JERSEY’S first environmental adviser, a man whose career seemed to epitomise the struggle between sustaining the Island’s prosperity and preserving its precious environment, has died in England at the age of 82.
Dr Mike Romeril, who worked for the States between 1978 and 2003, had retired to the Dorset village of Marnhull but continued to follow developments in Jersey, returning to take part in the National Trust for Jersey’s A Line in the Sand protest in St Ouen’s Bay and regularly revisiting the Island.
For the 2009 event, he stood with others of like-mind to draw attention to the importance of Jersey’s coastline and the pressures which it had been placed under by development. By happy choice of beach, he was only yards from the Les Mielles nature reserve – previously land used to dump household waste – the development of which he oversaw following his appointment as conservation officer. Later Kempt Tower became the Island’s west-coast environmental interpretation centre and, in 1995, the timber-built Frances Le Sueur Centre opened its doors as the Les Mielles ranger and education hub. Years later, delighting in progress elsewhere in the Island, he would refer to the achievements in St Ouen as “Jersey’s mini national park”.
Dr Romeril became States environmental adviser in 1995, a post he held until retirement, reporting directly to the influential Policy and Resources Committee. A year later, the States unanimously approved an environmental charter for Jersey, responding to the Rio de Janeiro Earth Summit four years previously, and he later authored a sustainable development strategy which sought to negotiate the perilous balance between economic success and development.
That report, written at the start of the new Millennium, warned of the consequences of the population rising above 89,000. Dr Romeril wrote: “There is a strong feeling that many of the characteristics that make Jersey unique are being constantly eroded at an increasingly faster rate as a direct and indirect consequence of population growth…Our standard of life may be rising but it is doing so at the cost of our quality of life… The relationship between population, infrastructure development, service provision and increased pressure on the Island’s environment has been well recognised over very many years and surfaced with great regularity in virtually all the deliberative processes feeding into this strategy.”
Following his retirement, Dr Romeril was to express sadness at the impact of the rising population on the character of the Island, and frustration at what he saw as some politicians’ disregard for previous States environmental policy decisions. He advocated briefings for new Members on these commitments.
“During my later years as environmental adviser, the States signed up to several international directives requiring serious commitment to environmental objectives, with some, such as the RAMSAR convention, particularly focused on coastal issues. As I understand such States decisions, they are binding on future generations of politicians unless there is a vote to change the original decision. Thus they are as relevant today as when first agreed in the States Chamber. It is why the public expects its politicians to honour these commitments,” he later told the JEP.
Dr Romeril was born in 1941 and educated at First Tower primary school and Hautlieu. He took his BSc degree at Nottingham University, going on to secure a doctorate in biochemistry in 1966. Before returning to the Island, he worked for the UK’s Ministry of Fisheries, the Central Electricity Generating Board – where he undertook research into pollution – and was head of environmental studies at the Hampshire Residential Study Centre.
Environmentalist Mike Stentiford paid tribute to Dr Romeril, with whom he worked first as a volunteer and then a colleague: “It is difficult to quantify the public enjoyment gained today by those benefiting from the grasslands, scrub and footpaths so freely available throughout much of St Ouen’s Bay.
“The majority of what we passively see and gain comfort from today is due to the visionary efforts of Dr Michael Romeril all those years ago.
“He was, without doubt, a man with Jersey and its environment firmly in his DNA and who has undoubtedly left a lasting legacy,” he said.
Judith Querée, widow of former Planning and Environment Committee president Senator Nigel Querée, said her husband had huge respect for Dr Romeril. “He always said he was extremely under-appreciated by States Members.
“A lot of those environmental issues he predicted have come to pass but, sadly, his advice was very often ignored,” she said.
