GoodGeist
A podcast on sustainability, hosted by Damla Özlüer and Steve Connor, brought to you by the DNS Network. Looking at sustainability issues, communications, and featuring global guests from a wide variety of sectors such as business, NGOs and government.
GoodGeist
Our Climate Heritage, with Richard Smith
Richard Smith, the Head of Climate and Sustainability at English Heritage, joins us to share his journey from BBC journalist to a passionate advocate for sustainability in heritage and conservation.
We chat with Richard about the complex sustainability challenges English Heritage faces in their quest to achieve net zero by 2035 as Richard sets out the difficulties of balancing heritage preservation with climate resilience, such as retrofitting listed buildings or dealing with rising sea levels threatening important sites. We also learn about innovative strategies to curb visitor travel emissions and the partnerships fostering eco-friendly travel.
Our conversation also takes a global turn, exploring the philosophical dimensions of heritage conservation through the lens of iconic landmarks like Hagia Sophia and Stonehenge. Richard shares his thoughts on "adaptive release" and how storytelling can inspire communities worldwide to cherish and preserve our shared past. Listen now!
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Good Geist, a podcast series on sustainability hosted by Damla Özler and Steve Connor, brought to you by the DNS Network.
Speaker 2:Hello, hello everyone, you are listening to Good Guys, the message on sustainability which is brought to you by the DNS Network, the global network of agencies dedicated to making the world a better place. This is Damla from Mirai Agency, istanbul, and.
Speaker 3:This is Steve from Creative Concern in Manchester. This podcast series explores global sustainability issues, how they're communicated and what creativity can do to make positive change happen.
Speaker 2:So in this episode we're going to talk to Richard Smith, who is the Head of Climate and Sustainability at English Heritage, the charity that manages over 400 monuments oh my God, 400 monuments medieval castles, roman forts and country houses visited by over 10 million people. So this is amazing and it's like a story and fairy tale, steve. Go on with it.
Speaker 3:I know, I know it's a lot of old stuff. A lot of old stuff, richard. Originally a news and business correspondent for the BBC, including Midlands. Today, richard changed tack in 2009, started working on saving the world rather than reporting on it, and for many years was the BBC sustainability manager, before working on sustainability in the university sector and now heritage. So, richard, thank you so much for talking to Damla and myself, that's all right, great to be here.
Speaker 3:Brilliant. So first of all, we'd like to delve in a little bit more deeply into that origins story that we skimmed across a moment ago. So tell us about the journey that Richard Smith has been on and what drives you to strive for a more sustainable future and what brought you to English Heritage.
Speaker 4:Okay, so three questions in one. So in order, the journey has been quite a strange one, which I'll try to keep fairly brief. When I was little, I really really wanted to be a journalist. I really really wanted to be a journalist and I and I was an unusual in that school and university and everything. I did everything I could to set me on the path to being a journalist which, I have to say, modesty aside aside, I succeeded in because I ended up working for the BBC.
Speaker 4:Uh, straight out of journalism college. Uh, and I was at the uh doing journalism for the BBC from 1994 to 2009. And, uh, when I was at the peak of my powers, I was a home affairs correspondent, which is a fancy phrase for crime reporter. I suppose I did do a bit of business as well, like you said in the introduction. So, basically, when I was at the peak of my powers, I was chasing bad guys down the street with a camera. So how did I end up being head of climate English heritage, I mean, really in the mid, not in the mid-naughties uh, I just started to learn more and more about the environment, or sustainability as we now call it, and ultimately I'm so sorry, my phone's just pinged. I'm hoping you can't hear that and I'm just going to carry on, yeah we don't mind doing pretty relaxed.
