Memorandum Submitted by BioDiplomacy
INTRODUCTORY NOTE
BioDiplomacy is a diplomatic/environmental consultancy
established by Iain Orr in 2002, after retiring from the UK Diplomatic
Service. His career had a strong China focus (Consul-General,
Shanghai 1987-1990); and many of his jobs involved political networks
in Whitehall and overseas concerning trade, development and environment.
He set up the FCO's Biodiversity Team, managed FCO environmental
funding for overseas posts and negotiated (within Whitehall as
much as with UK Overseas Territories' governments) the detailed
texts of joint Environment Charters. This memorandum also draws
on BioDiplomacy's work with the World Land Trust, the Global Islands
Network, Integrated Water Resources International, and the UK
Overseas Territories Conservation Forum.
SUMMARY
The FCO has distinctive roles in trade, development
and environment work in the UK and overseas. However, it does
not always deploy or use its resources well. One reason is failing
to understand and protect its own assets. The FCOs funding of
overseas projects needs to be managed more flexibly, giving greater
attention to the input from its posts and with less limited criteria
on environmental issues in order to strengthen its engagement
with biodiversity and food and water security. The recent closure
of the Embassy in Madagascar should be reversed. A sea change
is needed throughout Whitehall in respect of the UK's Overseas
Territories. The UK should lead an international commitment to
protect the biodiversity of oceanic islands.
PS The FCO will find it easy to ignore whatever
recommendations the EAC makes: to understand why this is so needs
a social anthropologist to analyse the FCO's working culture in
the UK and overseas.
Why should the FCO be involved in these issues?
1. The FCO's involvement in trade seems
to need no explanation, but is often misunderstood. Diplomats
are not traders (and the FCO's culture is increasingly risk averse).
The trade services the FCO provides, largely through its overseas
posts, should be regarded as part of its wider consular responsibility
to promote and protect, when appropriate, the interests overseas
and internationally of British citizens and organizations, including
those in its overseas territories and the Crown Dependencies.
2. What are the FCO's main assets? Knowing
the politics and culture of other countries; and skilled political
negotiating, bilaterally and internationally. These assets depend
on good and constantly updated contacts overseas with political
and commercial decision makers, the media and civil society. The
FCO needs to monitor changing currents that may benefit or threaten
UK interests. It should promote civilized values (freedom under
just laws, democracy, open-mindedness, individual responsibility
and creativity). In the UK, the FCO also needs to listen to people
and organizations that can give it different perspectives and
keep it aware of the variety of overseas and international interests
that should influence UK foreign policy.
3. British interests, global changes and
civilized values (not exclusive to Britain—one is readiness
to learn from and help others) are why the FCO engages in overseas
development. Funding for poverty reduction, disaster relief and
the development needs of the overseas territories are related
but different matters, where statutory responsibilities and budgets
lie with DFID. From 2010, DFID will no longer be providing China
with development aid, but the UK will have a continuing interest
in China's economic and social development (and similarly with
other rapidly developing countries).
4. The FCO's reasons for involvement in
environmental issues are largely because of newer developments.
During the 19th and 20th centuries, building on the industrial
revolution that Britain pioneered, there were increasingly global
strains on earth, water and air (Note 1). But until the mid-20thcentury
these strains were largely felt and tackled within national boundaries
(Note 2). Only recently have we understood that these issues cannot
be solved without a new conception of sovereignty. (Note 3) The
first to understand this were local communities, then scientists
and environmental campaigners. Politicians and diplomats have
come to it late and have much catching up to do. Their instinct
is often still to rely on traditional muscle-power (the UK trying
to "punch above its weight"—deluded cliche«)
of diplomatic carrots and military sticks; and to do so within
traditional power structures—nation state alliances and
trade-offs within the UN and the Security Council.
5. Largely outside that framework lies the
power of global communities: investment managers, bond-dealers,
multinationals, NGOs, peer-reviewed scientists; global media,
sport and music; and educational, health and other service industries
looking for the best people and products wherever they can be
found (at the right price). These have their own frameworks and
operate with or without visas, trading through markets and on
the web. Those with no framework are the poor, marginalized and
outcasts, mostly in poor countries but also in rich ones (including
servants and seasonal migrants, sending remittances to children
and relatives overseas).
