To my successor I leave unfinished business and great challenges. The organisation is still licking its wounds from setbacks that have occurred on my watch – times when we have failed to live up to the values we champion. And while we can never promise to stop falling short of our own standards and expectations, we can commit to learning from those failures. They make us stronger.
My greatest hope is that my successor will continue the unfinished journey of ensuring that Greenpeace becomes more truly global and diverse, more open, better able to unleash the energy and creativity of our supporters and volunteers, more articulate about what we stand for and the solutions we champion, more cooperative in working with movement partners and using our reach to lift up the work of others, more willing to dare to risk – and achieve – the impossible.
As for me, I'm returning to one of the most beautiful places I know in Africa, Rustlers Valley in the Free State, South Africa near the border with Lesotho. There I will continue to work with the EarthRise Trust that is developing an activist school, ecological farming projects, educational development, and economic empowerment programmes.
I'll be working alongside Greenpeace in the struggle against nuclear power and to reform the rules of the financial world to stop the flow of money toward projects which are holding back a more beautiful, sustainable, and equitable future for all humanity.
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