APPENDIX 3
Memorandum submitted by the Joint Nature
Conservation Committee
SUMMARY OF
KEY POINTS
1. There is some evidence that the MA findings
are beginning to influence policy development and decision making
at UK, EU and global levels. However, much more needs to be done
to adequately address the conclusions of the MA. In particular,
we believe it is essential that there is greater engagement with
non-environmental sectors on the value of ecosystem goods and
services.
2. The MA has great potential to inform
the development of a framework for the UK's activities in relation
to the conservation of international biodiversity. JNCC is currently
undertaking various strands of work to take this forward.
3. Further work is desirable to evaluate
the MA from a UK perspective, building on the work undertaken
by the Global Biodiversity Sub-Committee of the UK Global Environmental
Change Committee. Consideration of the global impacts of activities
originating in the UK should form a key component of this work.
4. The MA is a tremendous achievement, although
it has some weaknesses, for example in relation to assessment
of the marine environment and the approach to scenario building.
Some sort of follow-up process is highly desirable, and this should
be linked to the assessment requirements of the Convention on
Biological Diversity and other multilateral environmental agreements.
MEMORANDUM
The Joint Nature Conservation Committee (JNCC)
is the statutory adviser to Government on UK and international
nature conservation, on behalf of the Council for Nature Conservation
and the Countryside, the Countryside Council for Wales, Natural
England and Scottish Natural Heritage. Its work contributes to
maintaining and enriching biological diversity, conserving geological
features and sustaining natural systems.
We welcome the opportunity to provide evidence
to this inquiry on matters relevant to our statutory remit. Our
response is provided to each of the questions raised by the Environmental
Audit Committee in turn.
1. How successful has the MA been in influencing
decision making at UK, EU and international levels? How can we
encourage adoption of the MA response options in countries that
have been slow to do so such as the US, Brazil and India?
1.1 There is some evidence that the findings
of the MA have been used to inform decisions within those sectors
of UK Government concerned with biodiversity. For example, the
MA is cited in the introduction to Defra's World Summit on Sustainable
Development Delivery Plan for International Biodiversity, Beyond
Johannesburg: delivering our international biodiversity commitments
(as amended 2006), and influences its subsequent objectives and
actions. In addition, the MA has informed much of the work done
by officials in support of the Inter-Departmental Ministerial
Group on Biodiversity (see our response to question 2).
1.2 Within the EU, the MA has been cited
as the evidence base in a number of cases of policy development,
especially with respect to its findings on the deterioration of
ecosystem services and the loss of biodiversity. These include
the EC Thematic Strategy on the Protection and Conservation of
the Marine Environment,[1]
the EC Thematic Strategy on the Sustainable Use of Natural Resources,[2]
the Commission's proposal for the EU Sustainable Development Strategy
(EU SDS), and the EC Biodiversity Communication (Halting the
Loss of Biodiversity by 2010—and beyond),[3]
and its target- and action-orientated annex,[4]
all of which refer to the MA (though such references were lost
in the adopted version of the EU SDS).
1.3 Within multilateral environmental agreements,
the MA has been subject to the greatest consideration within the
Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD), notably through the
decision (VIII/9) adopted at the 8th Conference of the Parties.[5]
The Ramsar Convention on Wetlands of International Importance
considered at its 9th Conference of the Parties a special report
by the MA, Ecosystem services and human well-being: wetlands
and water, the findings of which influenced the content of
a number of resolutions arising from the Conference. Whilst these
actions (including the CBD's intention to discuss the MA with
the other biodiversity-related conventions to enable joint actions
to respond to the drivers of biodiversity loss) are welcome, if
the MA's influence is restricted to biodiversity-related agreements
(many of which have themselves yet to address the findings of
the MA) then it will have failed to make the impact that is necessary
to maintain the ecosystem services upon which humans depend.
1.4 In summary, it is not yet clear to us
that the MA has had a strong influence on policy development at
UK, EU or global levels. Where policy responses have been formulated,
we are not convinced that they are adequate to the challenge—most
fall well short of the "unprecedented effort" which
the MA suggests is required. Moreover, we see little evidence
that the findings of the MA have penetrated to sectors that are
not directly responsible for measures related to biodiversity.
For example, we see little evidence of the MA being considered,
or influencing policy, in spheres such as agriculture, fisheries,
trade and energy, all of which have a fundamental impact upon
how, and if, natural resources are managed sustainably.
1.5 Despite the question, we are not clear
that the USA, Brazil or India have been especially slow in adopting
the various policy responses suggested in the MA. Nevertheless,
the UK's sustainable development dialogues with countries such
as India and Brazil offer the opportunity to explore these issues
further.
2. To what extent have MA findings and processes
been incorporated into UK departments? How aware are departments
of the importance of the MA? What steps are being taken to ensure
that the findings of the MA are being considered and, where relevant,
acted upon in the departments? Is there any evidence of real change
in government as an outcome of the MA?