6. What this account omits is the extent
to which environmental factors have influenced much traditional
diplomacy. The metaphor behind diplomatic rivalries:
"Rivals = people who share the same river
bank (from the Latin rivalis-rivus a brook)"
reflects how often historic conflicts over territory
have been motivated by competition for the ecoservices which a
rival's territory could provide and their own could not—food
security, water (an issue in Palestine from biblical times), the
strategic value of safe harbours for navies, fishermen and whalers.
Now, the whole planet deserves listing under the World Heritage
Convention because of the global ecoservices provided to all people
by the atmosphere, the oceans and global biodiversity (a foundation
for food security and human health). It would be an international
outrage if the local guardians in this generation were to trash
Stonehenge, the Great Wall or the Galapagos Islands. All that
prevents global biodiversity and atmospheric, freshwater and oceanic
systems from being listed is that they are everywhere. (Note 3)
PROTECTING THE
FCO'S DISTINCTIVE
ASSETS
7. There are two cliche«s that nevertheless
cover vital truths. First, that a diplomat is "an honest
man who lies abroad for his country". The honesty is what
matters. Second, that the FCO "looks after the interests
of foreigners". The truth is that in looking after British
interests and civilized values, diplomats need to understand what
other countries and their people see as their interests; and make
sure that UK political leaders and officials in other government
departments are aware of these when developing policies with bilateral,
regional or international dimensions. That means British Ambassadors
and the FCO are often blamed for bringing bad news: sometimes
Johnny Foreigner sees things differently from John Bull. Telling
it like it is overseas is a thankless and sometimes repetitive
job, like cleaning the latrines; but is has to be done well if
the UK is to prosper.
8. It is a distinctive job. The UK's membership
of the EU has modified it, especially in relation to internal
EU policy. But it remains very different. Unfortunately, for some
years the FCO has bought uncritically into the business philosophy
of management by quantified objectives. This is not a sensible
straitjacket for an organization already constrained by dealing
with countries that have their own priorities. Targets are, of
course, helpful for many parts of the FCO. It has to manage its
budget responsibly (and its estate in the UK and overseas); but
it does not (yet) have to operate profitably (by selling foreign
policy services to other government departments and commercial
companies?). But it makes no more sense for foreign policy specialists
to draw up elaborate annual objectives than it would be for a
newspaper proprietor to judge journalists on a monthly wordage
target. Cultivating reliable contacts, accurate and timely reporting
and intelligent and persuasive analysis (and honesty) are among
key professional values which diplomats should share with journalists.
These values are often not best served by excessive micro-management.
9. It does not help FCO morale that on a
number of key issues the Prime Minister takes much of his foreign
policy advice elsewhere—at unrecorded meetings with staff
in No 10 and friends. Of course the Prime Minister (and the Foreign
Secretary) need to weigh many conflicting pressures that bear
on foreign policy decisions—international and bilateral
commitments, public opinion and domestic economic and political
consequences. But diplomats cannot do a good job if they are not
listened to on foreign policy, however well they meet their management
objectives. There is currently an unhealthy climate in which senior
FCO officials and Ambassadors believe they will only prosper if
they express views palatable to No 10.
10. The tyranny of micro-management in the
public services was analysed in Onora O'Neill's 2002 Reith Lectures,
A Question of Trust, as a conflict between accountability
and trust. The increasing micro-management of FCO departments
in London and of overseas posts stifles what the FCO needs to
be good at—being quick on its feet to anticipate and cope
with change. Many of the FCO's ten strategic international priorities
do not cascade naturally into a set of measurable targets for
each post and each officer each year. Posts need to turn around
their working priorities rapidly when the Berlin Wall falls and
plane bombs or tsunamis strike. Remember, too, that many Ambassadors
(not just to Islamic states) could bin many of their key targets
because of the UK's invading Iraq when it did and the way the
decision was taken. The appreciation overseas of civilized British
values continues to take a battering, especially when UK criticism
of Guantanamo Bay was so late and feeble. The FCO has been too
cowed by No 10 to report honestly on how much more difficult policy
on Iraq has made it to protect many UK interests besides the risk
of being attacked by Saddam's weapons.
