Tuesday 23 November 2004

Dusty Gedge, a London based campaigner, received the Andrew Lees Memorial Award for his success in persuading developers to install "green roofs" - hundreds of thousands of square metres of greenery - on rooftops hundreds of feet up in London's Canary Wharf, the City and other developments.

The first "green roofs" were launched last year in Deptford. The Laban Dance Centre and the Creekside Nature Conservation Centre were opened with rooftops designed especially to preserve the habitat of the black redstart, one of Britain's most endangered birds. The small grey and black bird with an orange tail, thrives on disused industrial land.

In his determination to preserve environmentally rich brownfield sites, Dusty Gedge has been one of the most influential figures in pushing the Canary Wharf Management and its high profile City and banking tenants into building "green roofs" on their tower blocks. Nesting boxes for a dozen swifts have already been installed 655 feet up at the top of the Canada Square tower and two sand martin nesting boxes have been put up on docksides. One experimental green roof is covering Chevron Texaco's building and another is under way on the Northern Trust block.

Green roofs aren't just good for birds, bumblebees and other insects. They're good for soaking up rain water, which helps prevent flooding during heavy rain; they improve local air quality and conserve energy. Heating and air conditioning bills are cut as the roofs act as an extra layer of insulation. Ironically, the new trend has been unwittingly inspired by the pressure to build 60 per cent of all new homes on brownfield sites, to save the green belt from housing and industrial development.

The BEMAs Awareness Award went to the government's scientific adviser, Sir David King, for keeping climate change high up the political agenda. The Guardian scooped several awards for its environmental coverage, being named the newspaper of the year. Its environment editor, John Vidal, took the award for journalist of the year and Paul Brown, the paper's environmental correspondent was runner up.

There were some new faces on the environmental scene too, with Time magazine recognised for its coverage of environmental issues such as GM foods and The Big Issue a runner up for coverage of environment and health issues.

The BBC had a strong showing as usual: BBC2's Britain Goes Wild series was named best environmental campaign and Countryfile won best television documentary for its investigation into ageing European trawlers reflagging and fishing in Senegalese waters; BBC Radio 4 and the website were also winners.