ENVIRONMENT - CONFLICT ISSUES
35. As outlined in earlier chapters, the environment
can play a critical role in creating the conditions in which conflict
can flourish. It is therefore likely that efforts to bring stability
to a region will also have to tackle the environmental drivers
of conflict. A UNEP report considered the links between environmental
degradation and conflict in Afghanistan:
the long-term consequences of nearly 25 years
of war and overexploitation of Afghanistan's once rich natural
resources created grave environmental threats. These included
surface and groundwater scarcity and contamination, massive and
ongoing deforestation, desertification of important wetlands,
soil erosion, air pollution, and depleted wildlife populations.
In addition, the prolonged lack of water and the rapid disappearance
of half of the country's forest and woodland cover turned thousands
of people into environmental refugees. This has led to increased
population pressure on over-burdened urban areas and could generate
new small-scale conflicts over access to scarce resources. National
capacity to address these problems is severely limited as a result
of the collapse of local and national forms of governance and
resource management.[50]
36. Although UNEP has been working to improve environmental
capacity in Afghanistan, and the UK is a major funder of UNEP,
specific development work undertaken by the UK appears to have
neglected the need to address these environmental issues. For
example, DFID's efforts on environmental sustainability in Afghanistan
have focused on the development of agriculture, and in particular,
"irrigation rehabilitation, farm and non-farm training, agriculture
inputs, illiteracy, roads and access to markets".[51]
Although important, these programmes by themselves might not necessarily
lead to more sustainable agricultural practices or prevent further
environmental degradation.
37. Although the foreword to the Sustainable Development
Action Plan makes it clear that the environment plays an important
role in the FCO's objective of helping to prevent and resolve
conflict, it provides little in the way of direct explanation
of how the FCO will use environmental management to do this. Of
course, other actions in the plan might be expected to address
indirectly the links between the environment and conflict including
action on international corruption, bribery and illegal logging.
Nevertheless, given the explicit acknowledgement that the environment
can play a pivotal role, we believe that the Action Plan should
seek to address this issue more unequivocally, especially as the
SDC review highlighted this as an issue.[52]
Failure to deal adequately with environmental issues in conflict
is also apparent in other government documents. For example, the
Government established Global Conflict Prevention Pools (GCPP)
in 2001 to enable a coordinated approach to conflict prevention
and management by the FCO, DFID and MoD. They seek to bring UK
diplomacy, defence and development together into a common strategy.[53]
Although the need for sustainable development and natural resource
protection is touched upon in documents relating to the GCPPs,
the lack of prominence given to them implies that these issues
are not being seen as an integral part of conflict prevention
and resolution.
38. The Sustainable
Development Action Plan appears to have failed to address the
SDC recommendation to "continue to explore the opportunities
for joint working with the Ministry of Defence (MoD) in relation
to natural resource protection and conflict and reflect these
in future [Action Plans]".[54]
Opportunities for closer working between the two departments on
the environment-conflict interface should include, jointly with
DFID, an assessment of the role environmental protection and management,
and sustainable development, can play in limiting the environmental
conditions that can exacerbate conflict and how this could feed
into Global Conflict Prevention Pool work. It should also consider
the role that environmental protection and restoration can play
in reconstruction efforts. The next Action Plan must detail how
the FCO will take forward this work.
Active Diplomacy for a Changing
World
39. The 2006 White Paper Active Diplomacy for
a Changing World established a new set of international strategic
priorities for the UK Government. This represented an update on
earlier priorities outlined in a 2003 White Paper, with more of
an overt focus on environmental protection through the inclusion
of a priority of "promoting sustainable development and poverty
reduction underpinned by human rights, democracy, good governance
and protection of the environment".[55]
Further to this the Foreign Secretary in June 2006 added an additional
priority of "achieving climate security by promoting a faster
transition to a sustainable, low carbon global economy" in
order to strengthen its "commitment to promoting sustainable
development and tackling climate change".[56]
The FCO told us that this "highlighted the importance of
the environment and natural resources for development and recognised
environmental degradation and an unstable climate as major threats
to the UK's ability to secure its political, security and economic
objectives".[57]
40. Nevertheless, the JNCC argued to us that global
environmental issues could have a higher profile in the White
Paper:
only two of the ten international priorities
contained in the White Paper explicitly mention the environment.
Those are the priorities to do with sustainable development and
climate change. So, despite the global importance of the Overseas
Territories for biodiversity for example, the priority associated
with the territories only refers to ensuring security and good
governance; it does not mention the environment at all
It is certainly true that most of those international
priorities are solely concerned with social or economic issues.
We believe that it is really important that government and FCO
do not treat environmental issues in isolation; they are intimately
entwined with social and economic issues. That, after all, is
at the heart of the concept of sustainable development. We would
therefore recommend that the environment does need to have a higher
profile within the FCO and that environmental issues need to be
better integrated with other concerns.[58]
41. We are concerned that there is some justice in
the JNCC view that international environmental issues were not
adequately consideredthe 2006 White Paper analysis of trends
failed adequately to describe the likely importance of natural
resource degradation and pressures. This is despite the Paper
being published in March 2006, a full year after the publication
of the UN Millennium Ecosystem Assessment which found that environmental
degradation is leading to, inter alia:
- rapidly increasing costs
- an increase in the likelihood of dramatic and
abrupt ecosystem changes with devastating and permanent impacts
- the likely failure of achieving Millennium Development
Goals to eradicate poverty, and might even undermine the progress
that has already been made.[59]
42. The
2006 White Paper acknowledged
that "we need to tackle shared global challenges, in particular
the loss of natural resources and biodiversity",[60]
although it did not elaborate on how action will be taken forward
directly on this front, focusing instead on climate change and
good governance. Biodiversity only receives one other mention
in the documentin relation to the Overseas Territories.
