His Excellency the Lieutenant-Governor of the Bailiwick of Guernsey, Lieutenant General Richard Cripwell, opened the 2022 Inter-Island Environment Meeting (IIEM) in Alderney on Thursday (October 13th). With more than sixty delegates attending in person and a further thirty or more joining remotely this was one of the busiest meetings since the IIEM was founded at the turn of the new millennium. His Excellency expressed his heartfelt appreciation to the speakers, talked about the challenges that we collectively face and noted how important inter island working was for the future of our islands.

The meeting was hosted by the States of Alderney and the Alderney Wildlife Trust, thanks to the support of KPMG in the Crown Dependencies and Charles Asprey and highlighted the importance of working together to help ensure our environment’s resilience for the future. The organisers expressed their pleasure not only in the productive nature of the meeting but also at the very positive impact that such a significant event will have had on Alderney’s economy.

Presentations covered topics ranging from new discoveries about the elusive Common Eel to ground-breaking work on recovering degraded agricultural land to make it not only thrive for wildlife but also help reduce impacts of over-nitrification. The States of Jersey presented on the establishment of a pan Channel Island tracking network for large fish species and dolphins which now spans the whole of the Channel Islands.

The meeting also received reports on the negative impacts of newly arrived invasive species and discussed work underway to help ensure better biosecurity. The scale of threats from species such as Asian Hornets was considered, as was the role of horizon scanning to better prepare response to threats, at both an island and pan island level.

Delegates also learned of the efforts to track avian influenza through the large seabird populations in Alderney, where the latest data suggests the loss of adult gannets killed by the disease may be as high as 3,000 to 5,500 birds and further 2,000+ juveniles. Jonathan de Pasquallie from KPMG in the Crown Dependencies talked about the growing obligations on ‘big business’ to respond to the global and local loss of biodiversity, and to climate change. This led to a workshop discussing the potential impact of business involvement in the future of large-scale environmental efforts within the islands

Underlying most speakers’ presentations and the subsequent workshops was a focus on the need for small islands, connected by sea and culture, to work collaboratively. This led to the representatives of 25 government and non-governmental bodies agreeing to support a move ‘to create a public – private – charitable environmental coalition across the Channel Islands, IoM and other partner islands. This coalition should, it is hoped, coordinate and co-fund environmental research, conservation and restoration projects which span multiple islands’.

At the conclusion of the meeting the delegates received an invitation to attend IIEM2023 in Sark. This will be the second time that IIEM has been hosted in this beautiful island and the announcement was received with great anticipation.