11. Two ways in which the FCO has not done
well in protecting its assets have been maintaining its collective
memory and its local knowledge overseas. There is a relatively
rapid turnover of staff at posts overseas (and often faster for
jobs in London). Many development and environmental NGOs have
the experience of needing to re-educate their FCO contacts from
scratch because knowledge in London or at posts is not retained.
In some cases Ministers has been unable to refute criticism by
an overseas counterpart of lack of UK involvement because officials
have not been aware of bilateral meetings or FCO-funded projects
only a few years before. This is largely because the FCO has adapted
poorly to new information systems. It will be hard for future
historians to discover how the interactions between different
FCO departments and overseas posts shaped foreign policy decisions
in the past 15 years.
12. Of equal concern is how the FCO has
weakened its global network by recent post closures. In the Pacific
and the Caribbean there is a distinct sense that the UK has been
losing interest; and over many years the FCO has undervalued the
importance of the institutional links with Commonwealth countries,
such as the professional and educational networks of Commonwealth
judges, journalists, doctors and universities. The British Council
has tried (sometimes without enough support from the FCO) to make
better use of these important UK assets overseas. "Commonwealth
Co-ordination" often seems to mean little more to the FCO
than defensive planning for the next Commonwealth Heads of Government
Meeting.
13. However, the most striking recent example
of a post closure that made no sense in terms of trade, development
and the environment, was not in the Commonwealth but the decision
to close our resident Embassy in Madagascar. This was done at
a time (2005) when the Prime Minister and Chancellor of the Exchequer
were devoting more time to Africa; the FCO was launching its first
Sustainable Development strategy, including support for the 2010
biodiversity target; and a new government in Madagascar was showing
its wish to move beyond the Francophone world by opening an Embassy
in London. The closure of this Embassy (a small one, costing little
to maintain) has adversely affected UK and Malagasy organizations
in the forefront of the challenge to coordinate development with
protecting global biodiversity. Sadly, the decision was not the
result of careful planning but of a haphazard process in which
there was no serious consultation with the Ambassador nor with
UK companies and development and environmental organizations working
with Madagascar. This incoherent decision needs to be reversed.
OVERSEAS POSTS
AND MANAGING
FCO PROJECT FUNDS
14. Foreign policy is about applying settled
values and long-term collective knowledge of other countries to
meet changing tasks and opportunities. One of the tools for this
should be funding which overseas posts can deploy to support their
work. Our diplomats need to maintain good links with those parts
of civil society—very often human rights, development and
environmental NGOs—which help shape change in ways that
promote our own core values. Such funding is different from the
strategic funding for poverty reduction and disaster relief that
are managed by DFID. It needs to be deployed by trusting the judgement
of posts about the best use locally of limited resources to promote
FCO policies and develop the post's influence. Such locally targeted
small project work uses ands enriches posts' understanding of
the country where they are working. Seeing how helping a local
NGO prevent a wetland from being destroyed involves land ownership
issues, commercial bribery and local power brokers has been an
eye-opener for more than one diplomat into the linkages between
environmental policy and human rights, democracy and good governance.
15. If the FCO's Global Opportunities Fund
(GOF) is to provide posts with this essential tool, it needs to
be managed with greater flexibility, so that it can respond to
opportunities that come up at short notice, often identified by
posts. Consider one tiny and one substantial project, neither
of which could probably be carried out now because of the time
scale for allocating funds and criteria that currently limit the
environmental theme in GOF to climate change and sustainable development.
In one, the High Commission in Mauritius discovered that if £2,000
could be found quickly, the historic first joint visit of French
and British naval vessels to Mauritius could be marked by the
visiting sailors building an aviary on an offshore island to help
the reintroduction of egrets that previously bred there. In another,
the FCO was able to respond within a week to an urgent request
for the Charles Darwin Research Station in the Galapagos Islands
for £50,000 to tackle damage caused by a serious oil spill.
In both examples the posts were responding to locally identified
needs (within policy parameters) rather than London pre-empting
local decisions on value for money.
16. Two useful changes would be for the
GOF to recognize that projects addressing the global crises over
biodiversity and access to fresh and unpolluted water should also
be supported. These are both areas where supporting local environmental
NGOs can also contribute to capacity-building in civil society
organizations which will often do most to build political support
for responsible environmental policies.
