A Table From The Sea's Edge is an art project, devised by Silas Birtwistle to raise awareness of environmental issues and promote conservation of the world's coastal and marine biodiversity as a contribution to the UN International Year of Biological Diversity, 2010.


The project aims to embody the rich biodiversity of nature by crafting a large conference table surrounded by twelve chairs, made entirely from beautiful examples of driftwood - collected from four key hotspots around the world. It is a dramatic statement on the environment, uniting different cultures and coastal communities, connecting land with sea, and symbolizing the boundary between marine and terrestrial ecosystems, making connections between man's land-based activities and the marine and coastal environment.

 

Photograph by Colin Mills

On display at The World Museum, Liverpool

 

The sculpture was unveiled during the International Year of Biodiversity at the tenth meeting of the Conference of the Parties to the Convention on Biological Diversity (COP-10) which took place in Nagoya, Japan on October, 2010. It provided a platform for a multitude of high-level UN debates on environmental issues, and ceremonial signings of agreements.

 

Since Nagoya, it has been exhibited and used at a number of venues, including The Annual Meeting of The World Economic Forum,The World Museum, Liverpool, More London office of Price Waterhouse Coopers, The SouthBank Centre, Save The Children International, Canary Wharf, Google and most recently on exhibition at The National Maritime Museum, Greenwich.

 

 

CBD Press Release.pdf
Adobe Acrobat document [217.6 KB]
PwC UK Chairman and Senior Partner Ian Powell, and members of the Sustainability and Climate Change team.
Ahmed Djoghlaf, The Executive Secretary of the CBD at COP-10. Photograph by John Einarsen.
Photograph by David Sandison
Karen Ellerman, Environment Minister for Denmark.
Prince Bandar bin Saud bin Mohammad Al Saud, Saudi Arabia, Ahmed Djoghlaf, Executive Secretary, CBD, Karen Ellermann, The Environment Minister for Denmark.
Youth participants of the IUCN Go4Biodiv initiative. Photograph by Sean Southey

The World Economic Forum, Davos, 2011

Jim Leape, Director General WWF International
Nils Andersen, Chief Executive of AP Moller-Maersk
Achim Steiner, Executive Director of the United Nations Environment Programme, UNEP
John Lipsky, First Deputy Managing Director, International Monetary Fund, IMF.
Boris Johnson, Mayor of London.
Tony Blair
Julia Marton-Lefevre, Director General of International Union for Conservation of Nature, IUCN.
Kumi Naidoo, Executive Director of Greenpeace
Hussain Dawood, Chairman of Dawood Group
Greg Stone, Senior Vice President of Conservation International.
Marc Bolland, Chief Executive of Marks & Spencer