Speaker 4:Um, in the mid-naughties, my knowledge was growing and growing and growing and there just came a point where I, ultimately, I felt like my desire to contribute towards saving the planet and therefore saving ourselves and all the other species we save, that we, we share the planet with my desire to save the planet was greater than my desire to be on tv, which sounds a bit pompous, but that's what it's, that's what it was about. So, um, I was very fortunate I managed to make the switch from being a journalist on the friday to working in the bbc's at that point, very new environment team. Um, so I joined the environment team on kind of permanent loan from the newsroom, and I created something called albert, which is a tool for measuring originally, I should say, was a tool for measuring the carbon impact of tv and film production and that created a whole industry really of sustainable tv and film production, which I believe you've already talked about with a former colleague of mine, um, on the show. Um, so I did that for, uh, I don't know, I did that for about 10 years, something like that. Uh, very successfully, I think, in terms of what we created with albert and sharing sustainability in the tv industry throughout uh, throughout the uk industry and beyond, setting up lots of good stuff, and at some point I decided my time was done there with the BBC. I joined the University of Manchester, where I was head of sustainability for three years, and I've been at English Heritage to bring the story up to date for about seven months, as we stand today.
Speaker 4:The thing that motivates me is I just wouldn't be able to live with myself if I wasn't trying to contribute to the cause that we all care so much about. And if you're listening to this, I'm sure you know exactly what I mean by that. I don't need to be specific. Like, no matter how awful it gets, I'm just not going to stop, I just can't help it. So I suppose you know, no matter how dire sometimes things might be, I just think if I can, without wishing to kind of big myself up in any way if I can help make things slightly less bad, then that's valuable and that's that's why I do what I do.
Speaker 4:Um, and in terms of English heritage, uh, just, it's dead simple, steve. I saw the job advertised, or rather a former colleague told me about it. I thought, wow, who would not want to look after sustainability with castles, just like you said. It's like a fairy tale. Castles, stately homes, uh, cold war bunkers, um, you name it. We've got it english heritage. It's an amazing, amazing so, having all the challenges of decarbonization and biodiversity et cetera. But within this historical setting I'm not saying historical, it's about today and the future as well. It's not just about the past. That's a really important point. Who wouldn't want to do that? So here I am.
Speaker 2:Well, that's brilliant how much all of our stories look alike, not only in the three of us but also with the other guests we have been talking in Good Guys. There's always a point that people do their job very well and at some point they want to give back and do more for the planet and the people. And a former crime reporter myself, I have to say that still working for sustainability is also kind of crime reporting at the moment.
Speaker 4:Yeah, I mean I hear you and yeah, I think you're right. There comes that tipping point for many of us, and it is a bit of a one-way street. I'm mixing my metaphors a bit here, but it's a one-way street. I don't think I know anybody who's gone into sustainability and then thought, no, I don't think so, I think I'm going to go back to doing sales or whatever. And it's that commitment to it and that real deep belief in it that drives us on, but it also it can mean that it's a burden as well. I was talking about this last night, giving a bit of a speech in Manchester. So we need to be aware of our well-being as well, doing everything that we can, but also accepting that we all have limits and we can't change everything single-handedly. But let's contribute, but let's not harm ourselves in the process.
Speaker 2:So back to our points, because we always like to get out a little bit, but we also have an agenda, so let's yeah, sure, sorry. We'd love to know a bit more about English Heritage for our international listeners, what it does and what the sustainability agenda looks like for the organization.
Speaker 4:OK, so English Heritage is a charity.
Speaker 4:It's a fairly new charity. It's only been a charity since 2015. And, as you said in the introduction, it looks after I going to get into it doesn't matter, but we, we look after them for the good of the, of, not just the you know people in england also, of course but but anybody who chooses to visit, and that, of course, includes people in the future. It's not just about the people today and people in the past who lived in these places. It's, it's about looking after them for future generations, which is obviously very much at the heart of sustainability and conservation. Um, it's a challenging, uh responsibility that the charity has, um, almost by definition, all of these things that we look after, and they go right back to. The most famous one is stonehenge, uh, youge, the incredible stone circle thousands of years old. I think the most recent one is a Cold War bunker, but they're all inherently in some way, basically kind of falling to pieces. It doesn't mean they're not well maintained, I must stress, but like everything on the planet, in one way or another, including ourselves, they're all slowly but surely falling to pieces. So we need to conserve them and we need to look after them to make sure that they don't cause any harm in the present, that nothing's going to hurt anybody as you're walking around our sites, but also to make sure that future generations can enjoy them in the way that we do. So sustainability and conservation go hand in hand. The best way to the most sustainable solution to anything really is to make sure you look after it, to avoid having to make big interventions further down the line.
