County Hall’s role in the Isle of Wight’s United Nations Biosphere came under scrutiny last week (Thursday), with questions asked over costs to Island taxpayers.
At the most recent Environment and Community Protection Committee (ECPC), the Conservatives’ Sandown South representative Ian Ward questioned the need for a steering committee governing the UNESCO designated area, and whether the council was contributing financially to it.
A Biosphere Reserve is an area recognised for its ‘combination of ecological and cultural diversity and its desire to see these qualities used to support a sustainable and resilient way of life’, according to the Isle of Wight Biosphere’s website.
Around 3/4 of the Island is ‘specially designated for wildlife and landscape with rewilding zones, wetland nature reserves, a white-tailed sea eagle reintroduction programme and seagrass restoration projects’, it says.
Cllr Ward said:
“The Biosphere is an award – why have we got a steering committee? What are they doing with it? Is it a council committee and do we contribute financially to it, even if it’s only staff time?”
Natasha Dix, Isle of Wight Council’s service director for waste, environment and planning, responded:
“The Biosphere award was provided to the Isle of Wight and its surrounding waters because of the way we already work as people, as a culture, as an economy with a sustainable development community.
Article continues below this advertisement “The Biosphere award… is a badge of honour, and it gives us a huge amount of respect in terms of tourism and also gives us opportunities to promote the Island.
“The Biosphere steering committee is not the council’s bit – it is the bit that we have helped set up, that sits as an independent group who act autonomously and are self-governing.
“They have a member from the Isle of Wight Council who attends that is non-executive, so not decision-making, and they also have one day a week of staff time to help administer setting that group up and help make sure that we are flowing information back and forth between the (participating) organisations and working for that.”
Green councillor for Chale, Niton and Shorwell Claire Critchison said:
“I think it’d be quite remiss of the Isle of Wight Council not to be the number one champions of our natural landscape that we’ve got here… it is one of our crown jewels.”
Tourism. Lol
Reduce ferry fares, source up Sandown, stop charging
50p to use toilets and abolish the £2 after 6pm parking
charge.
I suppose we could all park our vehicles on the pavement
outside the old tourist information centre opposite
Sandown pier.
it beats paying to park and IW Council Civil
Enforcement officers let motorists get away with
evading parking charges.
The island has a 2 tier parking charge system!
I often wonder where are council tax goes on things like that i just think it’s another quango
Council employees have lucrative pensions,
1 read 25% of our council tax goes to their pensions.
Time to reduce their workforce, the country cannot
afford them.
We are paying for them, enough is enough!
Communism never went away it became Environmentslism. Your money but someone else decides how it’s spent and you should think. Won’t anyone think of the Elk!
So, we, the Island, have been awarded biosphere status. Did we tell them that we are building houses on green field sites, pumping sewage out into our surrounding waters and clogging up our roads with cars.
There are too many people.
Not to mention majority of island vehicles are dirty diesels and
petrol vehicles.
On the mainland many councils have addressed the issue
by increasing parking charges for diesel vehicles
“The island have done nothing”
The only thing green about the island is the colour of the
grass.
Blackpool have more chance of winning the premiership than
Isle of Wight reaching Net Zero
Lol