Examination of Witnesses (Questions 67-79)
DR MARK
AVERY AND
MS JOANNA
PHILLIPS
30 MARCH 2006
Q67 Chairman: I would like to welcome
you both here this morning. We are very grateful that you could
make it. Can I ask you, to start off with—to give us some
background as to why you, what seems to me to be basically a sort
of UK-focused organisation, are getting so involved in development
issues now; why does that really fall within your remit?
Dr Avery: I am very happy to do
that. The RSPB spends about 10% of our money on conservation work
outside the UK, so that is about £6 million a year. We do
that because there are 10,000 species of birds in the world and
1,000 of them are threatened with global extinction; most of them
occur outside of the UK. The cause of those potential extinctions,
which apply obviously to wildlife across the board, not just birds,
is basically the way we are living on this planet, the way that
our species lives unsustainably. There are six billion people
on the planet; we use about 55% of the renewable water resources
of the planet each year, humans consume about 40% of all the photosynthetic
activity of the planet. The population is going to increase to
nine billion by the end of this century and that is what causes
problems for the environment, which has knock-on effects for people
but causes the high level of extinction that we are experiencing
at the moment. If all six billion of us lived with the same resource
use as Americans, we would need three planets to support ourselves
already, so the future does not look that great, unless we can
find a way to reduce consumption in the so-called developed world
and help poorer parts of the world reduce poverty, but reduce
poverty in ways which lead to more sustainable existence on this
planet. Clearly, DFID's role in being a UK department which helps
to reduce poverty across the world is an important way that the
UK influences that whole agenda and so we engage actively with
DFID. It is not the government department with which we have most
to do, because, as you say, most of our work is within the UK,
but we have regular meetings with ministers, with officials, we
respond to consultations and we attempt to influence what DFID
is doing on the world stage.
Q68 Chairman: Is that mainly in environmental
areas, or development; is it across the board?
Dr Avery: I suppose you would
say it is mainly in environmental areas, but we would see the
environment and development as being absolutely inextricably linked,
or they should be. I suppose one of our worries about DFID is
whether those linkages are made within DFID strongly enough.
Q69 Ms Barlow: You have highlighted the
World Summit for Sustainable Development and you have said it
is the focus for a great deal of work from DFID. Could the same
be said of yourselves? Was the WSSD the catalyst which was needed
by many to link environment and development, not just here but
internationally?
Dr Avery: We attended the World
Summit; we sent a few staff there. I think World Summit was a
step forward and certainly I think it helped the world to address
environment issues and development issues together. I think DFID
has realised that; although I suppose our worry is we are not
totally sure whether DFID has completely got that message. Our
concern about DFID would be not about what it says, because, many
of the things that DFID says, the current Secretary of State says
all the right things, I think, about the environment and sustainable
development and I think he has a higher environmental profile
than some of his predecessors, so it is not what DFID says at
a high level, it is what DFID does. We would say as well that
the sustainable development team within DFID is a pretty strong
team, but we would have some doubts about whether those staff
have enough clout to make sure that the messages which came out
of the World Summit are fully integrated into everything that
DFID does. I think some environmental staff within DFID, and there
are fewer of them now than there used to be, would feel that they
are fighting a bit of an uphill battle to get some of the linkages
between the environment and development made within DFID. One
of the big things which did come out of the World Summit was the
fact that economic growth alone cannot be the answer, cannot be
a sustainable answer to the world's problems. We would be concerned
that DFID's management board seems to be dominated pretty much
by economists with a background in the IMF and the World Bank.
That, I think, is valuable experience but it is difficult for
us to see where the environmental champions are within the management
board of DFID and that may have given rise to what we see as an
unfortunate emphasis on GDP, increasing GDP as a way of reducing
poverty rather than a wholly rounded, sustainable development
approach. The Millennium Summit did come up with Millennium Development
Goals and the environment is one of those goals; ensuring environmental
sustainability is Millennium Development Goal number seven, so
it is in there but whether it is tied absolutely into all the
others in the way that it should be we are not entirely sure.
I think the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment summarised this quite
well, and I will quote; the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment said:
"The long-term success in meeting all of the Millennium Development
Goals depends on environmental sustainability. Without it the
gains will be transitory and inequitable" and we very much
believe that. Our worry is that it is true but the important phrase
there is "long-term." Long-term success in reducing
world poverty, increasing the standards of living of people in
poorer parts of the world, does depend on linking the environment
to poverty alleviation in the long term, but the temptation is
always to ignore the environment and longer-term issues in the
short term, and we are a bit worried that DFID has lost focus
on that real link between a good environment and alleviating poverty.