Speaker 4:So the obvious things that come to mind in terms of our, in terms of our sustainability work is that, like everyone else, we've got a net zero target. Everyone else, we've got a net zero target. That target is to be net zero by 2035. Uh, I'm much more interested in the zero than the net, much more. Uh, I'm not really interested in offsetting. Uh, and certainly, working with my colleague former colleagues at university of manchester and I know you spoke to carly mclaughlin in one of the episodes I learned a lot from her. Offsetting is not really an option. Um, so we've got the net zero target for all our, for our direct operational stuff, for our supply chain.
Speaker 4:Uh, we've got another strand to do with people, which is about engagement. Um, how do we, how do we engage with our staff, our volunteers, our visitors, our members with this topic. Operations, that's the things that you would kind of expect in terms of looking after our water, reducing waste, etc. And really, really importantly for anybody in the heritage sector, there's an aspect called resilience, which is about how do we ensure that, to put it in very simple terms, our buildings and properties that we look after are not going to get trashed by the impacts of climate change, and that's a real, real issue. You know whether it be well, you can name whatever extreme weather event you want, or even just the gradual increase in global temperatures. These all have an impact on the places that we care for, and for better or worse, obviously for worse, really that.
Speaker 4:The poster boy for all of this um in english heritage is an amazing site just off the south coast of england called hurst castle, which was originally built by henry the eighth. It's had layer upon layer of military history built upon it, as each generation has found new ways to uh defend the territory using using greater technology. But it's it's it's on something called a spit, which is basically a kind of uh outcrop of sand and rock. Um about, I don't know about half a mile off the off the south coast, near southampton, and it's really having a hard time as a result of climate change. You know, rising sea, rising sea levels, storms, you name it.
Speaker 4:Hearst Castle is vulnerable to it and I think in 2021, there were some particularly bad storms that actually ended up with parts of Hearst Castle being very severely damaged. So a real issue for the charity for English Heritage is what can we do about that? How are we going to be able to afford it? It's very, very expensive to put it right, but positively. But positively also, how can we share our learnings with other people looking after heritage around the world, because we're not the only people with a hearse castle. Everyone's got a hearse castle if you've got a coast and you've got some heritage. So it's really important to us that we share our learnings um and build a community of organizations that care about these issues in the way that we do.
Speaker 3:So if we stay with Hearst Castle, richard, I just want to pick up on two of the bits. I'm sure, as you sort of map out the kind of sustainability issues and nature and climate emergency issues that you have to fold into English Heritage's sustainability strategy, you're in one of those positions where you have some unique factors that mean your sustainability plan is different to ASDA's or the co-ops, and so there will be some really tricky bits to deal with, won't there? For example, visitors probably get to a lot of your locations by car, so your scope three, as we call them, emissions, are pretty hard to grapple with. And then the other the other knotty problem I wanted to know what you think about is the whole issue of retrofitting heritage buildings when they're listed to make them resilient to climate change. But you, if you can't retrofit because of their heritage status, then they could actually fall apart, and are we defeating ourselves?
Speaker 3:so what about those two naughty problems?
Speaker 4:so you, you're right on both counts. Um, I'll come, I'll do the travel one first and then we can come back to the other one. I do remind me, steve, if I forget and I'll lose my way right. So, um, with the travel one. First of all, you're absolutely right, a lot of our sites um aren't very accessible by public transport. Um, that's an issue. Um, and yes, you're right, a very large part of our scope three are in direct carbon emissions as a result of a visitor travel.