It should be stressed that these strategic
priorities were identified by the Government, as a whole, as the
most pressing international issues that it must address. We thus
welcome greatly the Foreign Secretary's inclusion of climate security
as a new UK international priority, and the acknowledgement therefore
of the critical importance of this issue. We commend also the
Foreign Secretary for demonstrating the UK's commitment to this
issue through her robust argument for the consideration of climate
change at the UN Security Council. Despite this we believe that
wider environmental issues should be better reflected in the UK's
international priorities, particularly given the growing evidence
of the threats associated with continued environmental degradation.
A new international priority placing a greater emphasis on the
need to ensure environmental protection must be added, to stress
the key strategic importance of this issue for the whole of Government.
This should complement a new international environmental strategy
to focus Government-wide action.
15 Foreign and Commonwealth Office, UK International
Priorities: The FCO Sustainable Development Strategy, March
2005, p3 Back
16
Principle 10 of the Rio Declaration 1992 established that public
access to information, participation in decision-making and access
to justice, are key principles of environmental governance. At
the World Summit on Sustainable Development these principles were
reaffirmed, with the Partnership for Principle 10 being established
to better enable progress towards these goals. See: www.pp10.org Back
17
Foreign and Commonwealth Office, UK International Priorities:
The FCO Sustainable Development Strategy, March 2005 Back
18
Iain Orr (2007), www.bioDiplomacy.net Back
19
Qu 1 [Mr Buckley] Back
20
Ev 2 Back
21
Qu 72 Back
22
Qu 73 [Mr Wightman] Back
23
Qu 73 [Mr Wightman] Back
24
ibid Back
25
Qu 73 [Mr McCartney] Back
26
Ev 76 Back
27
Qu 39 [Mr Yeo] Back
28
Qu 9 [Ms Sanders] Back
29
"It's not just about climate", BBC News Online,
2 March 2007, news.bbc.co.uk Back
30
"It's not just about climate", BBC News Online,
2 March 2007, news.bbc.co.uk Back
31
HM Treasury, Stern Review: The Economics of Climate Change,
October 2006, p536 Back
32
"Address by Dr Ahmed Djoghlaf", Secretariat of the
Convention on Biological Diversity, 19 March 2007, www.biodiv.org Back
33
"Global Forest Resources Assessment 2005", Food and
Agriculture Organisation of the United Nations, 2006, www.fao.org Back
34
"Biodiversity and climate change", Secretariat of
the Convention on Biological Diversity, 20 March 2007, www.biodiv.org Back
35
Ev 69 & 70 Back
36
Qu 1 [Mr Papastavrou] Back
37
Ev 4 Back
38
Ev 25 Back
39
Qu 45 Back
40
Qu 68 Back
41
Sustainable Development Commission, Strategic Assessment: Foreign
and Commonwealth Office - Sustainable Development Strategy 2005,
October 2006, p5 Back
42
Sustainable Development Commission, Strategic Assessment: Foreign
and Commonwealth Office - Sustainable Development Strategy 2005,
October 2006, p5 Back
43
Ev 36 Back
44
Sustainable Development Commission, Strategic Assessment: Foreign
and Commonwealth Office - Sustainable Development Strategy 2005,
October 2006, p18 Back
45
ibid Back
46
Sustainable Development Commission, Strategic Assessment: Foreign
and Commonwealth Office - Sustainable Development Strategy 2005,
October 2006, p39 Back
47
Foreign and Commonwealth Office, UK International Priorities:
The FCO Sustainable Development Action Plan, January 2007,
p35 Back
48
Foreign and Commonwealth Office, UK International Priorities:
The FCO Sustainable Development Action Plan, January 2007,
p36 Back
49
Qu 84 Back
50
United Nations Environment Programme, Afghanistan's Environmental
Recovery: A post-conflict plan for people and their natural resources
(Kenya, 2006), p2 Back
51
"Country profiles: Afghanistan", DFID website,
May 2007, www.dfid.gov.uk Back
52
Sustainable Development Commission, Strategic Assessment: Foreign
and Commonwealth Office - Sustainable Development Strategy 2005,
October 2006, p8 Back
53
Conflict Prevention Pools, Foreign Office website, 14 March
2007, www.fco.gov.uk Back
54
Sustainable Development Commission, Strategic Assessment: Foreign
and Commonwealth Office - Sustainable Development Strategy 2005,
October 2006, p8 Back
55
Foreign and Commonwealth Office, Active Diplomacy for a Changing
World; The UK's International Priorities, CM 6762, March 2006 Back
56
Ev 35 Back
57
ibid Back
58
Ev 28 Back
59
Environmental Audit Committee, First Report of Session 2006-07,
The UN Millennium Ecosystem Assessment, HC 77 Back
60
Foreign and Commonwealth Office, Active Diplomacy for a Changing
World; The UK's International Priorities, CM 6762, March 2006,
p35 Back