Q70 Chairman: You mentioned the Summit's
production of these eight Millennium Development Goals; do you
think environmental sustainability, which is number seven on that
list, is prominent enough? Perhaps I can ask a little supplementary
to that, whether you think that what we understand by `environmental
sustainability' is adequately defined by the UK Government?
Dr Avery: Is it prominent enough,
well, it is there, it is in the list; it is up to individual governments
to make sure that they give it the prominence it deserves. Agreeing
with the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment, we would say that producing
a healthy environment is essential to producing a healthy future
for people and that meeting the other Millennium Development Goals
has to be based, long term, on environmental sustainability. Do
you want to come in on that, Jo?
Ms Phillips: I think one of the
concerns is that it is very difficult to see MDG7 as just one
of the Goals, whereas how you do things, how you meet the other
Millennium Development Goals, has a major impact on environmental
sustainability and there is not necessarily a clear framework
to ensure that all of the Goals are met coherently and simultaneously.
We recognise that is a challenge but it is also an essential component
which needs to be addressed. I think, in terms of how the environment
has been defined or is recognised, there are conceptual problems,
particularly with people perhaps who do not have environment as
a key component of their training. It is not helped necessarily
by shortening environment to environmental protection, for example,
because that tends to put it in a box which can alienate a lot
of people. Really what we are talking about is, yes, environmental
protection, as one aspect, but also looking at the sustainable
use of environment, looking at the opportunities the environment
provides for development but also at the challenges and threats,
but not focusing wholly on those threats, so there are issues
of chemicals, there are issues of climate change, biodiversity
loss, lots of issues that are core to development concerns.
Q71 Ms Barlow: You mentioned a lack of
training. Would you say this lack of training in environmental
issues goes all the way through DFID, or is it particularly in
the field of this problem, is it in the choice of projects as
well as in the field, or is it just in the choice of projects?
Ms Phillips: I would find that
difficult to answer. I do not know enough about training programmes
in DFID. I have heard it said that there is a need for better
training to ensure that environment is seen as a core competency
throughout DFID but particularly in senior management. That is
particularly important in country offices, where often it is the
personal interest of the lead officer in environmental issues
which results in them being addressed, rather than it being an
actual core competency across the board, so it happens on more
of an ad hoc basis.
Dr Avery: Another point we made
in our evidence was that the number of environmental advisers
in DFID has been reduced very dramatically over the last few years.
That does not seem to coincide very well with the messages coming
out of the World Summit, that environmental sustainability has
to be threaded through the whole of poverty alleviation, and it
does not chime very well with the very good words that the Secretary
of State says about the environment. When you look at how many
people there are with an environmental training in DFID able to
try to influence their policies from within, there are far fewer
now than there were even a few years ago, and that seems a mismatch
between the external rhetoric and what is happening within the
Department.
Ms Phillips: That is particularly
the case in the country and I think that there are good environmental
advisers and there are good livelihoods advisers, economic advisers,
natural livelihoods advisers, but increasingly they are being
asked to cover a range of issues which perhaps they do not have
the capacity, the time or the expertise to address.
Q72 Ms Barlow: Do you have any figures
for the cutback, the Gershon saving, or whatever?
Dr Avery: We believe that there
were some 34 environment advisers in 2004 and there are 18 today,
which is a pretty dramatic reduction in two years, and there are
various posts which have not been filled or, to our eyes, have
been downgraded within DFID.
Q73 Chairman: We are just about to become
inquorate for a little while because one of our members has been
delayed in traffic and another of our members has to go into the
House, I think, for a short while. We have got two minutes, and
then I will have to interrupt the proceedings whilst we wait to
become quorate again. I apologise for that, in advance. It is
one of the vagaries of a one-line whip day. Just to return to
the Millennium Development Goals, one question I would like to
ask you is about the trade-off between the various Goals. It seems
to me, looking at the complete list, that many of the others,
excluding number seven, you can put very clear figures on. If
you want to reduce child mortality you can put a figure on it
and then you can see whether you have met that or not. Promoting
gender equality and other things also might be quantifiable. "Ensure
environmental sustainability" seems to me to be pretty vague,
and if we look at issues such as biodiversity and climate change
either it is a huge challenge or it is difficult actually to pin
down what we mean by maintaining biodiversity, is it saving so
many species, or whatever? I do not know if anybody has actually
put their finger on it, have they?
Dr Avery: I think, at the World
Summit, it was agreed that one of the targets ought to be to slow
the loss of biodiversity by 2010, and, within the EU and its work
across the world, the EU has agreed to try to halt the loss of
biodiversity by 2010. I think it is true to say though that because
there is a lot of biodiversity out there it is quite difficult
to measure it.
Q74 Chairman: We do not really know how
much biodiversity there is, do we, because we see all the time
that there is a whole new species, particularly in the oceans,
for example, areas we have not explored, so we cannot actually
define it?