FCO INTERNAL HOUSEKEEPING
17. For the FCO to be a serious about the
environment, its estate and transport policies in the UK and overseas
must use (where possible) the best UK and local standards of energy
and resource efficiency, recycling and design.
"Setting an example is not the main means
of influencing others; it is the only means." Albert Einstein.
This is particularly important for new buildings
and renovations; and is not just a task for estate and transport
budget managers. Whatever technologies are used (local will sometimes
be best), commercial and public diplomacy sections should use
this in their work, reporting back to UK industry and investors
on innovations abroad from which we can learn and perhaps develop
for wider use. Travel should be carbon balanced (Note 5), with
input on the value of different offset schemes being provided
by the FCO climate change team (in consultation with Defra). Posts
should be given flexibility in choosing schemes that suit local
circumstances.
18. But do not forget that above all the
UK's national environmental housekeeping will determine posts'
influence on environmental issues. Embassies will be listened
to with more interest and respect overseas when the UK has domestic
success stories on recycling, good design, energy efficiency,
reduced greenhouse gas emissions, access to environmental information,
management of environmental risks and mitigation measures to tackle
the unavoidable effects of climates change that are already in
the pipeline
WORKING WITH
OTHER GOVERNMENT
DEPARTMENTS, COMPANIES,
AND NGOS
19. Some of the FCO's links in the UK need
strengthening. One surprising contrast between working in London
and at an overseas post is that it is when overseas that diplomats
learn most about the UK. If you are Consul-General in Shanghai
or Ambassador in Madagascar you will see most significant UK visitors,
because they value your local knowledge and wish you to support
their interests. To do that, they will invariably teach you much
about their organization and the sector in which it works in the
UK; and they will enrich your local knowledge from their own experience
dealing with the country. In London you are far more likely to
operate within the narrower confines of the desk you occupy.
20. The FCO's role in policy coherence ("joined-up
government") arises because it has to ensure that account
is taken of the external policy aspects of issues where the policy
lead (especially for legislation) and the big budgets lie with
Defra, DFID and DTI. Other departments also matter, even if they
have smaller budgets, notably the Department of Culture, Media
and Sport (DCMS) because of its lead on World Heritage Sites (including
those in the UKs Overseas Territories), UNESCO and the huge contribution
of the media, arts and sport—the 2012 Olympics—to
the UK's public diplomacy work overseas. That is likely over the
next decade to include the growing contribution of the arts in
the UK to raising awareness of human impacts on the environment.
(Note 6)
21. On trade, development and environment,
the FCO could do considerably more to build up its links with
other stakeholders in foreign policy. There should be more secondments
(outward as well as inward); and more of the FCO's public diplomacy
work should be done in partnership with companies, universities
and NGOs. The FCO has had quite a good record in secondments from
Defra. This has not included the sections of Defra based in Bristol
that deal with both UK and international conservation issues.
Secondments involving biodiversity and the UKOTs (see paragraphs
26 to 29 below) are desirable; as are secondments with DFID, DCMS,
UK and international NGOs and leading UK companies engaged in
sustainable development overseas.
GLOBAL PERSPECTIVES:
BIG AND
SMALL
22. The FCO has been an active participant
in cross-departmental Sustainable Development Dialogues with five
countries: Brazil, China, India, Mexico and South Africa. Those
with China and India are particularly important for the UK's promotion
of green technologies. Carbon Capture and Storage (CCS), renewable
energy, resource efficiency in design and engineering and many
other green innovations will only develop fast and have the global
take-up that the planet needs if there is good collaboration between
the UK and other rich countries with the burgeoning factories
and software developers in China and India—who can make
green products and software available at prices which ensure the
rapid elimination of high carbon and resource-wasteful economies
everywhere. Will the UK be showcasing what it can provide at the
Shanghai International Expo in 2010?
23. However, the FCO should not neglect
smaller countries. They are the equal of G8 countries when it
comes to votes in international trade, development and environmental
negotiations. In some areas they are also disproportionately important.
Two of these are biodiversity and the governance of the oceans.
