John Vidal, the Guardian’s former environment editor, has died aged 74. He died peacefully on Thursday in hospital, where he was being treated for cancer.
Vidal reported on the environment for the Guardian for almost three decades until retiring in 2017, calling it “the greatest job on Earth”. Afterwards, he continued to report from around the world with his trademark energy and enthusiasm and published a book, Fevered Planet: How Diseases Emerge When We Harm Nature, in June this year.
The tributes to Vidal remember his pioneering environmental journalism and highlight his passion for social justice, the underdog and putting people at the centre of his stories.
Katharine Viner, the editor-in-chief of the Guardian, said: “John was a passionate, warm, kind, unforgettable man and brilliant journalist – a one-off and a true Guardian legend. His commitment to covering the climate and nature crisis was clear in his gripping and important reporting, rich with humanity – and he got there before anyone else. He was much loved by his colleagues, and we will miss him deeply.”
Sir Jonathon Porritt, one of the UK’s earliest and best known environmentalists, said: “I’ve never known any journalist who so effectively combined uncompromising integrity, understated courage, mischief, irreverence and hard-hitting, compassionate eloquence in all his writing. He was just a wonderful friend and true champion for the environment.”
Paul Webster, the editor of the Observer, said: “John provided vivid and vital journalism and wrote beautifully and passionately about the environment, pioneering coverage of issues that are now central to public life. He was an indefatigable reporter and a warm, witty and generous colleague who was much loved by his fellow journalists.”
Vidal was born in Ghana in 1949, and returned 60 years later to find the midwife who had delivered him as part of a story on population growth. Before joining the Guardian, he worked for Agence France-Presse, North Wales Newspapers and the Cumberland News. He also wrote McLibel: Burger Culture on Trial, a book about the suing of campaigners by McDonald’s.
Vidal’s reporting took him to every corner of the world, particularly the troubled places where people were suffering, such as the Niger delta, Rwanda and Kabul. A series of epic reporting trips took him on climate journeys from the Himalayan glaciers of Nepal to the Bay of Bengal in Bangladesh in 2009; to the glaciers of the Andes to the Amazon rainforest in 2010; from Egypt and war-torn Sudan to South Africa in 2011; and down the length of the great Mekong River in 2015.
One trip, reporting on hunger in Malawi, led Vidal to set up the Gumbi education fund to educate children in one of Malawi’s poorest villages. It continues its work today.
Vidal also often caused “good trouble”. His revelation of a leaked draft agreement at the UN climate summit in Copenhagen caused uproar, with developing countries reacting furiously to a text they saw as handing more power to rich nations. He was also imprisoned in the Faroe Islands while reporting on whaling.
Paul Brown, who as environment correspondent sat next to Vidal in the Guardian newsroom for 16 years, said: “John’s talent was partly his skill as a writer, where he wrote persuasive copy that made environmental subjects come alive. It was also his unorthodox approach that got his stories in the paper, for example where he got a job as a security guard to report from the other side on how the authorities dealt with the Newbury anti-bypass protesters. Above all he was a champion of the underdog, always cheerful but relentless in pursuit of a story he thought worth telling.”
John Sauven, the former head of Greenpeace UK, called Vidal a legend: “He was an irresistible, booming presence at so many key moments. He was there in the Amazon and the Arctic long before they became celebrated causes – in fact he was often the reason an environmental threat was finally recognised. John was a tremendous friend to Indigenous peoples and to campaigners risking their lives on the frontline. But most of all he was a fine journalist.”
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Tom Burke, a former special adviser to several UK environment ministers and a head of Friends of the Earth, said: “John was a very influential environmental journalist. He, more than anyone else I remember, made visible the link between the environment and development. The idea that you could not protect the global environment in the absence of social justice is commonplace today but it was not when John first began writing about it. He was clear, consistent and correct in his passion to connect the empirical to the moral.”
The environmentalist and former MP Zac Goldsmith tweeted: “John was a pioneer and a hero. He did immeasurable good through his work shining a light on environmental destruction, highlighting good and bad – and always from a position of integrity. We are indebted to him.”
Geoffrey Lean, a veteran environmental journalist and a contemporary of Vidal’s, said: “John was one of the very best, pioneering coverage of the environment – initially in a quite hostile political and media atmosphere – from the late 1980s onwards. He was always on the cutting edge, exposing abuses all over the world, fearlessly and in depth. He did a huge amount to set the stage for today’s proliferation of excellent environmental journalists.”
Vidal is survived by his wife and his niece.
