House of Commons - Environmental Audit

Select Committee on Environmental Audit First Report

International impact of the MA

31. Almost one year on from the publication of the core MA report, a review was conducted to assess its initial impact. Although the review conceded that it was difficult to assess the impact of the MA at that stage, it found "widespread evidence that the assessment is having an impact on the intended audiences, but the extent of that impact is very mixed, with some institutions, regions, countries, and sectors significantly influenced by the MA while others have not been influenced at all".[14] A number of witnesses to this inquiry agreed that the impact of the MA has been patchy. The Royal Society told us that although the MA has a relatively high profile in the environment and biodiversity sectors in the UK, EU and internationally, it has "as yet had little impact on other areas of policy and research". It asserted that if the MA is to have any real impact its principles "need to be implemented outside of the environment sector, for example in the international development, trade and financial sectors". The RSPB concluded that outcomes following publication of the MA have fallen short of addressing the international challenges identified, and felt that international environmental governance mechanisms need to be improved and strengthened to help address these challenges.[15] John Forgách from Yale University agreed in evidence to us that the response so far has been inadequate:

In the last year since the MA was put out, if I had to rank the reaction of society and governments to the MA, it has been probably a two on a scale of ten; and a two probably only on the issues of education, but a zero in terms of biodiversity and issues of climate change. We have made some progress, especially in Europe, but it is still a two on a scale of ten; so it is certainly not enough.[16]

32. Witnesses thought that the impact might have been mixed due to the findings of the MA, which are challenging in themselves. For example, it calls for the removal of agricultural subsidies that have adverse economic, social and environmental effects such as the Common Agricultural Policy. NERC agreed that, given the scale of the MA, it is "not surprising that global and regional organisations are taking some time to absorb and respond to [the] messages".[17] Joanna Phillips from the RSPB said:

Addressing the challenges posed by the MA, it states, will involve significant changes in policies on investment, trade, subsidy, taxation and regulation among others, institutions and practices. It basically says we have to change the way that we do business, and that is fundamentally very challenging to a lot of people.[18]

33. Although we concede that it is still early days for the MA, we are concerned that given the scale of the problems identified within it, its impact so far seems limited. Full and proper engagement with its findings from local to international levels will be vitally important if actions to deal with the challenges are to be successful. We hope that the recommendations made throughout this report will go someway to ensure that the findings of the MA are adopted far more widely than they have been so far.

INTERNATIONAL POVERTY ERADICATION

34. As previously outlined, the MA established the fact that functioning ecosystem services are essential for poverty eradication and for the long-term achievement of the Millennium Development Goals. The statement by the MA Board that development policies may well be 'doomed', and existing progress undermined, if action to protect ecosystem services is not taken seriously is a clear and stark message which we would expect to have been robustly addressed by development agencies and civil organisations.[19] However witnesses to this inquiry have been concerned that this has not been the case.

35. The reason for this may, in part, be due to the separate establishment of the MA and the Millennium Project (MP), which monitors progress on MDGs. Steve Bass from IIED criticised a lack of coordination between the MP and MA, even though both had originated in the UN. He welcomed the fact that moves have now been taken to better account for the MA in the MP by ensuring that the indicators for MDG 7, environmental sustainability, are revised in a process informed by the MA. He went on:

In terms of the United Nations' own campaign to roll out the MDGs and encourage better progress, there is a new thing called MDG service delivery, run by the United Nations Development Programme. They are using the MA framework to help countries think through progress in the various accumulation or degradation of assets. So it is beginning at the bureaucratic level. One thing that nobody has really tackled is that, essentially, the MDGs—and there are eight of them, goals on hunger, et cetera—are not all equal in any one circumstance. There are critical paths; some are foundations to others. Nobody dares talk about this yet, but a foundation for all of them, of course, is the findings of the MA. So it is slow, but it is happening.[20]

36. The Royal Society also urged better integration of the MA into national implementation plans for the MDGs, with a higher priority given to MDG 7. It stated that:

