Select Committee on Environmental Audit Minutes of Evidence


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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