Dr Caspar Hewett is an environmental consultant in water resources with over seventeen years research experience in academia and industry. He has worked in water related research and knowledge transfer projects in the UK, USA, Balkans, South Africa and Turkey. He is director and chair of The Great Debate, a group that organises debates, workshops and courses for the general public and is on the management committee of the North East of England’s United Nations Regional Centre of Expertise in Education for Sustainable Development (RCE North East). The great northern debate, his ongoing project on Development, Sustainability and Environment, has recently been awarded international recognition by the United Nations University as an RCE project. He is currently writing a book about humanism and the notion of progress.