… the current momentum behind the implementation of the [MDGs] in developing countries could be a useful mechanism for communicating and implementing the MA framework. This however requires that strategies aimed at delivering the MDG's be revised to ensure that they are compatible with the MA framework. In particular we believe that it is important that more emphasis is placed on the importance of MDG 7 (to ensure sustainability) in international development cooperation policy.[21]

37. RSPB felt that there is "clearly much more work to be done" by Government and the wider development and environment communities, to link the interrelated objectives of environmental sustainability and poverty eradication. It stressed the importance of emphasising that the "delivery of the MDGs, even the primary economic development ones, are better achieved with strategies that include maintenance of ecosystems than strategies that simply prioritise economic development per se".[22] This failure adequately to draw a link between poverty and the environment in MDGs was referred to in our earlier report, Trade, Development and Environment: The Role of DFID:

Useful though the MDGs have been in focusing development efforts they are in essence flawed. Despite the recognition of many of those working in development, including DFID, that the environment and sustainability underpin much of what is being aimed for in the MDGs, the Goals themselves do not explicitly make these links. Furthermore, although attempting to meet the target date 2015 is important what is more important is that these achievements are made sustainably. Therefore in terms of development we need to be thinking 50 to 100 years into the future to ensure that the gains made by 2015 and beyond are maintained. The Goals do not reflect this need. For example efforts to improve water supply must go hand in hand with improving water catchment management and ensuring that water supplies, and ecosystems, are resilient to climate change as well as rising future demands. How Millennium Development Goals are met will have 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. This may well prove to be counterproductive in the long term.[23]

38. The Government responded to this, stating that it recognises that weak progress towards environmental sustainability will undermine achievement of MDGs, but that "frameworks to achieve sustainable poverty reduction and the MDGs need to be developed and owned by countries themselves". It went on to say that it supports the approach of the UN Agencies to "develop guidance and support to countries on how best to make the links to the MDG framework, including on integrating environmental considerations".[24]

39. The former director of the MA, Walter Reid, and the director of the UN Millennium Project, Jeffrey Sachs, stated that "both rich-country and poor-country governments overlook the policy links between poverty reduction and the environment".[25] However, they also felt that developing countries do not have adequate resources for dealing with the issues raised in the MA. They therefore called for:

… the rich donor countries to establish a Millennium Ecosystem Fund to give poor countries the wherewithal to incorporate environmental sustainability into national development strategies. The fund would support work that focuses on how poverty reduction can enhance environmental conservation (e.g., by giving farmers alternatives to slash and burn) and how environmental sustainability can support poverty reduction (e.g., watershed management to maintain clean water supplies).[26]

40. Given that a functioning and healthy environment will be crucial for achieving long-term success on MDGs, and that the MA provides a framework for the successful bringing together of development, environment and economic policies, we are disappointed that governments and development agencies have been slow to grasp the importance of the MA and MDG7. Although we accept that developing countries must own and develop their own strategies for sustainable poverty reduction, the Government must face up to the fact that these countries do not have the capacity to adequately incorporate the environment into their strategies. The UK Government and other developed countries must seek to ensure, through a Millennium Ecosystem Fund, that all developing countries are equipped to incorporate the environment into their development strategies, otherwise the unsustainable actions that might result may jeopardise the long-term achievement of MDGs.

41. A review of the MA's impact found that there had been "no evidence" of any impact of the MA on NGOs focused on development, poverty reduction, or health issues.[27] It is, perhaps, telling that we received no evidence from any such NGO for this inquiry. Steve Bass from IIED pointed out that he had written a paper on the findings of the MA from a development perspective as "nobody within the development community was producing a response to the link between the MA and poverty reduction".[28]

42. Despite this lack of engagement with the MA, development NGOs have become increasingly aware of the importance of avoiding climate change for the long term eradication of poverty. This is exemplified by the production of Up In Smoke, produced by a number of leading development and environment NGOs, which called for urgent action to tackle climate change as it "could threaten attainment of the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) and even reverse human development achievements".[29]

43. We are frankly disappointed that development NGOs have failed to engage more with the MA findings. Although we understand that these NGOs might focus on the immediate problems associated with poverty, such as access to clean water, their failure in the long term also to focus on the need to maintain ecosystem services will ultimately unravel their efforts.

