NIHERST: Caribbean Icons in STI

Dr Colin Hudson was a fervent environmentalist whose lifestyle reflected his convictions. Although he was born in Britain, the passion of his career was the protection of the environment of his adopted homeland, Barbados, where he spent most of his life. This tireless crusader wrote more than 200 papers during his 43-year career in agronomy, engineering and environmentalism.

John Colin Hudson was born on January 15, 1938 in Plumpton, Sussex, England. From an early age, he had exposure to agriculture. His mother Greta (née Heath) was trained in dairying and his father John was a graduate in horticulture who later became a professor of horticulture at Nottingham and Bristol Universities and director of a large research station.

His first exposure to Barbados came during his time at Cambridge where he completed a Diploma of Agriculture and a Natural Sciences Tripos (Cambridge Bachelor’s degree) in Botany, Zoology and Organic Chemistry, qualifying as a member of the British Naturalists’ Association (BNA). He became fascinated by the accounts of Barbadian agriculture, which claimed to have one of the world's most successful examples of tropical agricultural production with food crops rotated with sugar cane. In 1961 he started his first job, but he would not stay there long. By a stroke of luck, an acquaintance asked his father if he knew any young graduate who might be interested in a job as a research assistant on a project conducted by the Irrigation Unit of the Ministry of Agriculture in Barbados. Knowing that his chance had come, he showed his interest immediately.

Hudson’s application was accepted and he travelled from England to the West Indies by steamship, arriving in Barbados on August 3, 1961. In 1964, he started the Agronomic Research Unit and wrote his prize-winning doctorate PhD dissertation as an external student of the UWI, St. Augustine campus, completing it in 1968.

When Hudson saw the need for mechanisation in the sugar industry, he shifted his focus from agronomy to technology and developed a harvester for sugar cane. He formed the company Carib Agro-Industries Limited in 1979 and invented harvesters for sugar, yam and cassava, a cane reaping aid, a loader for small farms, yam and sweet potato digging equipment, yam and cassava planters and precision fertilisers. He and his colleagues obtained 20 patents in total, and these machines came to be used around the world. In honour of his achievements, he was awarded honorary membership in the Barbados Association of Professional Engineers.

In 1994, Hudson served as the co-ordinator of the successful Village of Hope which formed part of the United Nations Conference on Sustainable Development in Small Island Developing States. More than 1 000 volunteers helped to create the Village and during the two weeks of the Conference, 40 000 people visited it. The Village educated visitors on many of the sustainable development challenges faced by Caribbean nations and showed some simple decisions that ordinary people could make which would help to heal the planet. Because of the Village’s success, he created the Future Centre Trust at his Edgehill Plantation home to continue the programme of public education that the Village had begun. The Centre conducts practical demonstrations of eco-farming, permaculture, alternative energy sources and water reuse while also addressing global concerns such as loss of biological diversity, global warming, genetic engineering of food, nature conservation, fresh water access and coastal erosion.

Hudson was concerned with the unsustainability of modern lifestyles and urged that development should leave a smaller environmental “footprint". He advocated the creation of mechanisms to measure human impacts on environment- the consumption of water, effects of humans on the air, use of fossil fuels and the generation of garbage. He supported the theory that a person who incorporates the concepts of sustainable development does minimal damage and leaves a small “footprint” on our planet, safeguarding it for future generations, and applied this idea to his own lifestyle.

Hudson’s weekly expeditions, which first began as a project of the Barbados National Trust, led to the creation of the Treading Lightly organisation in the year 2000. Dedicated to finding sustainable solutions to development problems, this organisation assisted local and international environmentalists in solving sustainability problems, provided advice on environmental matters via a “Green Hotline” and promoted public environmental awareness through walking tours conducted with the aid of the Barbados National Trust, the Duke of Edinburgh Award Scheme, and the Barbados Heart Foundation. The Trust was later taken over by the established sustainable development organisation, Counterpart Caribbean in 2001.

During the preparations for the 2002 World Summit on Sustainable Development in Johannesburg, South Africa, Hudson mounted an international Exhibition of Hope in the corridors of the Train of Good Hope during the 24-hour journey from Cape Town. Afterwards, it was transported to St. Stithians College for display at the Peoples’ Earth Summit/World Sustainability Hearings. This venture was vastly successful and inspired others to undertake related projects– the Soweto Mountain of Hope (SoMoHo) in the Tchiawelo District, the philanthropic Hope currency project in Joubert Park, another Village of Hope in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia and an ongoing initiative in Pakistan. A website, called the Web of Hope, was also launched. This site was responsible for compiling the world's first comprehensive database of best practice role models and sustainable solutions. It creates an invaluable global resource accessible to all through an increasingly sophisticated website, produces a variety of publications called Little Books of Hope and runs an educational roadshow in schools.

Among his many honours, Hudson was presented with the Sir James Curry Memorial and Texaco Prize of the University of the West Indies. He was one of the advisors to the United Nation's environmental project, Greening Barbados and also Green Expo 2003. From 1997 to 2004, he served on the National Commission on Sustainable Development, the body that supervised the production of the Barbados Sustainable Development Policy.

Dr John Colin Hudson died on Sunday February 22, 2004, at age 66 after a life that he himself described in his will as “rich and rewarding”. Through his innovations, he demonstrated that conservation and sustainable development were everyone's responsibility and not just in the hand of an elite minority. He encouraged creativity in conservation and highlighted that it could often be achieved by simple means.

Colin Hudson -Agronomist and Environmentalist

Colin Hudson
-Agronomist and Environmentalist