Mission
Our ability to reduce the effects of climate change depends on a state of balance between carbon emissions and carbon absorption. While there are multiple sources of carbon emissions, producing food, keeping livestock, transport, building, heating and lighting homes, there are only two realistic ways to reduce atmospheric carbon, planting trees and, more significantly, managing soils. Yes, industrialised capture exists as a process but not an economic reality.
With 90% of the UK still not built on and 99% of the planet's land mass still green, it stands to reason that some of the causes of climate change and many of the solutions are going to be found there. Yet virtually all discourse and all strategy related to climate change is focused on our main areas of population, our towns and cities. There simply is no consideration, understanding, analysis or investigation given to those areas that do not contain buildings, i.e our fields and forests. This is clearly at best short-sighted and at worst absurd!
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cquester seeks to raise public awareness about the value of nature in offsetting the effects of climate change and in so doing to seek a more balanced approach to avoiding a climate calamity.
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Emissions
State of Balance
Global warming is largely a product of two opposing forces, carbon emissions and carbon absorption. Both have been going on far longer than we as a species have inhabited the planet. Had they not occurred, life in the form that we know it would never have developed. The problem is not the processes themselves, it is the fact that they are, for the first time in millennia, out of balance. Green house gas emissions have increased while at the same time we have compromised the ability of the planets air filters, its vegetation and its soils, to capture carbon, so the level of carbon accumulating in the earth's atmosphere has increased, to unprecedented levels. These gases, in our atmosphere, trap some of the warmth from the sun's rays, but this is a delicate balance, trap too little and we freeze, trap too much and we will literally fry. The solution is to get back to the state of balance that has long existed and we do so by both suppressing emissions to the minimum but also driving up absorption to the maximum. To move forward we have to look back.
Net Zero
Absorption
cquester : our offer
cquester’s mission is to raise awareness of climate change and the measures that we can each take to avoid its worst effects. In particular it focuses on our countryside, the areas not occupied by buildings and the area most likely to offer potential solutions. The areas outside our towns and cities are managed by our farmers, they are the custodians of our most valuable carbon store, i.e. our soil. However, farming can only capture carbon whilst it is financially viable, an underfunded farming community is itself unsustainable. As most of us do not live or work in rural areas we tend to be unaware of the processes and forces that shape it, and in some cases are destroying it. cquester, therefore, seeks to bridge that gap between us as the urban population and those who are looking after our land, the farmers. It does so through public speaking, to gatherings and to conferences. If you or your group wish to hear more go to our bookings page.
Us
Chris began his career in Landscape Architecture at the beginning of 1980. In 1993 he established his own Landscape design company, which went on to become one of the most successful practices in the UK. Through this company he and his colleagues delivered many high profile schemes, The National Maritime Museum - Greenwich, The Green Heart- University of Birmingham, Interchange Station for HS2 and Fellowship Square for Waltham Forest Civic Offices.
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During and after Covid, Chris decided to move away from mainstream landscape design and to focus more on our natural landscape at a much wider scale. He realised that with so much of the UK still occupied by fields, forests and fells, it stood to reason that any solution to climate change, and indeed some of its causes, were likely to come from here.
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Chris began taking this message to public audiences, initially branches of the Women's Institute but now expanding to embrace eductational and reform establishments. In 2023 Chris decided to leave landscape architecture altogether in order to commit more time to raising public awareness about this crucial issue.
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The company Chris has now set up is a not for profit venture. Any profits realised from public speaking or consultancy work will be donated to charities that focus on areas and communities negatively impacted by climate change.
Collaborators
Addressing climate change will be a multi skilled project, it will involve system level reinvention addressing all aspects of our lives. It cannot follow the siloed thinking that has characterised much of the drive to net zero to date. While each of us needs to deliver the necessary changes within our own sector, those who will guide the path back to a state of balance have to be able to look over the fence toward related areas of work. Tackling climate change will be a team pursuit, there are likely to be few gongs, medals and heroes, everyone will have to play their part in addressing it. Covid has shown that at a global level, when faced with existential threats, we do have the collective skills and will to come together to address a shared challenge.​
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​The aim over the next few months will be to draw in 4-8 specialists from different fields covering, economics, food production, land management, hydrology and ecosystem services. These specialists will then form a Board of Non Executive Directors and it is this Board that will determine the goals and objectives of cquester moving forward. If this is a role that appeals to you please contact us by email cc@cquester.co.uk.