Examination of Witnesses (Questions 30-39)
MR DOMINIC
WHITE, MR
TOBY QUANTRILL
AND MS
SALLY NICHOLSON
23 MARCH 2006
Q30 Chairman: Good morning
and welcome. I wonder if I could start by asking you, as an environmental
organisation, if you could give us a quick summary of your interest
and concerns about development issues.
Mr Quantrill: Andrew
has done quite a good job for us in answering that to some extent.
We do not recognise the stand-off that you mentioned with respect
to the Up in Smoke report. We do not feel that the distinction
between environment and development in international terms is
a true one. Like Christian Aid we also think it is a false dichotomy.
The way we like to look at it is in terms of a set of global challenges
that we are facing. We believe that there are a number of global
challenges out there and climate change is obviously one of them,
but there are others such as governance issues, conflict and security
issues and so on. Many of these global challenges have an environmental
aspect to them, eg poverty, as has been very well articulated
by Andrew. From a WWF perspective, we feel that in terms of natural
resource management, ecosystems health and so on in the areas
in which we have expertise, we can bring that expertise to bear
on these much bigger challenges, but there does need to be a coherent
and co-ordinated approach to tackling these challenges. We need
to work in partnership with development agencies, with governments
and so on in a way that allows us to find common ground, to negotiate
where there is dialogue needed, to find a compromise if necessary
and to move forward on some of these issues which are urgent.
Q31 Chairman: I hear what
you say. Obviously the NGOs are working on Make Poverty History,
but the consistent message that came out to the public was just
about poverty reduction, I cannot recall any significant message
about the environment creeping into that and that has perhaps
spawned Stop Climate Chaos to try and replicate that for the environment.
That does suggest to me that combating poverty is still always
going to be a more emotive pull on people. Do you share that view?
Mr Quantrill: I guess with large
campaigns such as Make Poverty History you are looking for a few
simple messages, but I do not believe that the agencies involved
in that would have excluded environment from their thinking on
poverty just that they needed very specific areas they could campaign
on. Certainly Stop Climate Chaos is now showing that there is
a large coalition building around climate change. There are other
such coalitions in existence, for instance the Corporate Responsibility
(CORE) Coalition which involves both environmental and development-type
agencies, there is the Trade Justice Movement and there are very
strong coalitions building up around management of freshwater
resources. I would also draw attention to the fact that in terms
of the White Paper consultation that is going on at the moment,
the Development and Environment Group of BOND (the British Overseas
NGOs for Development) has brought together a single input to that
consultation. We have got an input that will be going in very
soon, I can give you copies if you are interested[1],
to which we have 36 signatories, covering both environmental and
development agencies, including people like Oxfam, NEF, ourselves,
RSPB and a whole range of others. We are finding consensus, which
is not to say there is not dialogue required, but on key issues
we would see that there is consensus.
Ms Nicholson: Last
year the World Summit on the Millennium Declaration happened where
clearly the environment and development were brought together
very strongly. A sustainable environment was a large part of the
whole development chapter and the UK Government were there with
other donors and many other countries from around the world bringing
together the importance of delivering on the Millennium Development
Goals holistically. You cannot achieve poverty reduction without
the other aspects which include environmental sustainability.
Q32 Chairman: You are
an environmental organisation that receives funding from DFID.
Could you explain how that came about and what it is for?
Mr White: WWF has been working
with DFID when it was the Overseas Development Administration,
since 1986 and was a recipient of its Joint Funding Scheme. It
was in 2000 when DFID developed the Partnership Programme Agreements
which, as Andrew explained, is very much based around common strategic
aims and objectives where DFID identified the role of civil society
in environmental management for the purposes of development and
poverty reduction. Objectives shared by DFID and the WWF form
the basis of that strategic partnership.
Q33 Chairman: Are you
involved because of DFID's commitment to the environment or simply
because they have not got the capacity? As we have already heard,
they have 18 environmental staff out of nearly 3,000. Are you
being brought on to fill a gap?
