How many dispossessed people does it take to change a policy? in a 40-year career involving meeting, and in many cases campaigning for, tribal people driven from their ancestral homelands, British explorer Robin Hanbury-Tension has yet to find the answer.
Whether in canada, Indonesia or China, government blueprints rarely shift to accomodate indigenous people or ancient woodlands. Almost nothing stands a chance against greed and the electric saw.
'Sometimes I want to throw rocks, or plant bombs,' said the urbane, charming president of Survival International who sees himself on the 'acceptable side of protest' precisely because he does not do these things.
Hanbury-Tension was visiting Hong kong this month to give a talk to the local branch of the Royal Geographical Society (RGS), before setting off on one of his less rigorous assignments - giving lectures on the luxury minerva cruise ship en route to Borneo.
'It's tough,' he joked. 'You have to lecture twice a weerk. On the QE2 it was only once a week. I had to give talks to the crew or I'd have got withdrawal symptoms.' He is, he would happily agree, a dreamer, a schemer, a sometime talker in pinstripes and a sometimes walker in bare feet.
'I am not a scientist, I'm not a specialist. But I can talk to a lot of people, and sometimes they listen,' said Hanbury-Tension, who has the proper 19-century gentlemanly credentials for being an explorer (Eton and Oxford educated, vice president of the Royal Geographical Society, and an insatiable wanderlust).