Episode 148 - Joe Lamb, founder of the Borneo Project, is a writer, activist, and arborist living in Berkeley, California.

November 15, 2023 Eva Monheim

Joe Lamb, founder of the Borneo Project, is a writer, activist, and arborist living in Berkeley, California. His poetry and essays have appeared in Earth Island Journal, The Sun, Caliban, Wind, Orion, and other magazines. His work is also included in the anthologies The Rag and Bone Shop of the Heart: A Poetry Anthology, Robert Bly et al editors, and Veterans of War/Veterans of Peace, Maxine Hong Kingston editor.

Joe has degrees in biology, ecology, and film. He has taught biology and ecology in the United States and in Mexico. He worked as a field organizer on the Nuclear Weapons Freeze Campaign, and as a film distributor for The Video Project. For over forty years he has tended trees in the urban forest as co-owner of Brende and Lamb Tree and Shrub care.

In 1991, under the auspices of Earth Island Institute, Joe founded the Borneo Project, an NGO that helps the indigenous peoples of Borneo secure land rights and protect their forest. Honored by the Goldman Foundation as an “environmental hero,” Joe was featured in the San Francisco public television program, “Green Means.”

For over 30 years the Borneo Project has helped indigenous peoples map their lands, bring their case to the court of public opinion, and press for the preservation of their forests through legal action. Learn more about the Borneo Project – see the link below.

Joe is firmly committed to trees as an essential part of any realistic strategy to help the world limit and mitigate the potentially catastrophic consequences of climate change