GOVERNMENTS: THE NEED FOR NATIONAL ASSESSMENTS

44. The March 2006 review of the impact of the MA concluded that amongst governments the impact of the MA had also been mixed. The review found that the MA had most impact where MA sub-global assessments had been conducted, although "significant impacts are also noted in regions and countries that did not undertake sub-global assessments such as the European Union, UK and France". The variations in uptake of the MA might exist for a number of reasons, including disagreement with the findings. However, it is clear that a number of our witnesses believe that encouraging a wider uptake of MA findings will be hastened considerably by the undertaking of national and regional assessments. The MA itself included a number of sub-global assessments undertaken at local, watershed and regional scales. These were in part designed to validate the global assessment at a local scale as well as providing specific information for decision-makers at these scales. These sub-global assessments have been important for communicating the findings of the MA and increasing its influence in these regions. Neville Ash from the UN Environment Programme-World Conservation Monitoring Centre (UNEP-WCMC) said:

Typically what we are finding is that the national response around the world is strongest in areas where there has been a sub-global assessment of the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment... Many of those are on-going, in fact some have been completed, and we are finding in some parts of the world where there have been completed sub-global assessments there has been a particularly strong follow-up. In China, for example, there is a Western China Millennium Ecosystem Assessment and the Chinese Government is now taking those concepts on board nationally and thinking about natural resources and assessment at the national level.[30]

45. Witnesses pointed out to us that communication of the findings has played a large role in whether a country has acted upon them. RSPB highlighted the practical difficulties of obtaining MA documents in poor countries with inadequate access to the internet. Neville Ash from UNEP-WCMC felt that national and regional assessments had proven so successful due partly to the communication of findings in local languages and other forms of grassroots communication. He went on:

There is still a very significant language barrier in communicating the main findings in many parts of the non-English speaking world. That is slowly being dealt with as new translations are coming out and becoming available but, do not get me wrong, there is an enormous need still for much greater communication of the existing findings and by no means has that been a job done well.[31]

46. Steve Bass from the International Institute for Environment and Development (IIED) told us that he suspects that, in order better to communicate the MA, "messages produced at individual country level after this period of reflection on the MA could be simpler and more compelling".[32] He argued that making the MA more relevant to individual countries will encourage them to act upon its findings.

47. As outlined earlier, the former director of the MA, Walter Reid, and the director of the UN Millennium Project, Jeffrey Sachs, called for a fund to enable developing countries to undertake their own assessments. They estimated that the fund would need some $200 million over 5 years. Walter Reid elaborated on this for us:

… we believe that one of the most valuable activities at this stage is not a repeat of a global assessment (which would be better undertaken in about 3-4 years) but rather efforts to catalyze national, regional, and local assessments around the world. In a recent article in Science magazine, Dr. Jeffrey Sachs and I proposed a funding mechanism that could support such processes but to my knowledge there has not been any movement to create something like this. The primary hurdle, in my view, is that donors want their money to go into something that has immediate measurable results. An assessment, by definition, is providing the analytical basis for action, but isn't actually providing the action.[33]

48. More needs to be done to ensure that policy makers are fully aware of the ramifications of the MA, and what they can do to respond to these challenges. In order for this to occur, policy-makers need to see the direct benefits, primarily economic but also social and environmental, of sustainable ecosystem service management and the adoption of the MA conceptual framework. This must happen in such a way that effective national or local response options can be initiated. Therefore it should be a priority to carry out national assessments tailored to national needs. As developing countries do not have the resources needed to undertake such assessments, it is imperative that the UK Government galvanizes the international community to establish a Millennium Ecosystem Fund. Not only could this ensure that the MA findings are more widely communicated but also that developing countries are equipped to move themselves onto a sustainable development path.

