Dr Tony Juniper CBE Awarded 2023 Prestigious CIEEM Medal

Each year CIEEM’s Governing Board approves the award of the Chartered Institute’s highest honour, the CIEEM Medal, to a deserving recipient (who may or may not be a member) in recognition of their outstanding single or life-long contribution to the field of ecology and environmental management.

Previous winners include, amongst others, Professor Dame Georgina Mace, Professor Sir John Lawton and Sir David Attenborough. This year’s Medal recipient is Dr Tony Juniper CBE.

Tony Juniper, interviewed for Save Our Wild Isles: The Business of Nature. © Jacob Parish / Silverback Films / WWF-UK / RSPB / National Trust’

Dr Tony Juniper, one of the UK’s most distinguished environmentalists, has been awarded the prestigious 2023 CIEEM Medal.

Throughout his career, Tony Juniper has worked for change toward a more sustainable and nature-friendly society at local, national and international levels. He has campaigned on a wide range of issues including species conservation, recycling, tropical rain forest conservation, climate change and plant-based alternatives to plastics. He has also written a number of award winning and influential books.

An ornithologist by background Tony has held numerous senior organisational management and adviser roles including Policy and Campaigns Director at Friends of the Earth. He later went on to become Executive Director and from 2001 to 2008 he was elected Vice Chair of Friends of the Earth International. He contributed to many of charity’s most important achievements, including legislation enacted to protect the UK’s finest wildlife habitats, new laws to require more recycling and policy changes in the transport and farming sectors and a very effective campaign to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

Tony went on to become Executive Director for Advocacy and Campaigns at WWF-UK, a Fellow with the University of Cambridge Institute for Sustainability Leadership and President of the Wildlife Trusts. In 2019, he was appointed Chair of Natural England (NE), the statutory body that works for the conservation and restoration of the natural environment in England.

He has provided strong leadership to Natural England, bringing his passion for biodiversity and the environment more generally as well as a wealth of knowledge and experience to the organisation. Major achievements under his stewardship include making progress toward the creation of a Nature Recovery Network, working towards the implementation of Biodiversity Net Gain in the planning system, the declaration of new National Nature Reserves and notification of new SSSIs, better public connection with nature as well as advising government on nature-based solutions to climate change and how best to join up new farming policy with nature recovery.

In summary, Tony Juniper is one of the top environmental figures of the last 30 years, having had a major role in influencing the policies, programmes and agendas of governments and a wide range of organisations in the public and private sectors. Whilst he emphasises the seriousness of the biodiversity and climate crises, he manages to do so in a way that suggests hope and a positive outcome if we have the courage and determination to take the necessary action.

He has made an outstanding contribution to ecology and environmental management and is a very worthy recipient of the CIEEM Medal.