Because of the biogeographical role of islands as drivers of evolution,
the world's island states and sub-national island jurisdictions
(SNIJs)—like the Galapagos Islands, Hawaii, Hainan, New
Caledonia and the UKOTs—have a huge proportion of the world's
threatened biodiversity. The UK has also had a historic role in
the discovery and colonization of many oceanic islands; and Britain's
earlier imperial expansion contributed not only to the knowledge
of that biodiversity (with many of the type specimens in the Natural
History Museum) but also to the deliberate and accidental introduction
to them of alien and often invasive species.
24. The oceans are the parts of the planet
where we still know far too little about the way land-based activities
are changing natural processes on which we depend—the Gulf
Stream and many other deep ocean currents. It was a small Commonwealth
country, Malta, which took a leading role in developing the fundamental
framework for governance of the oceans—the UN Convention
on the Law of the Sea. But UNCLOS was developed well before we
understood the crises in climate and biodiversity. And small island
states have few resources with which to address their responsibilities
for using their Exclusive Economic Zones in ways that are truly
sustainable, including the management and monitoring of foreign
fishing fleets. These are issues to which the FCO and other departments
need to pay greater attention, starting with the UKOTs, whose
combined EEZs cover a far greater area than the EEZs around Great
Britain and Northern Ireland (see Appendix).
25. The development and environment priorities
of small islands are sometimes difficult to address: in financial
terms the projects they need are small, but so is their capacity
to frame bids to the Global Environment Facility, the EU or other
funding sources. One decisive contribution the UK could make to
the 2010 biodiversity target would be for the FCO, Defra and DFID
to put together a strategic island project, and attract to it
international partners with shared biodiversity interests and
skills. This would be to undertake to eliminate the major invasive
species which threaten global biodiversity on both inhabited and
uninhabited oceanic islands, including those in the UKOTs. For
some invasive species on some islands there are still technical
obstacles to eradication projects; but if we are genuinely committed
to biodiversity there must not be financial problems. The project
could be launched in the next Chinese Year of the Rat, 2008; and
a target of completion by the next Rat year, 2020 would be a good
way to start setting and tackling post-2010 biodiversity targets.
THE OVERSEAS
TERRITORIES—BRITISH,
NOT FOREIGN
26. Question 13 in the list of issues the
EAC wishes to address should not be only about the FCO but about
HMG's responsibilities towards its overseas territories. Even
more fundamental are British attitudes towards them. The FCO has
traditionally regarded all colonies as foreign (part of the imperial
baggage imported in 1968 when it merged with the Commonwealth
Office). The British public makes distinctions between those that
were wholly or partly colonised from the UK (eg Falklands, Bermuda,
Tristan, Pitcairn); those seized with their people as part of
imperial rivalries in the Caribbean and Indian Ocean—and
Gibraltar; and those without resident populations that were occupied
for their military or economic strategic value—St Helena,
Ascension, South Georgia.
27. With decolonisation firmly underway,
the FCO was left with a hodgepodge of anomalous territories not
destined for independence and over which the UK would continue
to exercise sovereignty. Some provided benefits to the UK (eg
getting favourable terms for upgrading Polaris in exchange for
leasing a military base on Diego Garcia to the US), some were
seen as a burden (the disputes with Argentina and Spain). But
it was impossible to give coherence to these anachronistic remnants
of empire as long as one of them was Hong Kong. Once Hong Kong
returned to China in 1997, the FCO set out with commendable vision
to frame a new relationship with the territories (no longer called
"dependencies") in the 1999 White Paper—Partnership
for Progress and Prosperity. However, the FCO has little institutional
experience of partnership within the British family of nations
and territories. Diplomacy is about forging alliances, fashioning
accommodations and managing conflicts with those who are not family
members. One telling sign of that is that the elected governments
in the territories were not consulted on drafting the White Paper.
28. It is not surprising, then, that the
UKOTs are still seen by many officials and ministers as problems
rather than as overseas relations sharing a common British heritage;
and that the rest of Whitehall often treats issues involving the
UKOTs as for them or the FCO to "sort out" (depending
on whether they think the FCO solid or weak in the promotion of
metropolitan UK interests). The territories are British, not foreign:
like Northern Ireland part of the UK by choice and necessity,
not by coercion. Maybe that gives a clue to why mainland Great
Britain has such a shaky identification with its overseas territories
as far as the UK's international rights and obligations are concerned:
their local social and political concerns (like Northern Ireland's)
are not the same as those of the Westminster Parliament.
