Christopher D.G. Le BRETON Web Site







	Christopher D.G. Le BRETON Institutional Adviser, Project Manager, Environmentalist and Public Speaker Education Christopher (usually known as Chris) Le Breton was born of British parents in Kenya in 1964, and grew up in Zambia, England, Hungary, Anguilla, Kenya, and The Gambia. After getting his A’levels and S’levels at Bryanston School, he spent nearly one year carrying out voluntary work in The Gambia, and then graduated with Honours in Geography with African and Asian studies at the University of Sussex, followed by a Masters in Agricultural Economics at the University of London, Wye College in 1990. His final thesis proposed combining ecological and environmental issues with structural adjustment to enable sustainable development in third world countries. Work His first “proper” job was in September 1987 as a management/ commodity trader trainee with E.D. & F.Man Ltd,. in the City of London. Two years later he left and became a campaigner with the London Cycling Campaign (LCC), leading rides to demonstrate for proper cycle routes in London. The LCC’s 1000 mile cycle network was eventually agreed by Government and is now implemented. After further volunteer work with Friends of the Earth, and an internship with Greenpeace Europe, he spent a year inside the European Commission from 1991 to 1992 as an administrative trainee and consultant, arguing for greater attention to the environment across EC project. Next he became a project manager for a German technical project management company in Brunswick, Germany. Following this he returned in 1994 to the European Commission and took over the reins of the environmental and humanitarian assistance projects in the former Soviet Union, As the first head of environmental projects for the former Soviet Union, looked after a project portfolio which grew to nearly € 50 million involving the whole project cycle from inception and tendering through to execution and monitoring. He travelled widely around the former Soviet Union and negotiated the projects, often at ministerial level. Four main achievements stand out from then: Persuading the European Commission Environment Directorate to set up its own system to be able to turn all office lights off at the end of the working day, and to introduce paper recycling in every EC office in Brussels, and in Delegations and Agency offices around the world. Conceiving, developing, and setting up a multi-country, multi-stakeholder Regional Environmental Centre for the Caucasus (headquartered in Tbilisi, Georgia) Brokering agreement between the World Bank, United Nations, European Commission, and the 5 Caspian Sea countries to set up an international programme of action for the Caspian Sea. Conceiving and launching the first ever environmental awareness-raising campaign across all thirteen countries of the former Soviet Union; During this period, he worked closely with the Project Preparation Committee (PPC) at the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development in London, to ensure maximum coordination between international donors at a bilateral and multi-lateral level. This coordination and collaboration brought together grant donors and the international lending institutions in order to facilitate environmental investments. As a result, the European Commission and the World Bank launched the Joint Environmental Programme (JEP1, and JEP2) to marry technical assistance grants with development loans. In late 1997, he left the European Commission and was asked to become Executive Director of Global Legislators Organisation for a Balanced Environment (GLOBE), a networking organisation for parliamentarians across the world, set up by Al Gore and Mikhail Gorbachev. His first task was to help organise a seminar in Kyoto for the climate change negotiators to learn more about “Contraction and Convergence”. Subsequent achievements included helping to advocate an increase in funding to the United Nations Environment Programme, and arranging a tripartite deal between the European Commission, GLOBE, and WWF that was to bring about constructive coordination between GLOBE parliamentarians in every country and WWF tropical rainforest campaigners to address unsustainable forest destruction around the world. In 1999, he became an independent consultant for the European Commission , and over the next 4 years worked in Russia, Kazakhstan, Kirghyzstan, Georgia, Azerbaijan, Armenia, Moldova and Ukraine to launch the new Regional Environmental Centres, help set them up legally, and advise their management boards and the Advisory Councils on management consultancy and strategic international perspectives. In Autumn 2003, he became the Donor Adviser on the European Union’s Environmental Capacity Building Project in Serbia. This entailed supporting the new Ministry of Environmental Protection and Science, to set up its first ever coordination meetings with foreign donors, and also co-chairing the first multi-stakeholder Serbian national environmental forum, at which a start was made to develop the first ever Serbian National Environmental Plan. In late 2006, aghast at the lack of interest shown by AEG Anschutz to retain the ecological reed beds used in the Greenwich Dome to treat grey waste water, he co-founded South and East London against the Casino (SELAC) with three colleagues to campaign against the planned supercasino at the Dome in Greenwich. As research became available detailing the links between casinos and crime, his views became more critical. He is now working on refining his idea of a green alternative which he has called the SuperGreenO. Whilst working on greening travel in London, Chris now leads the “Be the Change “Symposium, which help guide participants to create an environmentally friendly, socially just, and spiritually fulfilling society for humankind. For more details, please visit: http://www.bethechange.org.uk/about.cfm Other Chris Le Breton has worked in 30 countries, and travelled to a further 59 (plus some that are not strictly “countries”). He speaks English and French, with some German, Russian, Serbian, and the general travellers’ ability to ask for a coffee in a few others! He has friends who are atheist, Buddhist, Christian, Hindu, Muslim, and Quaker. Aged 23, he cycled solo over the Indian Himalayas from Kashmir into Ladakh (geographically Tibet) and wrote his first article: “Dead Easy, and not even a puncture. A short ride in the Himalayas”, published in a national magazine. He co-created London’s first gay cycling group in 1990 to raise money for Terrence Higgins Trust initiatives, and believes he is the first person to have taken his Brompton folding bicycle on the Eurostar from Brussels to London and London to Brussels during the inaugural week of operation in 1994. Since then, he has published several articles, in Friends of the Earth International magazine, and in Challenge – the magazine of the Green Liberal Democrats. He has spoken on radio and television in the UK, India, Argentina, and Georgia. He is currently active in the following positions: St. Alphege, Greenwich - Deputy Church Warden London Cycling Campaign – Olympic Working Group Greenwich Cycling Campaign – Publicity Officer London 21 – Supporter Planet Positive - Supporter Royal Institute of International Affairs (Chatham House) – Fellow. Chris Le Breton has a nephew and niece in Malaysia, two god children in England, and two “god” children in Buddhist Sri Lanka, Whilst he is passionate about sustainable urban living, and surviving climate change, he loves getting out of town on his bicycle into quieter parts of the English countryside. He has been based in Greenwich since 1987. Chris Le Breton Inspiring People Around the World to Live in Sustainable Partnership with Nature Visit my new blog: http://thegreenliberal.iblog.com/ OurGreenPage is now open and ready for use with a new FREE Green Directory! Are you a Green entrepreneur? or do you know of an individual working to save the planet? If so, please add them to the MillionDollarGreenPage directory: www.milliondollargreenpage.com All profits will go to fund green projects.