Any delusions that this trip might be a loosely disguised junket were categorically dismissed today, as I spent near-on five hours reading through a single application for development. Field research is always a steep learning curve in the early days in particular and today is no different...
In the interests of professionalism I dressed as a typical bureaucrat today, and spent the day fussing in a meeting room just off the foyer to council offices. In a collared shirt and dress trousers I fitted in comfortably with the swarm of local government bods buzzing around the premises. This turned to be somewhat negative as the odd aggrieved member of the public zeroed in on me. It came to pass that them not having recieved their CCC (building completion certificate) even after the plumber made a 'special trip' to fix the 'pipe' was entirely my fault. Today I learned that if you're a research student, dress like one and plead ignorance at any and all opportunity....
I've realised that animals and humans aren't all that different...we all function and behave better when there's a reward at the end. The way my fieldwork is structured means I plow through metric tons of documents, photocopy the slivers of paper that I actually need from the mountain and then skip off into the Far North spring to find/see the actual site where it happened (in like, real life!). Am glad it's structured that way...I fear if it were the reverse it just wouldn't work. The exit from the meeting room full of teetering piles of consent documentation would be one-way and the PhD would be further away in the end than in the beginning...
The range of developments is vast....the extent to which their designers are congnizant of environmental values is equally varied...but they all have one thing in common....they are all 'ecologically sensitive'. Well, at least so the application says. A miniscule few probably really qualify for the title, but the term is so calmly thrown around. It makes me think that a statutory definition of the term is probably necessary, so that those who strip every slope of the hundred acre lot of everything down to clay, dont claim the same as those who carefully set aside significant habitat and modify the rest with appropriate kid gloves...
But helter skelter, they seem to troop all over this region...leaving swathes of coastal forest chipped up in their wake, all claiming to be the next green Trump. The only thing green in most cases is the logo of the cheesily-named and likely quite ephemeral company in charge of the whole shooting match. However, all is not lost...a few green stalwarts do exist Im pleased to note, and once I wriggle out of the file room tomorrow I get to put foot to pasture and see them for myself....
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