Jon Tinker | a vision for PanosThe roots of Panos go back to 1974, when I started Earthscan as part of the International Institute for Environment and Development (IIED). When Panos was born from the ashes of Earthscan in 1986, we decided to make some key changes.
First, we needed a new name. Earthscan had been a great title, but francophone tongues found the five consecutive consonants rthsc totally unmanageable. So we looked for a new name that had some but not too much meaning - and Panos fitted the bill.
Second, we decided to establish totally autonomous institutes in other countries – initially in Paris and Washington – rather than recreating the Earthscan model of branch offices of a UK-based organisation. I served as their common president, but their boards and staffs were drawn from the francophone and pan-American cultures. I hoped that one day we could have similarly-autonomous Panos institutes in the South.
And the third change was a conscious increase in the Southern content of our information materials. Sustainable development analysis and policies formulated within a society were both more likely to be believed, and more likely to be socially sustainable, than those suggested or imposed from outside.
Soedjatmoko, a wise and distinguished Indonesian who later became rector of the UN University, had helped us plan Earthscan's first media seminar in the South in 1976. "Tell journalists the answers to environmental problems?” he asked. “No, no, we don't know the answers ourselves. But maybe we can help them ask some of the right questions."
Panos has, I hope, retained some of Soedjatmoko's humility: each nation and community must determine its own responses to development challenges. I take immense satisfaction that the vision born 32 years ago is being carried forward today by a global network of eight independent institutes.
Jon Tinker founded Panos, and is now executive director of Panos Canada |
