed MVO in 1958 and later knighted as a KCVO in 1983 on the Royal Yacht Britannia, to mark the conclusion of Queen Elizabeth’s official visit to Mexico. ...