INTERVIEW: Overseas entities have a common goal

Interview with Graham Saunders, Doctor, marine team leader, Royal Haskonig

Have you learned anything new from the conference?
One of things I did not know was the different layers of membership throughout the EU in terms of the OTs, and how much they are engaged within the EU. It seems the French have a rather different model to the English.

I can see why there is unhappiness amongst the British territories, and also it seems to have been translated that the French are leading EU policy in biodiversity and climate change directly into their OTs, where it is an opt out situation in British OTs.

Most people in the UK OTs want to opt in, but they don't know how. They are looking to the EU for guidance, but it is rather sad that the UK government is not well represented here. The conservation agencies have had notification that funding will be cut, so perhaps that is a factor.

Have you been able to contribute during the conference?
Where I am most engaged here is on how the EU has been looking at measuring biodiversity and how they monitor biodiversity. For a long time what we weren't disseminating that information, not just to the OTs, but to the rest of the world. If we want measure change in a consistent way, we should all get together, it makes sense.

Has there been a lot of sharing of information?
There has been a lot of discussion, especially over these past couple of days, doing exactly that. It's why the EU is good at disseminating what its doing, and how the OTs can actually learn from what we're doing. A good example, for me, is that the EU countries are spending a lot of time and efforts in measuring one of the features, for example, sea grass.

The trouble is getting enough representatives in the same room. You need people in the room who are actually doing the work on the ground to get things done.

It's very useful to have people from various levels of government, even those people who are trying to set up locally based initiatives.

Will the conference be successful in achieving its objectives?
There seems to be a lot of chest beating in terms of trying to make political points and there have been a lot of long speeches, but in terms of achieving something, I would like to see the recommendations going right to the places they need to go to, which is ultimately the people who fund this.

Another very important thing is that all the OTs, no matter what state they're at, recognise that we have a common goal, which is that we have to preserve biodiversity, and to look at ways of adapting and mitigating effects of climate change. We're all in the same boat on that one, it's just that for some people, their vehicle is heading towards a disaster much faster than the Euro vehicle.