Pam Berry works with the Environment Change Institute of Oxford University and participated in talks during Brussels Green Week held at the Charlemagne building between the dates of June 23-26. Following her participation she took a few minutes to speak with New Europe’s Alia Papageorgiou for NETV and explained for us just why biodiversity was so important.
What are you working on at the moment?
The main thing which I’ve been working on, which I’ve been talking about here in Green Week is about how climate change mitigation and adaptation measures can impact on biodiversity.
And how do they impact on biodiversity?
Well, I think that important message that I’ve been trying to get across is that there are some measures which are positive for biodiversity, some which are perhaps more neutral and others which are negative. So if we think about the negative ones, the example I’ve used is something like snowmaking which might be used by resorts in the Alps to counter the loss of snow. That can be very negative in changing the environment for the vegetation. Whereas if you look at something like recreating wetlands, salt marshes and things like that – that’s incredibly good measure because not only do wetlands help store carbon and therefore help address climate change but also they can help regulate river flooding and it provides very good habitat for range of aquatic organisms.
Am I wrong in that current government in the UK has produced one the largest works or future plans to reconstruct the wetland area in part of UK? Are you working with them on that?
I am not actually working with them on that but certainly that is a great project which would be a very good example of wetland recreation. And it’s certainly something that has been happening in the UK over the last five-10 years. And it’s an excellent example of what I would call the triple win situations where you’ve got something that’s done and is good for the mitigation, and adaptation and biodiversity, these represent really good measures for dealing with climate change.
So the other projects are more artificial, or commercially-based? Or are they not really going to the details of what they would be doing to the climate or biodiversity? Is that what you mean by the snow example?
Yes, I think the important thing is that each part of the economy is trying to adapt to climate change, or is thinking of how it should adapt to climate change. So this is growing in agricultural forestry, in tourism but very rarely do they stop and think about their actions and how they impact on biodiversity. And what we’ve been trying showing is that there are opportunities for benefit to the sector in terms of adapting to climate change and you can also get benefits to biodiversity. So when you’ve got that happening it seems much more sensible to go for those measures as opposed to one’s which would later cause problems to biodiversity.
Who are some of the people that you would work with? Who asks for your assistance?
You’ve got the standard conservation agencies and most of them are well aware that they need to protect biodiversity but they don’t always recognise what some of the others sectors could do to help them conserve and promote biodiversity. So that’s one area. In the UK, you’ve got the environment agency who is responsible for, amongst other things, for managing rivers and coasts, and they on the whole well informed about the negative impacts of a lot of hard costal defences like sea walls that prevent habitat like salt marsh be able to move in land in response to increased sea level. But they are also promoting what we call managed realignment which is actually allowing the sea to break through current defences and flood the areas behind. But there are whole range different sectors and people we could sort of work with. And this just a matter of talking to each of them and showing them how they need to think about biodiversity. But also probably to talk to each other as well because any action you take is not just going to impact on a sector like rivers and coasts, but it will impact on agriculture and possibly on forestry as well. We really need a very holistic approach to the environment.
How do you perceive Europe’s role in what you’re doing at the moment? Are they going in the direction as quickly as you would like?
Well obviously the European Union is concerned to address biodiversity losses, climate change. And there’ve been recently one or two important conferences to try and look at both those issues and bring them together. But I think as with any major organisation, major level of governance, action is very slow. But at least people are starting to recognise this need to bring together climate change and biodiversity. So I think let’s hope we need to move a lot lot faster.
European Commissioner for the Environment Stavros Dimas says that we don’t have any more time on this issue, we must act now. Would you agree with that?
I certainly think we are very close to not having any more time. I think we probably have five years if we have things moving fast, then we will have a major problem. Yes.
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