When building Begawan Giri Estate in Bali, Bradley T Gardner, entrepreneur, realized that in today’s world ‘there’s a lot of taking, there’s not a lot of putting back’. Wherever possible during construction, recycled wood was used, including a buried forest of logs 150 years old, unearthed in Java. The Gardners also planted 2,500 trees. His interest in sustainability led to the founding of Begawan Foundation in 1999, focusing on conservation, health and education. Currently the foundation is raising the endangered Bali Starling for release on mainland Bali, following the release in 2006-07 of 65 Bali Starlings raised by Begawan Foundation for release on Nusa Penida. In 2007, Bradley founded The GreenAsia Group.

The Kyoto Protocol allows people to engage in this sustainability market, however as Bradley says, it is the voluntary market which can have the biggest impact. “If everybody tomorrow said ‘I am going to be responsible for my impact on climate change’ it would have a huge difference worldwide.”