Connection, Cooperation & Change

Education:

Masters of Forest Science, Oxford University, 1990-91. Russell Grimwade Scholar

Bachelor of Forest Science, First Class Honours, Australian National University, 1984-1987

Corporate Coach International, Association of Coaching, 2020

Level 7 Certificate in Coaching & Mentoring, Institute of Leadership & Management, In process, 2020

Awards:

Jubilee Prize for Excellence, Oxford Forestry Institute, 1991

The World Bank Development Marketplace, Innovations for Livelihoods in a Sustainable Environment, Winner 2005

The Tech Museum Awards, Katherine M. Swanson Equality Award, 2007 Laureate, Tropical Forest Trust

Connection, Cooperation & Change

I’ve always been interested in change. From a very young age, it seemed to me the world needed a lot of it. I watched as my parents’ relationship crumbled, my brother and I fought until blood flowed most days and school was a procession of bullying and fighting for survival. Perhaps it was just what rural Australia was like in the 60s and 70s but I don’t think so. It was universal then and universal now, even more so, that people struggle to get on.

Bad things happen when people fight. They get hurt and there’s a lot of collateral damage, most often to those around them but also to Nature. The chance for things to change for the better is made so much harder because we fight, fight and fight.

As I grew and started working, I witnessed first hand the fighting between green groups and the forest industry in Australia. In 1990, I went to Oxford University and studied cooperation. In 1995, I co-authored a paper, “Cooperation and conflict in forest management: Applying a theoretical model to the Australian problem.” In 1999, after early forays into helping people cooperate in Vietnam’s Mekong Delta, India’s Terai region, and in Russia and Romania, I went full-blown and founded the Tropical Forest Trust to help build cooperation in the teeth of a European-wide NGO campaign against retailers and the garden furniture industry because of their use of illegally harvested wood from Cambodia. It was the only way I could see that things could improve, that our collective performance could be such that we helped ourselves and Nature.

I found then, and in so many fascinating projects since, that we can only change things if we can find a path to and then cross over a bridge beyond to cooperation. That path involves getting connected to who you are, to your own values.

Connection, Cooperation, Change.

I have been blessed in my work to have been deeply involved in many different and hugely challenging but significant change processes. I’ve mediated conflicts between some of the world’s largest companies and NGOs. I’ve helped individuals and mediated within and between teams within organisations to find new ways of working, unlocking dramatic and beneficial change along the way. Many will know Rumi’s magic words in his poem '“The Field.” I wonder sometimes if my work is to help bring people there.

I’ve learned a great deal, mostly about myself but also about others. The essence of my experience is that change happens deep in the hidden recesses of the human heart. It can take root and ultimately flourish there but only when people find ways to connect tot hat place, when they can put down their guns and swords and navigate the difficult terrain of life together, to that field, if only for a while. Getting there and helping this cooperation unfold in the face of often deep conflict can be really difficult.

Cooperation can grow when we’re connected to who we are because that’s when we’re most calm, when we’re listening, especially to our own emotions, and most essentially when we’re open. That’s not easy when we’re under pressure. Who we are can get thrown out the window as we struggle with narratives that tell us we’re evil, that the “other” are idiots, that we’re right and they’re wrong, that their concerns are baseless. It can get thrown under a bus when we’re triggered to anger, or when we’re judged or shamed; cooperation struggles to get a toehold in such barren wastelands and then change becomes impossible until the wastelands can be healed, until the garden can be watered.

We can heal those wastelands, water that garden and whisper forth the precursors to cooperation - openness and calm - for others but only if we’re calm and open ourselves. Then, slowly at first, cooperation between adversaries can emerge. When that happens, and if it can be maintained, we can achieve big, unprecedented change such as on those major projects I list below (see “Experience”). But cooperation is the precursor to that change and it’s creating the conditions for cooperation to emerge that has been my life’s work.

But how do we do that?

Influenced by Australian “National Living Treasure” Michael Leunig’s 1990 publication, “A Common Prayer”, I’ve learned that getting connected, living this different way is a lifetime’s work, a deep struggle and that there are many storms and other troubles to knock us from our path. Michael’s inspiration was to draw a beautiful yet profoundly simple picture of a man praying to a Duck to represent a person searching for their soul. This resonates very deeply with me.

I’ve learned that if I can connect to my true self, my soul, if I can get close to that Duck, my inner voice, then I can help others do the same. Time and time again, by being true to me, I’ve been able to “whisper” forth the Duck in others and help them to be true to themselves, to live from their own values. Armed with this connection, they’ve made profound decisions for themselves and sometimes for their companies that have transformed entire industry sectors, saving millions of hectares and forest and affecting millions of people’s, plants’ and animals’ lives. When people get there, really big things happen - for them, for the organisations they lead or work for and for society and the planet as a whole.

My Background

I grew up in rural Australia, on the outskirts of Melbourne. I learned to love Nature, most particularly as it was represented by my four beautiful dogs but also in my everyday surroundings. I learned the value of solitude but also the joy of mates.

My self-reliance and love of Nature became a very deep, personal connection with forests. Having listened to a very old, very wise man on the radio, I dedicated my life to forest conservation.

I studied forestry at the Australian National University where I was privileged to have the opportunity to work for three months in the Middle Hills of Nepal, an experience that changed my life. Living and working with families, studying trees, forests, people and Nature, I knew then that my life choice had been right.

