Robin Le Breton

 

Consultant on Natural Resource Management

M.Sc. Environmental Management, M.S. Agricultural Economics,

M.A. Law

People with enquiring minds – like those who read this page, for example – might ask how it comes about that a guy who runs a rainforest research center in South America has a Master’s degree in Law from one of the world’s oldest universities where, as of course they will know,  the Law of the Jungle is not part of the curriculum. You will not find the answer to that question here. It is just one of those things in life to which there is no answer: it just happens.

I was raised on a farm in Africa and my father often told me that farming is a mug’s game and that I’d never be able to make a living from it. I didn’t really believe him but I thought it was useful advice, so armed with it and with a second, more relevant, degree (in Agricultural Economics), I was obviously perfectly equipped to be an Expert in Agricultural Development.  For about twenty years, I pursued this career (my third) very happily:  I traveled about the world a great deal and was handsomely paid to tell the grateful farmers on five different continents how they should run their farms. They listened very politely, and then went on doing what they had always done. Eventually it dawned upon me that something was wrong, so as soon as I had paid off my mortgage and educated my children, I bought a farm of my own to study my father’s axiom at closer quarters. I discovered that indeed he had been right all along about farming. (He wasn’t right about everything, though:  he said that if you hover around flowers a lot like birds and bees do, you’ll end up having babies: I kept well away from flowers, but ended up with babies anyway – he must have got something wrong somewhere).  I also discovered that farms are part of system – an ecosystem, for example, as well as a social system, so you can’t make a farm produce bountifully if you ignore the systems that it is part of. Well, one thing led to another, so the farm got involved in the forest and the forest got involved in the people who live in it, and nobody really seemed to know for sure what made what work, so we ended up with a research center, trying to figure it all out. Of course, I had to get another degree as well, otherwise no one would take me seriously, so I got a Master’s in Environmental Management just to prove I know all about it.`

I do other things as well: I founded a non-governmental organization to support the rainforest research: I work with local government (I was the founder chairman of the county economic development council) and I am member of the State Environmental Policy Council as well as vice–chairman of the State Park advisory council. And, yes, I do have some practical skills, too: I can change the gearbox in a Land Rover and pilot an aircraft; I can vaccinate a calf and skin an ox and I speak all kinds of different languages. Trouble is I can’t remember what they all are – this is called Dynamic Random Access Memory Decay and is relieved (but not cured) by keeping your hard drive in the refrigerator. (Or by putting your head in a bucket of water).