2.1 We see evidence that the findings of
the MA have been incorporated into the thinking and processes
of some Government departments and their agencies, notably within
parts of Defra, DFID and FCO with which we deal. This is most
evident in the work that has been undertaken by JNCC for the Inter-Departmental
Ministerial Group on Biodiversity (IDMGB) and which has been guided
by officials from the aforementioned departments. This work has
examined the various mechanisms (such as multilateral environmental
agreements), policies and obligations for the conservation of
biodiversity internationally, and has assessed their effectiveness
at mitigating the direct and indirect drivers of biodiversity
loss. Subsequently, we have been looking at the impact of the
various drivers of biodiversity loss and how these affect ecosystem
services, especially those upon which the world's poor depend.
The MA has been fundamental in shaping and enabling these analyses.
The work is ongoing; ultimately, we hope it will guide the prioritisation
of UK effort on the conservation of international biodiversity
and the ecosystem services that such biodiversity provides.
2.2 We cannot comment on how the MA has
been incorporated into other departments (or other parts of the
departments mentioned above) with which we do not routinely deal.
However, the MA's findings are relevant across a wide range of
departments because, as the MA itself notes, the policies and
international agreements with the greatest impact on biodiversity
are not in the environmental field but, rather, deal with wider
political and economic issues. Indeed, we regard the MA as providing
an important means of engagement with non-environment sectors
on the value of ecosystem goods and services. Furthermore, the
emphasis in the MA on dealing with all the drivers of biodiversity
loss, especially the indirect ones (such as socio-political, economic
and cultural factors and human population growth) that are rarely
effectively addressed in policy responses and which are typically
the responsibility of non-environment departments, enables policy
makers to focus on the fundamental causes of biodiversity loss
rather than simply treating the symptoms. We believe that an internal
government mechanism, such as the IDMGB, is vital if the findings
of the MA are to penetrate within and between departments and
are to lead to coherent policy formulation which is then sustained
in European and other international fora. In light of this, we
believe it is desirable for other departments, such as the Department
of Trade and Industry, to participate in the IDMGB.
2.3 JNCC is developing a framework for UK
nature conservation that sets out the main drivers of ecosystem
change and the actions required to mitigate these at five scales:
the wider world, the national territory/regional sea, terrestrial
ecosystems/marine landscapes, protected areas and priority habitats/species.
This work was guided and inspired by the MA. JNCC is currently
experimenting with extending this approach as a planning tool
to identify corporate priorities. This has involved sub-categorisation
of the direct drivers into a series of human activities and identification
of the factors that make each of these activities unsustainable;
the relationship between human activities and factors has then
been determined at UK and global scales. An assessment of the
relative impact of each driver in terms of biodiversity loss has
also been made.
2.4 The UK Global Environmental Change Committee
(GECC) is an inter-agency committee which helps to co-ordinate
UK involvement in the science and technology of climate change
and other global environmental change, both nationally and internationally.
It aims to ensure that UK government policy is informed by a robust
science base. The GECC has a Global Biodiversity Sub-Committee
(GBSC), one of the objectives of which is to identify significant
gaps in scientific understanding of global biodiversity change
and propose options for addressing them. As a starting point for
work towards this objective the GBSC organised a workshop on 3
February 2006 to review the MA's findings, policy responses and
gaps in scientific knowledge from a UK perspective. The conclusions
of this workshop have been summarised as a series of recommendations[6]
which are a good starting point for planning further UK work around
the types of question asked by this inquiry.
2.5 Within the UK Biodiversity Action Plan
(UK BAP) the MA has hardly featured at UK level. Country biodiversity
strategies have also been adopted, but we are unsure to what extent
the MA was considered in their development. The MA never ventured
below the geographic scale of sub-regional assessments, other
than through the use of individual research projects to illustrate
certain points. As such, the MA is difficult to use directly by
countries within the UK without further work to assess the relevance
or appropriateness of its findings at this scale. Therefore it
is almost impossible for the UK BAP to use the MA at anything
other than a strategic level.
3. How has the MA been used to ensure that
there is adequate policy coherence, placing adequate weight on
non-financial impacts and environmental limits in policies? Are
the issues raised in the MA adequately addressed by UK policy
appraisal through Regulatory Impact Assessments? Can departments
document examples where the MA has resulted in a change in the
preferred policy option to one which is more sustainable?
3.1 We feel that it is too early to provide
substantive evidence of any greater policy coherence resulting
from the MA and responses to it. However, we refer again to the
creation of the IDMGB which, we believe, offers the best hope
of gaining a coherent approach within and between departments
to the UK's policy on biodiversity internationally. Indeed, JNCC
recommended to the IDMGB that Government needed to undertake a
critical analysis of the impact on international biodiversity
of its full range of non-biodiversity policies as a first step
towards a) enabling the integration of biodiversity and ecosystem
service issues into the wider policy arena, and b) ensuring that
that these different policies are not working at cross-purposes.
We are pleased to note that terms of reference for this study
are under development.
4. Should the UK develop its own assessment
report and would it be relevant to include external UK impacts?