I worked as a forester in Fingal, Tasmania, a small town set apart from much of the rest of the world, but surrounded by mountains and forests and inhabited by very fine people. Luck shone on me and I won a scholarship to complete a Masters at the University of Oxford. After a brief spell back in Tasmania, I set sail to work in Vietnam’s Mekong Delta, researching the best way to get forests back into a landscape denuded by human suffering, imbibing the culture and much rice wine, delicious food, sounds, smells, worms, parasites and bacteria. A truly unique experience that established my love for the country and its people.

A spell in consulting had me visiting more countries, experiencing more of the natural world and a lot of the human one too. I moved to the UK where a European wide NGO campaign against garden furniture made in Vietnam from wood harvested illegally in Cambodia led me to found the non-profit, Tropical Forest Trust (TFT) in March 1999. As TFT expanded beyond the tropics, it became The Forest Trust.

TFT was a beautiful vehicle for 20 long years. I worked in more than 60 countries, meeting many wonderful people and a few “less wonderful” souls, creating many ‘firsts’ and much innovation along the way. I established forest conservation and social livelihood programs working with thousands of companies and NGOs in Europe, the US, in West Africa and the Congo Basin, in the Brazilian Amazon, other parts of Latin America, in China, Indonesia and Malaysia, and across South and South East Asia. At the end of 2015, when I stepped aside as CEO, TFT had 260 people working in 48 countries from 16 different national offices, affecting more than $1 trillion in supply chain turnover in 20 different commodities.

I have spent much of my life living between two worlds. In work, that’s meant navigating the often stormy seas that chop up between companies and NGOs. I’ve mediated many major disputes that have led to profound and unprecedented breakthroughs - the world’s first certified forests in many places, the world’s first No Deforestation commitments in others. At home, I’ve spent more than twenty five years living outside of my native Australia.

I have learned the truth of my early inklings around the importance of living according to your fundamental values; of living connected to that Duck, that inner voice inside you. As I look back on my work, I realise that big changes happened, often amidst deep crises, only when I was able to help people find their own connection. When I couldn’t do that, nothing changed.

I believe that if I can help as many people as possible to find that connection and live from that true place inside them, then I can have a far greater impact than working project by project. The world could be a better place, for all of us, for our relationships, and for Nature but only if we can get connected to that Duck.

"
Scott helped me and my team initiate and navigate the difficult path to sustainability in the Palm Oil industry. I respect Scott for his genuine interest in sustainability. We came together to work but ended up as friends.

/ Kuok Khoon Hong, CHair & CEO, Wilmar International  /

Experience

I’ve been blessed to have so often been in the right place at the right time. I’ve been at the beginning of so many things. Innovation beyond known boundaries to solve challenging problems is part of my DNA. I credit the Duck! I’ve been a Founder, an entrepreneur, a provocateur, a writer, a speaker, a thinker. I would like to think that above all, I’ve been a human,: sometimes failing, sometimes kind, mostly striving to be the best version of me possible.

Here’s a sample of “firsts” I’ve been directly involved in or supported through my leadership at TFT:

~ First Environmental policy by a garden furniture company
~ First sustainable wood procurement program by a garden furniture company
~ First large-scale production of FSC garden furniture from Vietnam 
~ First Manual for excluding illegal wood from supply chains
~ First ever conference on FSC forest management in Cambodia
~ First natural forest to achieve FSC certification in Peninsula Malaysia 
~ First natural forest to achieve FSC certification in Laos
~ First community forest to achieve FSC certification in Laos
~ First natural forest to achieve FSC certification in the Congo Basin
~ First Pygmy language community radio station in the Congo Basin
~ First logging company to use community mapping to identify protected forest
~ First public-private sector partnership to exclude illegal wood from supply chains
~ First community forest to achieve FSC certification in Indonesia
~ Founded the Centre for Social Excellence in the Congo Basin
~ First FSC Gap assessment in the Democratic Republic of Congo
~ First ever No Deforestation Policy (Nestle)
~ First No Deforestation Policy for a palm oil company (Golden Agri Resources)
~ Pioneered development of the High Carbon Stock forest approach 
~ Asia Pulp and Paper No Deforestation, Peatland, Exploitation Policy
~ First NDPE by a global palm oil trader (Wilmar International)
~ First supply chain Transparency dashboard by a global trader (Wilmar International)
~ First FSC certified forest concession in Brazil 
~ Pioneered Values-Transparency-Transformation-Verification approach

In terms of my work “Between Two Worlds” mediating between companies and NGOs, though there have been numerous small projects, I remember the BIG 7:

~ Supported ScanCom International and Global Witness to lead the transformation of the wooden garden furniture sector;

~ Supported CIB and Greenpeace to secure the first FSC certified Congo Basin forest;

~ Supported Indonesia's State-owned Teak Corporation remove more than 4,000 guns from its forest protection program across 2 million hectares of forest and instead partner with local communities;

~ Supported Nestlé and Greenpeace to announce the world's first ever No Deforestation commitment;

~ Supported Golden Agri Resources and Greenpeace to announce the first palm oil industry No Deforestation policy;

~ Supported Asia Pulp & Paper and Greenpeace to end all natural forest fibre sourcing and to announce its own No Deforestation commitment; and

~ Supported Wilmar International and Climate Advisers to announce the world's first No Deforestation commitment by a major trader.

And lastly, outside of work, I walk a lot especially up the back of my house in the forests and foothills of the beautiful “La Dole” in the Jura mountains. I co-founded the Gingins Cricket Club, am a qualified Level 2 cricket coach and I love listening to music. I love cooking, especially on the barbecue, and I strive, with quite some success, to only eat a plant-based diet (since May 4th, 2015). I’m a Community Ambassador for the Movember Foundation in Switzerland. I’m married with two adult sons and I have a beautiful, deaf, Jack Russell Terrier called Finn.