APPENDIX 5
Memorandum submitted by UK Overseas Territories
Conservation Forum
1. The UK Overseas Territories Conservation
Forum (UKOTCF) exists to promote the coordinated conservation
of the diverse and increasingly threatened plant and animal species
and natural habitats of the UK Territories Overseas. It aims to
do this by providing assistance in the form of expertise, information
and liaison between non-governmental organisations and governments,
both in the UK and in the Territories themselves.
2. DFID's approach to sustainable development
tends to overlook HMG's commitment to UK Overseas Territories
(UKOTs), which appear mainly as footnotes in the document. This
is inappropriate, primarily because the nature of UK's commitment
here is of a different nature to DFID's role in the rest of the
developing world. The UKOTs are British territory and their citizens
UK citizens. UK is jointly responsible with local government for
international commitments in the UKOTs, eg under multilateral
environmental agreements, for biodiversity conservation and sustainable
development in the UKOTs. Elsewhere in the developing would, UK
is acting as a good citizen of the world via DFID's efforts. However,
DFID is also the principal budget holder for UK's spend on that
part of its own territory in the UKOTs.
3. Most of UK's globally important biodiversity
resides in UKOTs. This underpins sustainable development, eg through
fisheries and appropriate tourism. Potentially, investment in
these would provide not only benefits to the UKOTs but good examples
for elsewhere in the world. However, most initiatives at present
depend on the efforts of NGOs in the UKOTs and supporting NGOs
in UK. HMG's own figures (noted in UK Overseas Territories Conservation
Forum's Forum News 27 (August 2005), available on www.ukotcf.org)
show that HMG spends at least £460 million pa on biodiversity
conservation in UK and at least £40 million pa on international
conservation but only about £1 million pa on UKOT conservation,
divided between all 16 UKOTs. When one takes into account that
conservative estimates indicate that the UKOTs are at least 10
times more important in global biodiversity terms than Great Britain
and Northern Ireland, HMG values its responsibilities to global
biodiversity in GB&NI about 5,000 times more than it values
its responsibilities to global biodiversity in its Overseas Territories.
As a result of this neglect, species are still going globally
extinct on UK territory, one important plant (the St Helena Olive)
going globally extinct two years ago and several others at severe
risk. Also, because of lack of funding, no fisheries enforcement
is present to deter illegal fishing by foreign vessels in the
seas around Ascension Island, St Helena and Tristan da Cunha—allowing
both severe depletion of the biodiversity and the loss of a potentially
sustainable industry.
4. The system is exacerbated in that the
tiny human populations of UKOTs do not allow an adequate local
financial base for the necessary work, especially at start-up
phase—despite high local commitment in many cases. Furthermore,
UKOTs are not generally eligible for international environmental
funding. This is because they are UK territory and UK is not a
developing country. International funding bodies assume (erroneously)
that UK government meets its responsibilities in this area.
5. Table 1 in DFID's Sustainable Development
Plan mentions the joint FCO-DFID Overseas Territories Environment
Programme (OTEP) as "the main vehicle for delivery"
of the commitment to support environmental projects in UKOTs.
This is a successful programme, built on FCO predecessors and
depending heavily on voluntary input from NGOs. However, this
is a small programme (less than £1 million pa) and individual
projects are limited to £50k per year, most being much smaller.
Such tiny projects are impeded by an excessive bureaucratic demand
for quarterly reports, when annual ones would be more appropriate
to the scale of funding. The programme is also hampered by its
lack of continuity, with DFID's contribution not committed beyond
March 2007 and FCO's beyond March 2008—serious constraints
when dealing with ecological issues with strong seasonal components.
Once these difficulties are overcome, this programme is important
for small projects and start-up or exploratory work. However,
there is no source of funding for major projects in biodiversity
conservation and linked sustainable development. Therefore, issues
of an importance which would, had they arisen in GB&NI, would
be guaranteed resourcing to meet UK's commitments under the Millennium
Development Goals and/or the Convention on Biological Diversity
are simply not funded and do not proceed in UKOTs, so that UK
will continue to fail its international commitments in these areas.
UK's and HMG's credibility in world sustainable development is
severely undermined by its failure to act on these matters in
those developing parts of UK which are its own responsibility.
March 2006
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