JANET Videoconferencing helps to save the planet

Professor Paul van Gardingen is the UNESCO Chair in International Development and the Director of Ecosystem Services for Poverty Alleviation (ESPA) Programme
His work on forests, biodiversity and emerging global challenges is designed to provide world-class research that will improve the lives of the poor. Science alone cannot solve the world’s problems and he believes that real progress can be made through relationships: if you allow people to interact more frequently, then progress can be made. If you only take one message from his work it is that people matter immensely. Conservation needs to benefit people (and society) and people need to be considered to be part of the solution providing sustainable ecosystem services.
With researchers and stakeholders distributed at different locations around the world and many of the former sited in the developing world, one of his challenges is to be able to interact with his teams on a regular basis. Videoconferencing is a ubiquitous technology that has allowed greater interaction and has revolutionised the way that his teams work - instead of trying to arrange one and a half day meeting slots with people, with videoconferencing you’ve only got to arrange a time slot for one and a half hours. Time is a valuable resource and he sees that as a more important consideration that the monetary cost.
Stakeholder participation is extremely important to Professor van Gardingen’s work and it is happening in a way that has not previously been seen - now these participants can be linked into a secure videoconference environment from their own desktops. Web streaming and recording can be accessed quickly too.
He has high praise for JANET Videoconferencing support without which he could not say to his team: is travel (and air travel in particular) absolutely necessary or could you have a virtual meeting/workshop instead?  Air travel is definitely seen as a last resort option. As an example of that, he was invited to attend a meeting of the UN environment at Nairobi. Normally, this would take a whole week spread between travelling and attending the meeting. Instead, he held a videoconference with them and on that same day he had 3 other meetings – 4 videoconference meetings in one day versus the one meeting that would have taken a week.
JANET Videoconferencing is a revelation and is so flexible that there’s very little extra he would want it to do. He finds that the new management tool is particularly useful - now it is much easier to control a video conference on the fly.