Miguel Mendonca

Miguel Mendonça (born August 1973, Salisbury, Rhodesia) is an Anglo-Azorean writer based in Bristol, England.

Education

Miguel studied Forestry at Sparsholt College, Landscape Management at Hadlow College, Journalism and Radio Production at FAS, Geography and History at University College Cork, and Social Science and Environmental Ethics at the Open University.

Sustainability Work

Miguel is most associated with work on feed-in tariffs, a renewable energy policy. He did advocacy and education work on this topic on four continents, contributing to legislative change in several countries. Much of this work was carried out while he served as Research Manager for the World Future Council, an international NGO. He subsequently worked with The Converging World, a renewable energy-focused charity based in Bristol, England.

Miguel then worked for a short period as a freelance sustainability researcher and writer. He produced two key studies, the first reviewing the first year performance and outcomes of the UK feed-in tariff in 2011, and the second assessing The Green Economy in Bristol and the West of England, which was published in January 2012. The latter assessed the size and make-up of the environmental technologies sector in the region at that time. It also surveyed the UK green policy environment, and summarised some of the other key aspects of a green economy, including sustainable design of goods and services, retail, food, and well-being. The report concluded with a call for 'Resilience Planning', an ongoing process of strategic collaboration between actors and stakeholders in the region, towards meeting local needs sustainably through investment in local assets. The integration and optimisation of food, energy and transport systems is central. The development of resilience should merge the agendas of sustainability, economic development, social capital development, participatory democracy and emergency planning.