BUSINESS

49. A review conducted one year on from the publication of the main MA report concluded that "MA findings were well-received by business journalists but the impact to date in the business sector has been relatively limited".[34] However the review did point out that Goldman Sachs had incorporated the concept of ecosystem services into its environmental policy, and the World Business Council for Sustainable Development is undertaking MA follow up activities.

50. John Forgách of Yale University told us in evidence that for business to better account for the MA and the issues which it identifies, more effort has to be put into valuing ecosystem services so that the costs associated with ecosystem service loss can be better accounted for. He believes that "the private sector is waiting for this to happen, because they would like them to come on to the balance sheet. Until they have dollar or sterling numbers on them, they are off-balance-sheet items, so they are not discussed in the boardrooms and in the corporations".[35] John Forgách argued that business would not resist moves to account for ecosystem services in this way, as they are becoming aware of the threat to themselves of ecosystem degradation. He pointed out that "already, Coca-cola cannot meet its water requirements, so what will they do in 2030 or 2050?"[36] Mr Forgách felt that the MA established that the "whole system is unsustainable", and as a result corporations are starting to look to governments to "establish the rules of the game". He did concede that business is not communicating these fears and wishes as "no corporation likes to admit that there are problems of access to natural resources in the future; otherwise their shares go down".[37]

51. Steve Bass from IIED told the Committee that he felt that the business community had started to pick up on the MA "because the analysis is fairly compelling".[38] He referred to the World Business Council for sustainable development, which has started a new programme of MA audits across a trial set of companies. He added that this process could be sped up by more targeted communication to business on a sector by sector basis. The Government in its written evidence said that it will "continue to work with the business community to ensure they are aware of the findings of the MA and how these influence their bottom line".[39] It also stressed that "the UK has championed involvement with the business community in addressing the loss of global biodiversity, and this priority is highlighted in our WSSD Delivery Plan for international biodiversity".[40]

52. The MA showed that degradation of ecosystem services is a threat to businesses' bottom line.[41] Witnesses expressed optimism to us that the MA would act as a spur to business to address its impact on the environment. The development of robust econometric models for ecosystem services must be developed with some urgency to enable the internalisation of the full costs of business' impact on the environment. The UK Government and international community must act to ensure that this happens. In line with our previous report Outflanked: The WTO, international trade and sustainable development, we recognise that ultimately the full environmental and social costs of products and services must be reflected in their final price.

53. In the meantime, the UK Government must ensure that businesses are made fully aware of the consequences for their short and long term profits of ecosystem degradation. The DTI and DEFRA must, with business, develop sectoral MA reports outlining these consequences, in order that 'UK plc' competitiveness is not damaged by ecosystem degradation.

14 Walter Reid, "Millennium Ecosystem Assessment: Survey of Initial Impacts", Millennium Ecosystem Assessment, March 2006, www.millenniumassessment.org Back

15 Ev6 Back

16 Q47 [John Forgách] Back

17 Ev19 Back

18 Q21 [Ms Phillips] Back

19 Millennium Ecosystem Assessment Board, Living beyond our means; Natural Assets and Human Well-being; Statement from the Board (Washington, 2005) Back

20 Q50 Back

21 Ev57 Back

22 Ev7 Back

23 Environmental Audit Committee, Tenth Report of Session 2005-06, Trade, Development and Environment: The Role of DFID, HC 1014, para 23 Back

24 "UK Government response to the Environmental Audit Committee's Report, 10^th session 2005-06; Trade, Development and Environment: The Role of DFID", Environmental Audit Committee, 27 October 2006, www.parliament.uk/parliamentary_committees/environmental_audit_committee.cfm Back

25 Jeffrey D. Sachs and Walter V. Reid, "investments Toward Sustainable Development", Science, Vol312 (2006), p1002 Back