Chris Church

Chris Church is a founding Director of Community Environment Associates (CEA) with Jan McHarry. He has worked since 1990 as an advisor, researcher, trainer and advocate on sustainable and community development and climate change. His main focus is on the development of effective action by communities and locally-based organisations, and on how local action links to policy work at national and international level. This has been at the core of his work since 1979 (see ‘history’ section).

Chris has consistently worked across disciplines, working to link sustainability issues with work on poverty and equity, health, and community development. His 1997 publication ‘An Environment for Everyone’ was the first UK publication to focus on local action on environment and equity issues and to highlight the policy gaps in this area. Chris has also worked at every level, from publications for the World Health Organisation and the World Bank, to project work on social housing estates in east London and environmental action in small villages.

Since 2005 climate change has been a major focus for Chris’ work and he chairs the UK Low Carbon Communities Network (LCCN). He also runs a wide range of training courses (see Facilitation and training), both around issues and also on facilitation. He works at a European level with the NGO network, ANPED – the Northern Alliance for Sustainability, which he chaired from 1999 – 2010.

A full CV can be found here and see Chris’s History page for more information.

Working with others

As well as working through CEA, Chris works with many other organisations as:

• An Associate of the Green Alliance, the sustainability policy think-tank, with whom he has worked on locally focused projects;
• A founding Director of Mapping for Change, an innovative social enterprise based at University College London (UCL) working on community use of mapping and information – Chris is an Honorary Research Associate at UCL;
• An Associate of the Community Development Foundation for 12 years and produced a range of reports for them;
• An Associate of Capacity Global, a non-governmental organisation that is pioneering work in the UK and elsewhere on environmental and social justice;
• An Associate of Resources for Change, an ethical consultancy based in the Welsh /English borders, focused on involving people in sustainable development and regeneration;
• lead trainer for social enterprise Talk Action.