Mr White: I hope it is not seen
like that. This is not a service delivery agreement where we have
to deliver certain outcomes that DFID are not able to do. It is
more established around working through civil society as a strategic
development mechanism in terms of holding governments to account
in-country and, of course, for the poorest who depend on the environment
directly the organisation of civil society to advocate their needs
in terms of environmental management that underpins their development
prospects is critical. So the support of WWF as a civil society
organisation in developing countries and empowering and working
with local civil society groups is what underpins the principle
in the Partnership Programme Agreements that DFID has with the
UK civil society organisations. I do not see it as a stopgap for
DFID or an excuse for DFID in that sense.
Q34 Chairman: Presumably
you would like to see them employing a lot more environmental
staff.
Mr White: I think it is imperative
and I do not think they can ignore that fact. We are still hoping
that they fulfil their commitment to replace core environmental
capacity (Head of Profession Environment). If, as we anticipate,
the budget for DFID increases dramatically in the near future,
which is expected, then we would have serious concerns that they
would be able to deliver the development that is required in terms
of sustainability without some more environmental expertise to
underpin some of their core policies and programming.
Q35 Chairman: How closely
do you think environment and development NGOs are now working
together? It seems to me, even from the evidence from Christian
Aid, that there now seems to be far more of a crossover even internally
on these things. Is that how you see it?
Mr Quantrill: That is definitely
how we would perceive it. We are starting to articulate our thinking
in terms of global challenges rather than in terms of aid development
as an ordinary environment issue. I have mentioned the fact that
we are able to work together on the submission to DFID's White
Paper process. That is not to say there are not areas where further
dialogue is needed. Climate change is driving that, but climate
change is not the entirety of that debate. Climate change exacerbates
existing issues. Let us take water resource allocation and the
management of resources especially trans-boundary, that is going
to become a more and more critical issue. It already is and it
will continue to be so. If climate change patterns evolve then
it is more and more likely that that will become a source of potential
conflict and so there needs to be increasing investment in managing
that. The governance of natural resources can actually be quite
a strong force, both economically an improvement and for reducing
conflict.
Q36 Chairman: To what
extent do you think that this message is beginning to resonate
with your members having to start off with all of the UK population
because in the past development has always been about something
overseas, usually the Overseas Development Agency and that sort
of thing? Are you telling your members that we have to take tough
measures here to do with a global problem?
Mr Quantrill: Yes, WWF is stepping
up its work on sustainable consumption production processes in
the UK as well as internationally, so we are taking that message
to our members and beyond to the public more and more strongly.
It is evident in the work that we do, in the messages that we
put out. There is a lot more work to be done, but we are certainly
already working hard on that. We perceive there are two sides
to a development process, there is the international side, what
happens out there, but development starts at home and you have
to deal with consumption issues if you are going to deal with
poverty issues. We are one of the agencies that are working on
both sides of that equation.
Q37 David Howarth: Can
we ask you some questions about your view of DFID, especially
its policy implementation. You said that DFID does a lot of good
studies and we have a list of about nine of them to about February
of this year, and a lot of good recommendations come out but not
very much seems to happen. Can you give us some examples of that
sort of recommendation and perhaps say why you think the policy
words did not become real actions?
Mr White: There are a number of
examples and we have always been very complimentary of DFID's
ability to produce excellent analysis of the issues, debate and
discussion around environmental matters. One of the most significant
reports that it recently put forward was Linking Poverty Reduction
and Environmental Management, a multi-agency paper with UNDP,
World Bank and the European Commission, for example. There is
nothing at fault in this document in terms of the understanding
of the discourse on the environment and its imperative for development,
but what we do not see is the follow-up in terms of action that
carries that forward. Similarly with an evaluation that DFID had
in 2000 (Environment: Mainstreamed or Sidelined), looking at whether
they had mainstreamed environment within DFID, there were a whole
series of recommendations. We agree with all of these, but again
they have not really been acted upon. Their environmental screening
guide has been downplayed and perhaps diluted in terms of how
well that is utilised within DFID recently, as well as a whole
range of excellent papers on climate change and adaptation, poverty
and the environment, biodiversity et cetera. All of that
we absolutely commend DFID for producing and articulating. I think
the answer to why, therefore, we do not see the follow-up is somewhat
more complex, and it comes back to perhaps some fundamental failings
in corporate governance in DFID in terms of the fact that there
is no senior director within DFID responsible for the environment.