Speaker 4:Um, it's a bit of a paradox or irony, or whatever word we want to use, because of course, we want people to visit our places. Of course we do Not just because we want them to enjoy those very special spaces that we care for, but also because, frankly, with a lot of our sites, they're pay-to-enter and we need the money. Right, I mean it's fair enough. We need the money, because if we don't have the money, right, I mean it's fair enough, we need the money, because if we don't have the income, that we can't sustain them. So we've got this issue about what to do about visitor travel. It's still very much a work in progress, you won't be surprised to hear, but we are working with other heritage organisations across the UK to see if we can at the very least come up with some methodology where we can all understand the best way of tracking these emissions and simultaneously thinking about what we can do about it. So, for example, there's a great organization called good journey that we've done some work with. We've got a little partnership with them, where they will promote ways to get to some of our sites by public transport or by active travel walking, cycling, wheeling and there's a discount in place if you do turn up at one of some of our places and you can demonstrate in some way. You know it's a, it's a bit of a show of trust, but that's okay. If you can demonstrate that you've come by a non-car method, then, um, you can have a slight reduction on on the entrance fee.
Speaker 4:There's another interesting aspect, though, to the car issue, which is around inclusivity. So one might assume certainly I assumed, you know you kind of think, oh, everyone's got a car. No, everyone has not got a car, and there are lots of reasons why that might be the case. But in fact, one in four households in England don't have access to a car for whatever reason, whether it's through choice or through very likely for social reasons, for affordability reasons. So if we can't do more to enhance our offering around ways of getting to our sites without a vehicle, without a car, I should say, then we're not including those people and that's a missed opportunity for them and again, it's a missed opportunity for us in terms of visitors. So it's a fascinating area.
Speaker 4:The other one that I'll talk about now, the retrofit aspect. Steve, yeah, you're right, it's fraught with difficulty, but perhaps not the difficulties you might necessarily expect. One might think, oh, you know, there's nothing that we can do to these heritage buildings and you won't be allowed and things like that. In my limited experience and again, I've only been here seven months or so, as I speak in October 24, that's not the main issue. Actually, you can do more than people might think and a really great example of that is I remember even when I was at the University of Manchester a year or so ago, I jumped for joy when I saw that there were solar panels on the roof of York Minster, which is an incredibly famous and beautiful building in extreme historical value.
Speaker 4:So you know, actually we've now got solar panels on the visitor centre at Whitby Abbey, which is on the East Coast and famous for its connection with Dracula. So they're not on the Abbey itself. No one needs to worry. They're not on the Abbey itself, but they're on the visitor centre very nearby. So I don't see heritage and sustainability as mutually exclusive. I think we can and we must find ways to bring the technology of today into the buildings of the past and make them work together. The you're right that we have unique challenges, but the biggest challenge, along with every other organization that's trying to do this, is ultimately the money. It kind of goes without saying. Really, it's very, very expensive, um. It's more expensive to to uh decarbonize a heritage property um than it will be to decarbonise, say, my house that I'm sitting in now. That was built in 79, that's got a heat pump and it all works great, very warm. Today, in fact, I'm almost too warm. So there's challenges everywhere, but the money is the main one.
Speaker 3:So just Dan, before I come back to you. So I'm thinking Stonehenge is quite a windy site.
Speaker 4:I'm wondering whether you could do some cheeky turbines. So that's a good point that I know you've cheekily suggested there, steve cheekily. So one tension that I didn't mention tension's not even the right word Something for us to be respectful of is what we call the heritage landscape. So we have people at English Heritage and they'll have counterparts across the sector where these people's job is to make sure that we're presenting these special sites in the best possible way, within the historical context perhaps, which they're best known. So they'll look at a site, whether it be a Victorian mansion or whether it be stonehenge, and think what should that look like now?
Speaker 4:Needless to say, no wind turbines at the point at which stonehill stonehenge not stonehill stonehenge, uh was was originally built. So I think there would be a great deal of resistance to the notion of of putting uh wind turbines up in the vicinity of Stonehenge, but less so others. Stonehenge is an extreme example due to its great age and its great fame. I wouldn't say that we can take it for granted that we can do anything anywhere we like, but I'm definitely interested in kind of pushing it a bit and seeing where the boundaries lie, because there's a lot of sympathy and support for this topic.
