How You Can Save the Planet

About Hendrikus van Hensbergen

Hendrikus van Hensbergen has a BSc in Zoology from the University of Bristol where he was awarded the Rose Bracher Memorial Prize and an MSc in Biodiversity Conservation & Management from the University of Oxford. He is the CEO of youth environmental charity Action for Conservation (AFC) which he founded in 2014 whilst working for WWF after realising that no charities in the UK existed with the sole purpose of engaging young people in environmental action. In a short space of time the charity has become an influential force driving greater action to engage and involve young people across the environmental sector. In 2018 Hendrikus' inspirational leadership was recognised with a Postcode Trust Rising Star Award and in 2019 the charity launched the world's largest youth-led nature restoration initiative in Wales. Robert Macfarlane is internationally renowned for his writing on nature people and place. His bestselling books include Underland Landmarks The Old Ways The Wild Places and Mountains of the Mind as well as a book-length prose-poem Ness. His work has been translated into more than thirty languages won prizes around the world and been widely adapted for film music theatre radio and dance. He has also written operas plays and films including River and Mountain both narrated by Willem Dafoe. He has collaborated closely with artists including Olafur Eliasson and Stanley Donwood and with the artist Jackie Morris he co-created the internationally bestselling books of nature-poetry and art The Lost Words and The Lost Spells. As a lyricist and performer he has written albums and songs with musicians including Cosmo Sheldrake Karine Polwart and Johnny Flynn with whom he has released two albums Lost In The Cedar Wood (2021) and The Moon Also Rises (2023). In 2017 the American Academy of Arts and Letters awarded him the E.M. Forster Prize for Literature and in 2022 in Toronto he was the inaugural winner of the Weston International Award for a body of work in the field of non-fiction. He is a Fellow of Emmanuel College Cambridge and is currently completing his third book with Jackie Morris: The Lost Birds.