You see excellent support for a number of these issues coming
from the ministerial team, but not necessarily carried through
the department wholesale. We need some senior level responsibility
for answering and responding to environmental concerns, we need
some performance measures in place that allow DFID and incentivise
DFID to keep environment in mind and respond to monitoring and
performance against those measures; so representation in PSA or
service delivery agreements would be welcomed in terms of having
a reference point to check DFID on. Environment is a cross-cutting
issue, it is incredibly complex because you are dealing with extremely
complex systems and you cannot measure progress on environment
as tidily as you can measure maternal mortality or the number
of inoculations or some other health or social data which is more
readily available. That is not an excuse, however, to not tackle
some fundamental issues around environmental management. We feel
that without this corporate acknowledgement in terms of senior
management representation, performance measures and therefore
the impetus that that would generate to bring in environmental
capacity that is available to all country offices as well as the
policy division and regional divisions—within DFID UK is
critical. It is not acceptable that Latin America, West Asia,
South Africa, the Middle East have no dedicated environment advisory
capacity, and we really have to ask DFID quite hard, which we
do, how can you actually continue with the sustainable development
pathways that you are pursuing without actually having some expertise
that might be able to highlight the opportunities as well as,
obviously, some of the risks of certain development interventions
which they are proposing.
Q38 David Howarth: Can
we try and tease out some of those different candidates for causing
what is going on? We have also noticed the fact that the Secretary
of State makes excellent speeches, but not much happens even as
a consequence of those. Presumably, the point about the organisation
of the department has been put to the Secretary of State, so I
was wondering what your impression is about whether this is a
problem of political will or whether it is a problem of resources,
that more expertise is needed that cannot be found in existing
budgets?
Mr White: You are quite right,
ministers have made excellent speeches on the linkages between
environment and development and we applaud that. Probably what
we would see, I think, is that within the department's structures
if there are priorities that DFID have to make when reducing the
staff cadre they are defaulting to a prioritisation which does
not bring environment into that mix. Without senior lever representation
and staff responsible for that at the high level, there is no
one to actually uphold the necessity to keep the environment capacity
within the DFID policies, programmes and staff.
Ms Nicholson: If I can add to
that, they did, a couple of years ago, announce that they would
be appointing a chief environmental adviser and made a quite fanfare
about it in terms of (I quote) "we recognise how important
environment is to our work, to continuing development of poverty
eradication", and within six months that post had disappeared.
It seems to be very strange, as if they had actually done it,
within six months they had actually measured environmental sustainability.
It seems to me that there are very mixed messages, both to the
staff within DFID, I would have thought, as well as to recipient
countries and as well as to other agencies with whom they work.
Q39 David Howarth: Is
there a problem about cascading down the concept of sustainable
development as containing both poverty and environmental aspects?
What do you think the Secretary of State and the department mean
by sustainable development and is there in fact a gap between
the two?
Mr White: The Secretary of State
in a number of his recent speeches leading the White Paper consultation
has constantly underlined and underscored the link between the
two and that you cannot pursue macro-economic growth strategies
and pick up environmental issues later, it is not a win-win situation.
I have every confidence that the Secretary of State actually understands
that and is convinced about the necessity for sustainable development
that includes that type of analysis. I would not question necessarily
that the Department does not agree with him, it comes back to
this more fundamental issue, almost cultural issue, and when you
are pursuing increasingly direct budget support strategies which
tend to follow and support the general growth agenda, often in
countries the ministries responsible for environmental issues
and management are not strong ministries and they are not really
having a strong voice at the table of their government and therefore
are not picked up in bilateral development discussions in the
same way. Therefore, without that voice coming through from national
government, representing environmental interests and concerns
in development, the bilateral agencies do not necessarily respond
to that either. What we would like to see is approaches from bilateral
agencies, and DFID particularly, which start addressing that disparity
and strengthening the ministries in government which have these
cross-cutting agendas in particular, and strengthening them so
that they can start addressing the disparity between investment
for environmental aspects of growth as well.
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