Laureation address: Sara Parkin OBE
Honorary Degree of Doctor of Laws
Laureation by Professor Sir Ian Boyd, School of Biology
Wednesday 2 July 2025 – morning ceremony
Vice-Chancellor, it is my privilege to present for the degree of Doctor of Laws, honoris causa, Sara Parkin OBE.
Sara Parkin has been an independent campaigner, writer and broadcaster on environmental and sustainable development issues for more than 60 years. She was born in Aberdeen and, after starting as a nurse working in Edinburgh, she extended her vocation for caring for people to include caring for the planet.
Having established a career in the health sector in the 1970s, both as a nurse and as an educator, she turned to the politics of sustainability when she stood for election as a member of the Ecology Party, later renamed the UK Green Party, in the 1979 General Election. By the time of the 1989 European Parliamentary elections, the UK Green Party won 15% of the votes. Sara also played a leading role in the development of many green parties around the world, including what became the multi-country European Green Party for which she acted as a co-secretary and spokesperson until 1991.
In 1989, Sara wrote an international guide to green parties and, in 1994, authored a biography of Petra Kelly, the inspirational leader of the German Green Party. This book has been reprinted in several languages and Sara continues to argue that green parties need to be better organised to have greater impact.
In 1996, Sara co-founded Forum for the Future, growing the organisation to become a leading UK sustainable development charity with a mission to promote sustainable development through working in partnership with business, government and other organisations. For the next 20 years, at Forum, Sara designed and ran a Masters course in Leadership for Sustainable Development, while promoting sustainability literacy in universities and colleges through the Higher Education Partnership for Sustainability, of which St Andrews was an exemplary member, and the Sustainability Literacy Project.
Her 2010 book, The Positive Deviant: Sustainability literacy in a perverse world, is based on the Forum course and remains a course book in several countries.
Throughout this period, Sara worked with many different organisations, serving on the boards of the Environment Agency for England and Wales, the Natural Environment Research Council, the Leadership Foundation for Higher Education, the European Training Foundation and NGOs such as Friends of the Earth, the New Economics Foundation and Groundwork. She has contributed to the operations of many trusts and was for many years a judge of the St Andrews Prize for the Environment. Currently she chairs the NGO Population Matters, and is completing a new book entitled What Does Good Look Like? How to live properly with nature and each other, due for publication next year.
Sara was awarded an OBE in 2000 for her services to education and to sustainability, and holds honorary positions with several organisations, including the Institute of Energy, the Institution of Civil Engineers, the Engineering Council, and the Society for the Environment.
Vice-Chancellor, in recognition of her major contribution to environmental and sustainable development, and to education, I invite you to confer the degree of Doctor of Laws, honoris causa, on Sara Parkin OBE.