Conversations Environment

An Interview with David Harland

5 minute read min read

by Alex Moshakis

David Harland joined the Eden Project in January 2013 as finance director and is now the organisation's CEO. In 2024, he will oversee the opening of Eden's second location, in Morecambe, a seaside town in the North West of England. He was born and raised in St Austell, Cornwall, five kilometres from the Eden Project's first site, which was built 20 years ago on a reclaimed china clay pit. Here, he discusses the climate crisis, changing behaviours around the environment, and encouraging sustainable consumption. The interview has been condensed and edited for clarity.

"We've all realised we want to build communities we deserve."

David Harland, CEO of Eden Project International Ltd

Tell us about Eden Project North, Eden's second site, in Morecambe.

Well, firstly, Eden Project North is not a copy of Eden in Cornwall, but it shares a familial resemblance. The big difference is that we're 20 years on from having completed Cornwall. When we were approached by the University of Lancaster to consider the site, we were unsure. But we realised that Morecambe is a town with an amazing history. There is a beautiful bay, in which tides move so quickly, and in the distance you've got the Lake District. The town has a strap-line – "beauty surrounds and health abounds" – and we felt we could create a project that educated people about the surrounding environment while also acting as a catalyst for economic and social change. During the pandemic, I think we all realised that we want to build communities we deserve. The Morecambe project is about doing that, catalysing a region to show that good things can happen there.

Impression of Eden Project North in Morecambe

You've said before that Eden is, first and foremost, an entertaining day out. But you also aim to drive behavioural change. What change are you talking about?

What we realised at Eden in Cornwall is that when you take a piece of land that was seen to be hopeless and sterile, and you breathe new life into it, it allows you to start conversations about the fact that the future remains ours to make. The working hypothesis in Morecambe is that we will be able to show people that there are natural rhythms throughout our lives – rhythms like the tides, but also things like circadian rhythms – and that these are all linked to how we live. We're trying to help people become great observers of the natural world, not to be blind to things that are happening. We want to bring to life things that are incredible that we just don't see.

You're suggesting that if more people are aware of nature's rhythms, the more we'd care about the natural world?

That's exactly what I'm suggesting. That will help change behaviour. It will help people realise we've only got one chance at this planet.

Eden Project, Cornwall: The Core & Biomes

Why aren't we more aware of that?

We've let ourselves believe that there's science, and then there's art, and philosophy, and design, and they're all separate disciplines. If you look back at the great natural philosophers of 200 or 300 years ago – Isaac Newton is a good example – they weren't just scientists, they were interested in everything, and how everything worked together. We've let ourselves become increasingly specialist and forgotten about the whole. The ability to work trans-disciplinarily is what's going to help us out of some of the crises we're in. Also, our school system has not given the focus to nature it should have done. We believe there should be a natural history GCSE, for example.

Eden Project, Cornwall: Aerial Shot

"How are you encouraging people to live in a more considered way when it comes to consumption?"

Endless consumerism is just not going to work, is it? We don't want to say to people, "You can't buy stuff." But it's far better to buy a smaller number of products of greater quality, with the right origins, the right materials. A lot of people think that people at Eden are hippies, that we'll be preachy about things. To their surprise, we make no apology for being capitalist in the way we approach our project. It's just that we believe that capitalism needs to have a moral compass. It needs to prove it is the system that allows democratic society to exist.

How do you convince people of that message?

I think 20 years ago, when Eden started, it was difficult to convince people that climate change was even a thing; they were certainly not accepting that it was in any way human caused. Now pretty much everyone accepts the climate is changing and that we have to do something. One of the problems is that sustainability, as a topic of conversation, can be dull after the first ten seconds. It tends to focus on what you can't do, rather than giving a positive vision of what it could mean. We're working on projects that say, "Look, it can be done" – and that these solutions can be completed in the local community. Everyone talks about global solutions these days. But what are global solutions? It's just a lot of local solutions added together.

Eden Project, Cornwall: Mediterranean Biome

How do you think the pandemic has changed our relationship to nature?

Well, the weather did us a favour didn't it? In those early months, when we were all locked down, we were able to get outside because the weather was great, and we saw nature suddenly appear. There were primroses and then bluebells and then foxgloves. But we also started to notice how quiet it was, that you could hear the birds singing. A lot of people – people who are not in any way environmentalists – have been saying to me that the pandemic had a profound impact on them. They realised they could slow down, they could stop. People found that getting out into nature, better understanding its rhythms, not having to get on a train every day, was a solution to that. And I think we've rather liked the change. If we can just hold onto the best bits.

Eden Project, Cornwall: The Core

When you think about the future of the natural environment, are you positive?

Yes. We have to be unrelentingly positive. We have to paint that picture. The rewilding movement that's happening at the moment is positive. People taking their own action is positive. Big business is waking up to things. Technology is advancing so we can do things like track plastics. Top designers are making things of beauty. (We mustn't forget that beauty is part of the human condition; it brings us joy.) All of these things, coming together, is positive. I just hope we get there quick enough. We have to seize this moment.

Alex Moshakis is Commissioning Editor at the Observer.