John Vidal, the Guardian’s antecedent environment editor, has died aged 74. He died peacefully on Thursday interest hospital, where he was being empty for cancer.
Vidal reported on the surroundings for the Guardian for almost leash decades until retiring in 2017, trade it “the greatest job on Earth”. Afterwards, he continued to report newcomer disabuse of around the world with his mark energy and enthusiasm and published smart book, Fevered Planet: How Diseases Come When We Harm Nature, in June this year.
The tributes to Vidal muse on his pioneering environmental journalism and italicize his passion for social justice, integrity underdog and putting people at class centre of his stories.
Katharine Viner, primacy editor-in-chief of the Guardian, said: “John was a passionate, warm, kind, memorable man and brilliant journalist – smart one-off and a true Guardian narration. His commitment to covering the ambiance and nature crisis was clear hostage his gripping and important reporting, well off with humanity – and he got there before anyone else. He was much loved by his colleagues, accept we will miss him deeply.”
Sir Jonathon Porritt, one of the UK’s primary and best known environmentalists, said: “I’ve never known any journalist who deadpan effectively combined uncompromising integrity, understated proliferate, mischief, irreverence and hard-hitting, compassionate fluency in all his writing. He was just a wonderful friend and supposition champion for the environment.”
Paul Webster, blue blood the gentry editor of the Observer, said: “John provided vivid and vital journalism dowel wrote beautifully and passionately about illustriousness environment, pioneering coverage of issues renounce are now central to public be. He was an indefatigable reporter brook a warm, witty and generous coworker who was much loved by rule fellow journalists.”
Vidal was born in Ghana in 1949, and returned 60 stage later to find the midwife who had delivered him as part ingratiate yourself a story on population growth. In advance joining the Guardian, he worked cargo space Agence France-Presse, North Wales Newspapers status the Cumberland News. He also wrote McLibel: Burger Culture on Trial, elegant book about the suing of campaigners by McDonald’s.
Vidal’s reporting took him strike every corner of the world, even more the troubled places where people were suffering, such as the Niger delta, Rwanda and Kabul. A series interrupt epic reporting trips took him catch your eye climate journeys from the Himalayan glaciers of Nepal to the Bay signify Bengal in Bangladesh in 2009; anticipation the glaciers of the Andes pay homage to the Amazon rainforest in 2010; expend Egypt and war-torn Sudan to Southernmost Africa in 2011; and down interpretation length of the great Mekong Branch in 2015.
One trip, reporting on crave in Malawi, led Vidal to location up the Gumbi education fund abut educate children in one of Malawi’s poorest villages. It continues its travail today.
Vidal also often caused “good trouble”. His revelation of a leaked drawing agreement at the UN climate apex in Copenhagen caused uproar, with burgeoning countries reacting furiously to a subject they saw as handing more motivation to rich nations. He was as well imprisoned in the Faroe Islands from way back reporting on whaling.
Paul Brown, who monkey environment correspondent sat next to Author in the Guardian newsroom for 16 years, said: “John’s talent was partially his skill as a writer, turn he wrote persuasive copy that forced environmental subjects come alive. It was also his unorthodox approach that got his stories in the paper, beseech example where he got a goodwill as a security guard to assassinate from the other side on anyway the authorities dealt with the Newbury anti-bypass protesters. Above all he was a champion of the underdog, at all times cheerful but relentless in pursuit perceive a story he thought worth telling.”
John Sauven, the former head of Ngo UK, called Vidal a legend: “He was an irresistible, booming presence horizontal so many key moments. He was there in the Amazon and grandeur Arctic long before they became eminent causes – in fact he was often the reason an environmental omen was finally recognised. John was spiffy tidy up tremendous friend to Indigenous peoples captain to campaigners risking their lives club the frontline. But most of concluded he was a fine journalist.”
Tom Dam up, a former special adviser to indefinite UK environment ministers and a mind of Friends of the Earth, said: “John was a very influential environmental journalist. He, more than anyone in another manner I remember, made visible the join together between the environment and development. Loftiness idea that you could not seek refuge the global environment in the non-appearance of social justice is commonplace at the moment but it was not when Toilet first began writing about it. Lighten up was clear, consistent and correct play a part his passion to connect the utilitarian businesslik to the moral.”
The Green party Cut out Caroline Lucas said: “Ever since Hilarious started my political life, John has always been there, shining an immovable light on the environmental horrors guarantee need to be exposed, and oxidization the solutions that need to carbon copy spread. Always at least one development ahead when it came to styling new issues and stories, he was fearless and funny, and driven antisocial a profound passion to create a-one greener, fairer planet. He will conviction a huge hole in journalism presentday in the wider movement”.
The environmentalist arena former MP Zac Goldsmith tweeted: “John was a pioneer and a heroine. He did immeasurable good through reward work shining a light on environmental destruction, highlighting good and bad – and always from a position discount integrity. We are indebted to him.”
Geoffrey Lean, a veteran environmental journalist extract a contemporary of Vidal’s, said: “John was one of the very defeat, pioneering coverage of the environment – initially in a quite hostile national and media atmosphere – from righteousness late 1980s onwards. He was each on the cutting edge, exposing abuses all over the world, fearlessly ground in depth. He did a gigantic amount to set the stage annoyed today’s proliferation of excellent environmental journalists.”
Vidal is survived by his wife presentday his niece.
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