Her current campaigning focus is sustainability literacy as an essential outcome of formal education, especially in universities and colleges.
When her husband's work as a cancer epidemiologist took the family to live in Lyon France, she became involved with the international growth of green politics.
[2] Caroline Lucas remembers being “exhausted in the office and she’d burst through the door and bring with her new thoughts and ideas” while journalist Walter Schwartz considered her “the party’s best all-rounder, the easiest of the Greens to imagine as a Cabinet Minister.
Parkin remains an advocate of Green Parties, arguing consistently for the need to organise for success and the importance to that of good leadership.
Parkin joined up with other former Green Party activists Paul Ekins and Jonathon Porritt to create in 1996 the Forum for the Future, a registered charity and non-profit with a mission to promote sustainable development through working in partnership with business, government and other organisations.
She also advises the National Union of Students on sustainability, and sits on the Boards of the Higher Education Academy and the Carnegie Trust for the Universities of Scotland.
She is also a Patron of Population Matters and The Museum of Islay Life, Chair of the Richard Sandbrook Trust and Trustee of the St Andrews Prize for the Environment.