Speaker 2:Richard, you said two important things that struck me. One was everybody's got to hearse, but I think also hearse is everybody's, because even if I'm sitting in Istanbul at the moment, very close to Hagia Sophia, I do feel the amazing stories of your castles and I have read Henry VIII for so many times and I have watched Tudors. But also I do know that Hagia Sophia, istanbul, antakya, all of these bring the same emotions to you too, and I remember when Notre Dame was burning, I was crying actually, because it wasn't only the French, it was all of us. It's our mutual heritage for humanity. So my question lies in the storytelling, the emotions and the money getting together for sustainability, because to find money for preserving everything around us is a kind of magic trick with good storytelling, and sustainability is also with good storytelling. So do you see a path that can lead to a global, actually sustainable heritage movement? How can we tell this story without any borders and having all the tales together?
Speaker 4:Well, that's a big one, isn't it? There is already a global heritage movement, there are organisations that make these connections all over the place, so we don't need to reinvent the wheel. But I think the point that you're trying to make is really about harnessing the power of storytelling and perhaps something quite deep within I'm not a spiritual person in any way but something quite deep within us that we perhaps might feel when we visit these special places Again, with Stonehenge being a very obvious example. But it's very, very far from being unique, um, I think there's something there were lessons to be learned, obviously, from from history.
Speaker 4:That's a cliche, but it's true and I think when we see these properties in a state of disrepair or where we're fighting to maintain them in in reasonable condition, it's a bit of a reminder to us, perhaps, of the fragility of everything and the transience of everything, without wishing to get too heavy about it, and that ultimately, nothing lasts forever. You know, um, empires rise and fall, and it's very hard from the perspective of us living in 2024, with all the stuff surrounding us, even with our knowledge of climate change, that things are really going to be ever going to be any different. But we look at these 420 places and properties that English heritage look after, and we see that nothing does last forever and things do need to be maintained and preserved and conserved, and we have to accept that we're not going to be able to keep everything. And there's a phrase, uh, which is used in heritage circles, called adaptive release.
Speaker 4:I believe it is adaptive relief yeah, and that's something around the notion of accepting that you're not going to be able to keep everything and thinking about a plan for some degree of decline, which sounds very sad, you know, kind of accepting that you might lose something and thinking about, well, how are we going to let it go or how could it be used in a completely different way? So adaptive release, that's the phrase. Um, so there were, you know, alongside the very practical aspects of how we're going to get that, that air source heat pump to work inside, you know, a certain castle or whatever it may be, you've also got these quite philosophical things underlying it all, which which, yeah, we think about. You know, I certainly think about it, and it's it's hard not to when you visit those places. So, even though heat pumps etc. All sound very technical, ultimately I've always believed that climate change is, is the ultimate human interest story.
Speaker 4:You know, as a journalist, we, all three of us, I'm sure we're told human interest, human interest, that's that's, that's the thing, and human climate change is all about human interest. Yes, it's science, yes, it's economic, but it's ultimately it's about people, it's about life. It's science, yes, it's economic, but ultimately it's about people, it's about life. It's about whether we live or whether we die. And if we live, how do we choose to live? How are we going to survive in the situation that's being created? So I completely agree with you, Damla. I'm not sure I've answered the question that you've set me. I might have swerved that one. I'm sorry, but I feel very strongly.
Speaker 3:You took us into philosophical territory, richard, and we're grateful for that, because that's where we like to be. I was actually, you know, who sprang to mind as you were talking there To think. Go on, heidegger.
Speaker 4:Okay.
Speaker 3:I was suddenly thinking about Heidegger. I was thinking about time and being and how, if you scratch out the word time being no longer means what it meant when time was there.
Speaker 4:Well, look, I've got. You're not gonna be, I'm gonna. I'm just about to hold up a book which is useless for anyone listening to this podcast. This book is called 4,000 weeks. Do you know what the significance of 4,000 weeks is? Well, if we are lucky enough to live until we're 80. 4,000 weeks is is Well, if we are lucky enough to live until we're 80, 4,000 weeks is the length of time that we're on the planet. For there you go. Yeah, we could talk about this all day, couldn't we.
Speaker 3:So we've gone from heritage to time mortality, the very essence of human fragility. Yeah, goodness me, I didn't see that coming. Richard Smith smith. Well, I'd like to surprise you.