Dr Avery: I think we could come
close enough to measuring it and I think the approach which has
been developed in—
Chairman: I am afraid we are now inquorate.
There followed a short break from 10.30 am
to 10.39 am. Q75 Chairman: We are back in business
after that period of contemplation. Following on from that last
question, I was asking about the trade-offs between the MDGs and
that specific one on sustainable environments. I guess, helping
that process along and giving us a greater edge to understanding
the sustainable environments issue, the United Nations Millennium
Ecosystem Assessment has now been published and I wonder what
your view would be on what may be the most important outcomes
of that for the environment and for development?
Dr Avery: I am happy to comment
on that. If I could just go back and finish the answer I was giving,
with the extra time for thought that we were given. You were asking
about how difficult it is actually to measure biodiversity and
biodiversity loss well, and I think there are several approaches
to that. One, I think that we could learn the lesson that economists
teach us, that they use very simple indicators, so we talk about,
in the UK, for example, the FTSE 100 Index. I do not really have
any understanding of what that means but we hear it on the radio
every day and it has gone either up or down, and this is good
or bad. Biologists need to develop indicators a bit like that,
which are simple but meaningful indicators of what is happening,
and that has been done in the UK. There is a `quality of life'
indicator based actually on birds, but it would not have to be
on birds, and Government publishes the results each year on whether
that index has gone up or down. We need a similar approach to
the world's biodiversity, so that each year we can have a measure
of whether there is more or less biodiversity in the world and
get an understanding of the causes of that. I think there is a
role for DFID in this, in that it is not very clear at the moment
which UK government department has responsibility for trying to
meet that goal outside of the UK. Because it is the seventh Millennium
Development Goal, it would make sense if that responsibility was
given to DFID and I think that would help them have a more rounded
environmental view. Also I think that indicators of biodiversity
loss ought not to be just about numbers of species and extinction
but they ought to try to measure what are called ecosystem services.
Which comes on to the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment, not just
the fact that we should not be losing species, because it is a
ridiculous way to live on this planet, but if we destroy ecosystems
then we are destroying the life support system for many people
on this planet. By chopping down rainforests we will create floods,
soil erosion and actually make the life of poor people more difficult;
so developing good but simple indicators of how much of that ecosystem
services has been lost, and is being lost, would be a good way
to measure the loss of biodiversity. The message from the Millennium
Ecosystem Assessment is that we are trashing the planet, that
we are living on the planet in a way which is not remotely sustainable
and that the effects of a loss of ecosystems and species is going
to be felt most severely by many of the poorest people on this
planet and it will make their life more and more difficult. In
terms of the way that DFID has picked up the messages from the
Millennium Ecosystem Assessment, generally I think it would be
true to say that the world has not picked up the messages as well
as it should have done, and that may be because the messages are
so depressing and suggest such huge problems that we are facing.
We would say that DFID has made a lot of reference to the Millennium
Ecosystem Assessment in what it has said and in their written
material, so there are plenty of signs that they are aware of
the implications, but we would have some worries about whether
the true messages really have struck a chord with DFID. The examples
we would give on that would be that we believe DFID's focus on
economic growth for poverty reduction kind of misses the point,
it misses the point that, long term, we need to move towards environmental
sustainability, not just increased economic growth. The fact that
DFID has reduced its funding for environmental projects is worrying,
because it suggests, again, that type of approach has lost favour
over the last few years. As we said before, we do not see much
evidence that the environment is absolutely a part of DFID's thinking
in everything it does. The reduction in the number of environmental
advisers, which we have mentioned already, sends absolutely the
wrong signal, if DFID is taking account of Millennium Development
Goal number seven. To some extent, I think the fact that the environmental
issue most talked about by DFID these days is climate change is
good but it is worrying at the same time. I think generally we
are moving towards a position where climate change is seen as
almost synonymous with environmental problems and that the big
issues of habitat destruction, which will have massive impacts
on wildlife and people, are being sidelined slightly. That is
not to say that the RSPB is uninterested in climate change, we
believe it is a massive problem, but it is becoming the only thing
that people talk about when they talk about the environment, and
there is a sign of that in the way that DFID addresses the Millennium
Ecosystem Assessment tool.
Q76 Chairman: Do you think that last
year's Make Poverty History campaign actually made it more difficult
for DFID to take a holistic view of environment and development
issues?
