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Peter McManners works as an author, consultant and teaches the Global Business Environment as a Visiting Executive Fellow of Henley Business School. He also writes a monthly column in Sustainable Business magazine. His multidiscipline background as an engineer, geographer and management expert has shaped his view of a sustainable future society.
The seeds of his ideas were sown in the late 1970s as a young engineering student at Durham University where, in designing a solar water heating system, he was surprised that such systems were not universally applied. He realised that there was some sort of barrier and could see that it was not the engineering.
Peter’s interest in the environment continued to grow as he pursued a military career. Even whilst fighting with parachute forces in the Falklands War he found time to admire the wild windswept beauty of the islands, where wind power is universally adopted. As a military engineer in the jungles of Belize in Central America, he built bridges and structures from local materials, and marvelled at the abundance of biodiversity all around.
His interests then led him to become a military mapping expert, surveying remote parts of the world. He was smitten with the beauty of the continent of Africa but ashamed at much of the negative influence exerted by other outsiders and concerned for the environmental damage being caused.
This was the spur to starting research into global databases and environmental monitoring, graduating from Edinburgh University’s MSc in Geographic Information Systems with distinction. He then worked with global positioning systems, satellite remote sensing and geographic databases in support of Defence Intelligence. From 1993 to 1997 he was head of the Terrain Analysis department at the Royal School of Military Survey. In 1998, as a young Lieutenant Colonel, he was appointed Head of the Operations Division of the Defence Geographic Agency.
In 2000 he moved out of the Defence sector and completed his MBA (Henley Business School). As Chief Operating Officer of The Oxford Trust (2000-2002), he was involved with spinning innovative technology out of academia and incubating technology companies. In 2002 he moved down the Thames Valley to be Chief Executive of one of Britain’s premier high performance sport organisations – the Leander Rowing Club at Henley.
Over many years Peter’s ideas for a sustainable future had been starting to come together drawing on lessons from engineering, environment, business and other areas. In 2002 he won a prize in the Oxford Science Writing Competition for his article, ‘Is Carbon the Culprit?’
From 2004 to summer 2008, in order to continue to develop his radical ideas, he moved with his family to a country that comes out top of the world rankings for both competitiveness and environmental stewardship, Finland. There he researched and wrote the book, Adapt and Thrive: The Sustainable Revolution - a book that has been described as a radical green business book and environmentalism with a hard commercial edge.
In summer 2008 he returned to the UK, working in consultancy, completing his next book, Victim of Success: Civilization at Risk, and continuing to work for Henley Business School. His third book, Green Outcomes in a Real World is published by Gower in July 2010.
Peter is a fellow of the Royal Geographical Society, member of the Institute of Directors, member of the Centre for Alternative Technology and member of the Institute for Green Economics.
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