Tom Roche - Just Forests

Background

I am an environmental-rights activist, craftsman in wood and educator. I have a passion for education for sustainable development (ESD) as a means of empowering society to act to address the challenges of climate breakdown, human rights and the loss of biological diversity.

I have always believed that many of the problems of developing nations can be solved here in our own country. It often come down to economics - to the matter of how we trade with emerging economies - do we pay them adequately for their goods and services? 

Values

My approach to human-rights, environmental sustainability and the protection of flora and fauna is very clear – if my livelihood depends on the extraction of natural resources, then I have a responsibility to ensure it is not impacting negatively on people, wildlife or the ecosystems that produce the resources. It’s a values-system I learned while serving my apprenticeship as a carpenter. This values-system was further enhanced from the many slide shows I was exposed to by a local catholic priest on his return to Ireland from his missionary work in Fiji and again during my time working on a sheep station in Australia in the late 1960’s.

As a self-employed furniture maker, working mostly in Brazilian mahogany, I felt I had a responsibility to ensure the wood I was using in my work should come from responsible sources. Realising the significance of the problem I was dealing with I set out to create public awareness and impress upon people the importance of forests to our economic, social and environmental sustainability while emphasising that all our timber needs should come from responsibly managed forests. This meant that I had to develop personal skills that would empower people to act and solve the problem. 

So with this in mind I set up Just Forests in September 1989. Being a small organisation, I knew I had to be very focused and identify specific sectors of Irish society that I could influence and that would in turn adopt my proposal and become part of the solution.

In 2020, I launched Barking Up The Right Tree (BURT) - a Global Citizenship Education initiative that will engage Irish society in supporting the spirit of the United Nations Decade on Ecosystem Restoration 2021 – 2030. BURT will make very clear and present links between forests and all the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).

In June 2023, US human rights Attorney Steven Donziger launched Just Forests publication SpoArts Wash- exposing Ireland's fossil fuel sponsorship culture https://spoarts.ie/download-spoarts-wash/

I am currently re-ordering the SDG's, as I do not have any faith that they are working in their present order.  The RIO Series of Global Citizenship Education (GCED) resources for a world in peril is available from my newest project at this link: https://ecorace2030.com/

"Long-view leadership, rooted in the values of truth, justice and humanrights, is essential if we are to bequeath a better world to our children and grandchildren."

Mary Robinson

As part of their Frontlines of Activism series, the Centre for Global Education in Belfast published Awash in Greenwash which can be downloaded from here...

Skype: tom.roche7
Website: https://linktr.ee/justforests  

Facebook: https://bit.ly/34J3eye
Twitter: https://twitter.com/Justforests
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/user/rathcobican                                   Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/just.forests/

Other interests

Member of Tallaght Choral Society  https://tallaghtchoral.ie/

Co-creator of the Giants of Men sculpture http://concernproject.tomroche.ie/