Ms Phillips: I think that Make
Poverty History was a necessary and vital campaign to raise poverty
up the public and political agenda. I think, potentially, we could
have done more to mainstream environment through the messages
but, interestingly now, in the post-MPH phase, environment and
how to address environmental concerns is becoming a lot more prominent
and is being seen as more the issue of today. I think we are seeing
that in a joint submission that we have just made to the DFID
White Paper consultation, where we have a number of major development
NGOs putting their name to a joint development and environment
statement, which says these issues have to be addressed coherently
and simultaneously, it is not an either/or situation. Really it
is a false dichotomy to think you can do development and then
fix the environment later; you cannot do that. Going back to the
Millennium Ecosystem Assessment and developing countries, I think
one of the key issues is in helping developing countries, supporting
them, to understand, recognise and value what their natural asset
base is, so they do know where their natural wealth lies and then
can manage that and use that sustainably and appropriately. The
work that the World Bank has been doing on the Wealth of Nations,
the work that the World Resources Institute has done most recently,
all is pushing in that direction. The move that DFID has shifted
towards, I think, rightly, in really supporting in-country demands,
means that has to work more effectively and more efficiently so
that developing countries themselves are able to manage their
natural resources well.
Q77 Mr Caton: We have started touching
on the next subject we want to focus on, which is development
funding. Poverty Reduction Strategies, direct budgetary support,
are becoming increasingly important, in terms of development funding.
Do I take it, from what you have just said, Ms Phillips, that
the RSPB supports that direction of travel?
Ms Phillips: On the whole, supporting
states to become self-sufficient and more effective, I think,
has to be welcomed. I think the concern is that there is not a
`one size fits all' situation and direct budget support is not
going to be appropriate in all situations. Direct budget support
has to be underpinned by ensuring good governance and that includes
ensuring environmental governance as well, and I think that is
where some of the shortcomings in the system could lie, potentially.
It is supporting that move to have strong in-country capacity
to address governance issues across the board and to ensure that
large pot of money that direct budget support means is spent in
a way which delivers sustainable development. I think, on top
of direct budget support, we need to recognise that is not always
the case and in most developed countries there are budgets and
funds to enable and support environmental action on the ground,
and we need to make sure that there are means to support this
in developing countries as well. One of the big concerns is, with
the shift to direct budget support, where we are seeing environmental
resources being degraded at an incredible rate, for example, forests
are still being lost at an incredible rate, it does not match
necessarily with the time it takes, the sort of slow process of
building effective governments and governance systems, so you
need not only direct budget support but other aid funding mechanisms
to be able to balance that.
Q78 Mr Caton: With the direct funding
support though, completely agreeing with what you are saying about
needing to tie the environment in there, have we not got a problem,
because DFID, for very good reasons, is reluctant to go back to
conditionality, as I say, for very good, historical reasons? Do
we need to re-open the idea of conditionality, to talk about environmental
conditionality, because otherwise some of these third world countries
may not give it the priority that we would want to see?
Ms Phillips: I think often there
is a misconception, when we talk about no conditionality, that
we mean no discussion at all of the basic premise under which
money is going to spent. What DFID has signed up to is no financial
policy conditionality which relates back to the problems associated
with the structural funds, etc. DFID is very much supportive of
creating effective states and what we need to be supporting are
accountability mechanisms within the spending of resources that
are agreed between the recipient country and the donor countries
to ensure that money is spent well and effectively. Personally
I feel that probably it is wrong to call that `conditionality'.
There needs to be some accountability, and I think as long as
it is a fair contract agreed between partners then that can help
towards ensuring that money is being spent effectively and ultimately
is reaching the poor.
Q79 Mr Caton: The deal between partners
when one of them is the donor and the other is the recipient is
not an equal one, is it? I am just thinking of how it would be
viewed by the governments of developing countries, whether we
call it `conditionality' or not, if we are trying to tie in what
some, at least, might perceive as western priorities. Do you see
there could be a problem there?
Ms Phillips: I think it is very
important to recognise there, and DFID and others have shown,
that a lot of western priorities, if you are talking about the
environment, are vitally important to the poor. A responsibility
of DFID is to ensure that the voice of the poor is heard, and
having open, democratic, transparent processes and ensuring that
civil society is engaged in the setting of strategic priorities
and targets can help ensure that happens.
Dr Avery: I think you are absolutely
right to say that this is difficult and I think DFID is right
to have moved away, for a long time, from the worst of a colonialist
approach to giving money, but if UK taxpayers' money is being
given to other countries to alleviate poverty then surely we want
that to be done in the most environmentally-sustainable way rather
than in an unsustainable way. Although that is a difficult route
to find a way of achieving, that must be DFID's responsibility,
to find a way that they can justify giving UK taxpayers' money,
in a way which will enhance environmental sustainability and Millennium
Development Goal seven, rather than leading to a further reduction
in the planet's assets. That is difficult, but that is the route
we ought to go down, which is why giving DFID a more formal responsibility
for meeting Millennium Development Goal seven probably would help
in their thinking.
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