Earth Day co-Founder celebrated with ‘Green Swan’ Award

Pioneering success of Denis Hayes recognised on eve of historic 50th anniversary.

Photo credit: Earth Day Network

Denis Hayes, the co-Founder of the Earth Day Network, and one of the most influential environmental campaigners of all time, has been awarded a prestigious Green Swan Award by Volans.

Click here to view four short videos explaining the evolution of the Earth Network and the virtual presentation of the Green Swan Award.

The Green Swan Award

?The Green Swan Award goes to those individuals, ideas and initiatives tackling the world’s most “wicked” challenges. Celebrating the milestone of its 50th anniversary this year on April 22nd, Earth Day has flourished under Hayes’ stewardship. Today it encompasses more than 190 participating countries, as the biggest secular event in the world’s annual calendar.

The global call to embrace an exponential change agenda and create regenerative new realities is outlined in Volans’ Founder and Chief Pollinator John Elkington’s new book, Green Swans: The Coming Boom in Regenerative Capitalism.

A Green Swan signifies a profound market shift that delivers exponential progress in the form of economic, social, and (most important of all) environmental wealth creation. And the awards spotlight exponential solutions to wicked problems that make the seemingly impossible virtually inevitable.

Elkington calls the Earth Day movement “one of the most effective and impactful “Green Swans” of the past fifty years”.

Denis Hayes at the first Earth Day event in 1970. Photo Credit: Earth Day Network

On awarding Hayes his trophy, Elkington commented:

“COVID-19 has starkly underscored the fact that we live on a highly interconnected planet, introducing a range of new risks. Thanks to the global pandemic, human health is in the spotlight today, but the planet’s health is also deteriorating, its temperature running at near-record levels. Just as we must now flatten the curve on viral infections, so we must also urgently flatten the curve on greenhouse gas emissions.”

With the climate emergency being the priority theme for Earth Day 2020, Elkington sees the coronavirus crisis as laying the foundations for better coordinated efforts to urgently rein in this emergency. He explains: “Green Swans are the opposite of Black Swans. Black Swans typically take us exponentially to places we don’t want to go, while Green Swans have the potential to take us exponentially to places we need — and want — to go”.

Previous winners

In January, Volans held the Tomorrow’s Capitalism Forum bringing together leaders from business and sustainability to explore the implications and opportunities of the exponential decade. At the Forum, John Elkington announced the two inaugural winners of the Green Swan Award: Sir Tim Smit of The Eden Project, and ‘The Human Swan’ Sacha Dench (you can find out more about them, and why we thought they deserved a Green Swan Award here).

Green Swans riffs of Nassim Nicholas Taleb’s “Black Swans”

Elkington’s 20th book, Green Swans: The Coming Boom in Regenerative Capitalism, was born out of Volans’ Tomorrow’s Capitalism Inquiry, which explores how companies can become catalysts for systems change as we move through exponential, systemic challenges. It is published by Fast Company Press [available to purchase here].

The Awards evolved out of a question we were often asked in our early work on Green Swan solutions: Where can I see examples in the real world? For more information please get in contact.

Notes about Earth Day

Earth Day was founded in 1970 by the late Senator Gaylord Nelson and organised by Denis Hayes, who is now Board Chair Emeritus of the Earth Day Network.

To take part in the first ever fully virtual Earth Day with millions of other global citizens, visit Earth Day 2020.

To take part in the Earth Day Week climate conference, please go to the We Don’t Have Time website.