My friend Dongria Kondh, who has died aged 65 of cancer, was an environmental activist in the north of England whose main focus was on climate change.
In the late 1990s she founded Treesponsibility, a not-for-profit community group dedicated to raising awareness about climate change in the Calder Valley area of West Yorkshire, where she lived. Following floods in the Calder Valley, she also became a strong advocate of natural flood defences, spearheading a local Ban the Burn campaign against the damaging practice of burning and draining peat bogs on grouse shooting estates.
Dongria was born Penny Eastwood in Newbury, Berkshire. She never knew her birth parents, and was adopted by William and Patricia Eastwood, whose surname she took. After attending Millfield school in Somerset, in 1971 she went to the University of Warwick, where she met Jon Tattershall, a fellow student. They got married, had two children, Kate and Jem, and moved to Hebden Bridge in West Yorkshire in 1987, before divorcing in 1990.
In 1987 she researched climate change at the University of Bradford, where she gained a first-class degree in peace studies and had her dissertation, Responding to Global Warming: An Examination of the Prospects for Effective Action, published as part of the Bradford Peace Studies Papers series in 1992.
To coincide with the Rio Earth Summit that year, she organised a two week Walk for the Earth from Manchester to London, on which she met Billy Frugal, a psychiatric nurse, whom she married in 1994. For most of the rest of her life, as she became expert at tapping bodies for funds, her environmental work was supported through various grants and schemes.
In 1998 she founded Treesponsibility, which, apart from its campaigning work on climate change, encouraged the planting of thousands of trees. I was a volunteer for Treesponsibility, and it was through that connection that the two of us met in 1998.
In 2010, she changed her name from Penny Eastwood to Dongria Kondh as part of a campaign against proposed British investment in a bauxite mine on land inhabited by the Dongria Kondh tribe in India, on one occasion glueing herself to the offices of the Royal Bank of Scotland. After a long battle, the Dongria Kondh successfully saved their lands, but she retained her new name.
Dongria was a force of nature, a kind, pragmatic and humorous woman who found happiness in her environmental work. With her quick intellect, she understood well before most of her contemporaries that climate change is the biggest threat to the planet, and dedicated herself to trying to create positive change. To relax, she loved storytelling and was a demon Scrabble player.
She is survived by Billy, Kate and Jem, and her granddaughters, Eva and Harriet.
