[Coral-List] Stop flying????!

[Sue Wells]

Well done, Mark.  Yes, we must reduce our travel significantly - once the
virus peak is over there is likely to be a rush to take holidays and hold
meetings and the skies will be full of planes again.  You rightly question
whether enough effort is being made to enable "virtual" attendance at coral
reef meetings.  I know that people are looking into this, and hope that some
solutions will soon be on offer.

 

In the meantime, my recent positive experience might be of interest. Over
the course of 4 days in February, from the comfort of my office in
Cambridge, I dialled into two international meetings, one in Washington DC
on MPAs and one in Germany on protected areas more generally.  Both were
fairly small (DC had 65 participants, with 5 dialling in; Germany probably
less than 50 with c. 3 dialling in) and involved plenary sessions with
break-out discussion groups.  There was a joint session when the two
meetings "met" virtually, with others dialling in remotely.  The meeting in
Germany used "global.gotomeeting.com" and the DC meeting used "webex" - both
systems seemed to work fairly well for those dialling in.

 

Overall, the presentations worked well (as is the case with webinars), and I
could follow the plenary Q&A sessions and for the most part get noticed if I
wanted to ask a question myself.  Ironically the one session when the
presentations did not work was the MPA one on technology, but this turned
out to be "human error" rather than anything technical with the dialling-in
system. 

 

One big advantage was that I could attend both meetings, unlike other
participants.  With the time zone difference, this led to some long days but
it was worth it.  I could provide feedback from one meeting to the other -
particularly useful for the discussions on the CBD post2020 target for
protected areas which evolved as the meetings progressed. 

 

So what did I miss? Break-out groups were of course not possible to join,
and I did miss the social side (catching up with old friends and making new
ones) and networking.  I would not want to do it for every meeting. 

 

But in some ways I achieved as much as I did by participating in person last
year in another meeting on protected areas, held in a mountainous part of
Italy.   In line with my aim not to fly when overland transport is
available, I used trains and buses.  I spent 2 days and 3 nights (c. 60 hrs)
at the meeting location, and over 3.5 days and 2 nights (some 70 hrs)
travelling.  Admittedly, there were some unusual aspects to the trip, which
coincided on my way back with temperatures of 40oC in France and a major
disruption to train services due to an accident But it gave me some real
insight of what travelling will be like once the effects of climate change
fully take hold.  International conservation meetings should definitely no
longer be held in remote locations, however beautiful the surroundings,
unless absolutely essential. 

 

As Mark says, we need to reduce travelling, keep flights to a minimum/those
that are essential and unavoidable, and use the rapidly developing
technology more effectively to keep in touch with each other.

 

Sue Wells

 

Sue Wells

95 Burnside

Cambridge CB1 3PA

Mob: 07905 715552

e-mail:  <mailto:suewells1212 at gmail.com> suewells1212 at gmail.com