Speaker 4:What can I say?
Speaker 3:so um the uh damla do we have time for one more question, or do you want to go to the killer question at the end? What are you thinking? I think we can ask one more, and it can be you okay, so I did want to ask you, just it's a shameless opportunity for a plug, richard apart from anything else, what's the next big thing on the horizon for English Heritage?
Speaker 4:In relation to sustainability is how I'm going to answer that. Well, we've got that 2035 target. We've got a 2040 target for net zero across all three scopes. I wasn't going to mention the scopes because I thought it might be a bit nerdy, but you brought it up. So what the hell? So, 2035 for net zero for scopes one and two, 2040 for scopes one, two and three?
Speaker 4:The thing that I really want to have is some degree of plan and idea of the cost of achieving that. Um, because at the moment, uh, through nobody's fault, nobody's fault, you know, no one's tried to, no one's tried to decarbonize heritage before, so we don't know how much it gonna it costs. We don't know how quickly we can do these things. I want to come up with some kind of longer term plan, because it's only 10 years now till 2035. I've not got long got to come up with a plan. Uh, I've got to redo a strategy as well. But really, I'm more concerned about that. I'm more concerned about actual practical actions that we, that we can take. Um, so much we need to do to engage people to, to build our resilience, to make sure our buildings are protected, to uh mitigate against climate change, etc. Etc. So there is yes, there's a lot on my, there's a lot on my plate and I'm I feel very blessed to be in a position of having to deal with it.
Speaker 2:This was absolutely great and this was the first time Heidegger just popped into our podcast. I hope it will be more. There will be more. Final question Our network is ironically called Do Not Smile, because we need to make sustainability a subject that brings happiness into the world. So what object, place or person always makes you smile?
Speaker 4:Am I allowed to?
Speaker 4:I'm going to go for two, and I'm going to do it quickly. So the first one is that I love watching science fiction. The first one is that I love watching science fiction. So you could superficially say it's escapist, and I don't mind that it is because we've all got quite a lot to escape from if we're working in sustainability. I love watching Star Trek, I love watching Star Wars, I love watching Doctor who.
Speaker 4:I think Steve knows this already, and I was thinking the other day why do they make me happy? And I think, ultimately, it's because they've all got a great feeling of hope in them. And I think we need hope, lots of hope. And I think Star Trek in particular without again, without getting too nerdy, the whole story of it really is about things getting worse for humanity in this century and then getting considerably better.
Speaker 4:And by the time you've got Captain Kirk on the telly, you know there's, there's no, uh, inequality, there's not even any money, uh, everyone's working together. Yes, they're having conflict out in outer space, but ultimately human race has sorted it out. So so those kind of things also always make me happy. And the other one, very quickly, is I've got a 15 year old son and he's recently just decided to start playing the bass. And the other day I heard him playing the bass line to a fairly obscure Joy Division track without me, without any prompting from me, he'd learned, he was learning how to play Joy Division and I thought well, as a dad, my work here is done.
Speaker 3:Wow, joy Division bass line to see us out. Rich, I like what you did there, like we did. I'm not gonna hum it no, no, no, no. Now I've just got to guess which track it was.
Speaker 3:There you go well, that's amazing, I mean I do think on the sci-fi front. Actually, one little anecdote before we close damla, which I really loved, I found out recently that there are several states as we, as we rocket towards a us presidential election, there are several states where you can literally write down in a blank spot who you'd like to be president. Um, so, very regularly in these states you get these random lists of people, sometimes people putting themselves uh, and there's one year where I spotted that quite a significant number of people wrote down jean-luc picard well, we could do a lot worse, right I?
Speaker 3:know, and I think it's a vote for bald people everywhere. Oh, very good. Anyway. So Damla over to you to wrap us up.
Speaker 2:So thanks to everyone who has listened to our Good Guys podcast, brought to you by the Do Not Smile network of agencies.
Speaker 3:And make sure you listen to future episodes where we'll be talking to more amazing people about how we can work together to create a more sustainable future.
Speaker 1:So Richard Damla Özlüer and Steve Connor, brought to you by the DNS Network.
