My twin brother, Jonathan, who has died aged 69, helped ignite the modern environmental movement. In the early 70s he was a founding member of Friends of the Earth UK, set up the National Union of Students’ environment committee, and was an organiser of the first United Nations youth conference on the human environment.
A lover of hitchhiking and hostelling, in 1973 Jonathan received a Winston Churchill Memorial Trust fellowship and campaigned as an environmental activist in London, Japan and New Zealand. He was the author of three books on the environment, including Consumers’ Guide to the Protection of the Environment (1974).
His wanderlust took him to Tokyo in 1975, where he worked at the university, translated bio-geography articles and co-founded Friends of the Earth International Japan, which he represented internationally with Naomi Kamei, whom he married. He helped raise millions for conservation in Japan, and his television interview in Tokyo with Paul McCartney in 1980 encouraged McCartney and his band, Wings, to endorse FoE’s fundraising activities.
The fifth son of Marjorie (nee Fenney), an arts and crafts teacher, and Edwin Holliman, an actor, Jonathan was born and brought up in west London and attended Raine’s Foundation and then Holland Park school. At the age of seven his passion for the environment was sparked by visits to the Natural History Museum and to the Children’s Centre, a weekly educational activity focused on natural history and funded by the London county council.
He went on to attend the Junior Naturalists’ Club at Chelsea Physic Garden, and his initiation into international conservation circles came through the Field Observers’ Club. This put him in touch with the International Youth Federation for Environmental Studies and Conservation, of which he later became president. Whether uncovering rare fossils that went into national collections or serving on boards and commissions, Jonathan was in his element with anything that concerned the environment.
In 2000 he moved to New Zealand, where he joined the Earthsong eco-community in west Auckland, and established its workshop. His marriage to Naomi ended in 2001. In 2006 he married Mutsumi Kanazawa, whom he had first met in Japan in 1986, and they set up home together in Auckland.
Jonathan is survived by Mutsumi, and by his brothers, Michael, Patrick, Andrew and me.
