Those of us at the Resource Renewal Institute (RRI) who knew and worked with Thomas Winston Fookes are deeply saddened by his passing. Tom passed away peacefully on August 2 in Auckland, New Zealand.

Tom was one of our first Forces of Nature and sat with Huey Johnson for a Skype interview on March 5 2012, where he talked about his greatest accomplishments as a green planner: he was one of the chief architects of the New Zealand Resource Management Act http://theforcesofnature.com/movies/tom-fookes/ and a go-to strategist on issues concerning human settlements around

Tom was a passionate practitioner and teacher, and part of a tight knit network of RRI’s green plan advisors from New Zealand, the Netherlands, other European states, Canada, and Mexico City. Here is a link to one of his videos about green planning: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4DGBBAeu3bY.

His many colleagues, students, family and friends the world over will sorely miss him. Peggy Lauer, who directed RRI’s Green Plan Program in the 1990s and who worked closely with Tom, wrote a touching elegy that can be found on the RRI website.: http://rri.org/blog/?p=828

We send our deepest condolences to his wife, Susan, their daughters Emma and Catherine, their son, Ian, and their grandchildren present and future who will grow up knowing of Tom’s integrity, intelligence, humor, and love of them and their country.