About 30 stakeholders from the tourism and fishing industries and from several government departments took a hard look at the stages of making environmental policy in the Virgin Islands, and found that while various agencies gather lots of data about the territory, the advice gleaned from experts is not always implemented effectively.
Led by Newcastle University professor Dr. Selina Stead, the Tuesday meeting included an examination of the territory’s policy cycle because identifying weak points in the cycle can help the territory work to change how it manages coral reefs — and the natural environment more broadly — in the future, the researchers said.
Dr. Stead, who this week joined a team of other Newcastle researchers who have been in the territory since January, emphasised that the Future of Reefs project, which is funded by the United Kingdom’s Department of Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, is not geared to making recommendations but to helping reveal connections between people’s actions and the health of reefs.
See the March 6, 2014 edition for full coverage.
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