Mai on Strengthening Ties between Agencies, Avoiding Duplication of Effort

Chief Environmental Officer, Anthony Mai, says that strengthening the department’s partnerships is also a priority. He says these relationships –including with other government agencies, N.G.O.’s, and the Chamber of Commerce—are important in realizing the department’s legal mandate. And, while he concedes that, at least on the surface, it appears the relationship between the Department of the Environment and the N.G.O.s has a contentious history, Mai hopes that greater communication can be achieved.

Anthony Mai

Anthony Mai, Chief Environmental Officer, Department of the Environment

“On the topic of collaboration and cooperation, this is one of the things that immediately I want to strengthen. We have meetings with senior managements within the Department. We will meet with all the key government agencies and senior management within government agencies, and then we will extend that to the terrestrial N.G.O. groups, the marine N.G.O. groups, including some the associations, for example the Chamber of Commerce, academia etc. So, we want to meet with all of these senior people to understand what the issues are and how they could assist us to address national environmental issues. We will never address our national environmental issues if we are pulling and tugging at one another. The Department of the Environment has to be that helping hand to push, for example, the Forest Department to ensure there is a robust reforestation program in place. And so, these are the things we need to do. I need to lift up the Forest Department, and the Forest Department also needs to lift up the D.O.E. and then we continue with that along the way until we are all on the same page. I do want to highlight that the N.G.O. community will play a very critical role in addressing nationally our environmental issues. I have seen throughout the years where some of the N.G.O. has similar objectives to what the D.O.E. has, in fact, we almost have similar work plans, at the end of the day. So, the action now is bridging that, how do we come around the table and say listen, since you are doing this the Department of the Environment does not have to do that, maybe I could spend my attention on doing something else. Also, as it relates to enforcement and monitoring, that is a section of the department that needs to improve. We don’t have human capacity to do that effectively. We are doing it to a certain degree but we could do much more. So we need to lean on our partners for them to assist us in delivering our legal mandate.”