Speeches by Gardiner.

“Absolutely right.”

“Let me ask this question to get us a bit more specific. It is my final question, I promise. With the Indian overseas territories marine biome, how confident or how concerned is the scientific community that the level of enforcement under Mauritian sovereignty will be able to combat the pressures of illegal fishing in t…”

“If we turn to the Indian overseas territories and the Chagos biome—the marine biome—we know that there will be pressure on fisheries in that area, because the enforcement that we have already has shown that there is encroachment by fishing.”

“Why has the MMO not yet proceeded to stage 3 and 4?”

“If we are thinking about our management of the seabed today, how likely is it, because of that lack of good quality data, that we could be facilitating damage to the ecosystem because we do not have the data to demonstrate it?”

“There is a lack of good quality data.”

“What we have not signed up for is what protection means. We signed up to protecting 30%, but as we heard from the earlier panel, what that means in practice is not clear. It is not clear exactly what level of protection is being put in place. I want to talk to you about baselines. We have all heard the analogy about cl…”

“You talked about the Crown Estate, and they are trying to balance these very complex choices. On the one side, there are clear economic metrics, and on the other side, you were telling us that there are very uncertain biological metrics, but they have huge monetary implications. It is very difficult to quantify them. I…”

“I loved that last analogy that you used about farming and soil structure, and what you said about the whole sedimentary ecosystem. Has any work been done on trying to calculate the natural capital value of the sedimentary system that you were talking about? In your earlier remarks, you said it was about a metre where a…”

“I think our species has done more damage to the rest of nature than any other species that has ever lived, and we are in danger. If you look at the world wildlife curve, 69% of species populations have been depleted in the last 50 years. I do not think that the preservation of us should be the top of our list. We prese…”

“You both are.”

“The MMO, the Marine Management Organisation, was supposed to be completing stages 3 and 4 of the review on destructive activities, namely bottom trawling and dredging, as we were talking about. That was supposed to come in when? When should it have been done by?”

“A simplified and holistic view?”

“Yes, but there has been a marked improvement in a period as small as five years, has there not?”

“I think there are some great recommendations for us there.”

“Who should be doing it, and what recommendation should this Committee make to Government?”

“Thank you. I think the Dasgupta review sets out very clearly our dependence, and how we should be regarding natural capital as national infrastructure, in that sense. I want to press you on the fact that you seem to be saying that we have all the ingredients and we know what the recipe is, but somehow we are not gettin…”

“You are not talking about the dredging in the north-east that saw the die-off there—or that did not see the die-off there?”

“One of my colleagues will be asking a question about that.”

“We have heard that we have the best marine science in the world, so I am sure the evidence base is out there. Maybe we just need to gather it together a bit quicker. We have touched on regulation and enforcement, the implementation and the management regimes. I think you have said that currently they are perhaps less t…”