29. However, the environmental richness
and diversity of the UKOTs make the UK (to much surprise) a key
state in terms of coral reefs, albatrosses, tussac grass, active
volcanic geology, albatrosses and endangered endemic plants and
insects. One of the FCO's prime undischarged responsibilities
is to convince every part of HMG (especially the Treasury and
Defra) that only by a sea-change in attitudes to the UKOTs will
the UK be able to meet its commitments to the global 2010 (and
beyond) targets on biodiversity; and its commitments in the 1999
White Paper and the 2001 Environment Charters.
NOTES
1. Earth—too many people using land and
natural resources as if both were infinitely renewable; water—too
little freshwater and growing pollution of rivers, lakes and oceans;
air—smog, acid rain, ozone depletion and increasing atmospheric
CO2 and other greenhouse gases. The fourth traditional element,
fire, uses manifestations of the other three elements to provide
man with the energy to transform the planet, as no other known
part of the universe has been transformed. Earth provides fossil
fuels and uranium ores; water powers mills, hydroelectric stations
and wave and tidal power; air gives oxygen and winds to fill out
sails and turn turbines.
2. Some of the earliest legislation to deal with
two impacts of globalization on biodiversity—alien invasive
species and over-harvesting of wild resources—were in two
distant islands which Britain colonised and which remain sovereign
British territories. Early Governors of St Helena identified,
and took local measures to counter, the destructive effects of
goats on the local vegetation (see Richard H Grove: Green Imperialism—Colonial
Expansion, Tropical Island Edens and the Origins of Environmentalism,
1600-1860, Cambridge University Press, 1995); and Bermuda
adopted the world's fist marine turtle conservation legislation
in 1620. One of the first modern international treaties on an
environmental issue was the 1946 International Convention on
the Regulation of Whaling, which established the International
Whaling Commission. The IWC's precarious agreement to maintain
a moratorium on commercial whaling needs all the diplomatic support
the FCO can provide.
3. "Our ability to manage our transactions
with the planet around us is usually discussed in the context
of environmental or, more rarely, economic policy. Yet I believe
these issues go right to the heart of the new diplomacy. Foreign
policy will increasingly be about the tensions and difficult choices
that arise from environmental stress and competition for resources.
In responding, we must not let yesterday's notions of sovereignty
and national interest get in the way of solutions that are bound
to transcend the limits of those ideas." Peter Hain (written
while Minister of State in the FCO) The End of Foreign Policy?—British
Interests, Global Linkages and Natural Limits Fabian Society,
Green Alliance and the Royal Institute for International Affairs
2001 p 22.
4. The World Heritage Convention gives protection
to "parts of the cultural or natural heritage [which] are
of outstanding interest and therefore need to be preserved as
part of the world heritage of mankind as a whole." The elemental
ecoservices we all need cannot be given delimited boundaries as
the Convention requires, but they certainly meet criterion (ix)
for listing, as " outstanding examples representing significant
on-going ecological and biological processes in the evolution
and development of terrestrial, fresh water, coastal and marine
ecosystems and communities of plants and animals".
5. The January 2007 issue of BBC Wildlife assessed
several schemes, with three getting the highest marking (7/10):
www.worldlandtrust.org, www.envirotrade.co.uk and www.climatefriendly.com.
6. There were two notable examples in 2006 of
the arts engaging with environmental issues. Orlando Gough's choral
work We Turned on the Light was a highlight of the BBC
Proms season. The words—by the playwright Caryl Churchill—and
music, give dramatic expression to the linkages of which we need
to be aware between our daily actions and consequences on people
and places remote in space and time. For example, between international
aviation and losing glaciers and polar ice: "...We flew to
the sunshine/ And saw the ice falling". Similar climate change
themes were explored in a magical exhibition at the Natural History
Museum inspired by David Buckland's Cape Farewell project, with
its related book, Burning Ice—Art and Climate Change
(Cape Farewell 2006, ISBN 0-9553109-0-3).
January 2007
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