4.1 In our response to question 2 we outline
the difficulty of applying the MA results at a national level,
through the example of the UK BAP, and we refer to the work that
the GECC-GBSC has done to review the MA to make it more applicable
at a UK scale. We recommend that the UK should continue the work
started by the GBSC to make an appraisal of the MA from a UK perspective.
This is an essential step in trying to integrate the findings
of the MA into UK policies and practices. It should not be a laborious
and time-consuming replication of the MA process for the UK, but
rather a consideration of the MA to identify the key issues for
the UK. The recommendations made by the GBSC usefully outline
the work necessary to undertake this type of UK assessment report.
4.2 We strongly recommend that the external
impacts of activities originating in the UK should not be ignored.
The MA comprises an extensive source of biodiversity information
and provides a mechanism to highlight priority ecosystems and
associated threats. In collaboration with the World Conservation
Monitoring Centre in Cambridge, JNCC is exploring mechanisms to
link information from the MA to the influence that the UK has
through trade, aid and investment on specific ecosystems in particular
areas of the world, and highlighting actions that are being taken,
or need to be taken, to protect these ecosystems. Through this
means the MA provides a standard, global reference source.
5. How have international institutions adopted
the findings and processes of the MA? Why has the World Bank been
slow to respond to the MA? How should the findings of the MA be
incorporated into the World Bank's work?
5.1 The World Bank was one of the primary
partners in the MA, providing both technical and analytical contributions.
In January 2006, the World Bank published a report, Where is
the wealth of nations? Measuring capital for the 21st century.
It complements the MA report, which played an important role in
signalling the importance of environmental services to human well-being.
The World Bank report places an economic value on natural resources
and argues that many of these values are underpinned by environmental
services that may be at risk. The report specifically states that
the degradation of ecosystem services is a block to achieving
the Millennium Development Goals.
5.2 The World Bank also referred to the
MA in its 2005 Annual Report, which recognises the need to build
on the MA, take responsibility for understanding the lessons,
and turn the findings into operational work. These commitments
seem to represent a useful starting point for trying to further
incorporate the findings of the MA into the World Bank's work.
6. Are NGOs acting on the MA's recommendations,
particularly those involved in development and poverty reduction?
6.1 JNCC has no specific knowledge or experience
to answer this question. However, despite the fact that the MA
highlights how the protection of ecosystem services can contribute
significantly to reducing proverty, we fear that in a growing
global climate of famine and hardship, those NGOs concerned with
poverty relief and development may be reluctant to divert resources
away from very immediate and important life-saving activities.
7. How has business risen to the challenges
identified in the MA? Has the MA been used in strategic business
planning?
7.1 We are not able to offer any opinion
on this question.
8. How useful was the MA in addressing the
assessment needs of a number of Multilateral Environmental Agreements
such as the Convention on Biological Diversity?
8.1 The Convention on Biological Diversity
(CBD) undertakes scientific assessments predominantly through
its Subsidiary Body for Scientific, Technical and Technological
Advice (SBSTTA). The assessment work is supported by a variety
of mechanisms, including ad hoc expert groups, preparatory
work undertaken by the CBD secretariat, commissioned reports,
and workshops. A spirit of collaboration with other organisations
is adopted across all types of assessment.
8.2 At the 5th Conference of the Parties
in Nairobi in 2000, SBSTTA was asked to identify and explore scientific
assessment methodologies and to identify opportunities to work
with the MA on the CBD's assessment needs. At the 6th Conference
of the Parties in the Hague in 2002, parties were urged to provide
expertise to support the MA, and SBSTTA was requested to review
the MA findings and report back. The CBD secretariat was also
charged with facilitating implementation of the MA. At the 10th
SBSTTA meeting in 2005, SBSTTA decided to focus half of each of
its meetings on scientific assessments of status and trends and
to enhance engagement with the scientific community. The 9th Conference
of the Parties in Germany in 2008 will consider the evaluation
of the MA due for publication in 2007 as a precursor to debate
on the need for another integrated assessment of biodiversity
and ecosystems.
8.3 In summary, the MA has played a prominent
role within the scientific assessment processes of the CBD and
has generally raised the profile and understanding of scientific
assessments and how they can be used.
9. Were there any gaps or weaknesses in the
MA? How should the MA be followed up? Are the mechanisms and expertise
which were developed to create the MA now being lost due to a
lack of confirmation of a formal follow up procedure?
9.1 Although it has some weaknesses, the
MA is a tremendous achievement that pulls together in one place
an enormous quantity of biodiversity information and expertise
and interprets it in a policy-relevant manner. The strong clear
messages, the variety of levels of summary and the availability
of cross-cutting interpretive reports (biodiversity, wetlands,
etc) all make the vast quantity of information accessible to users.
9.2 In terms of weaknesses, the MA was generally
less comprehensive for the marine environment than for terrestrial
ecosystems, possibly because of gaps in knowledge.
9.3 The MA also tried to illustrate the
state of ecosystems in the future through the use of a number
of scenarios that represented some of the extreme positions to
which current developments might lead; the effects these might
have on biodiversity were then modelled. For many, including JNCC,
this approach was not credible enough for the results to be taken
very seriously. Each scenario was too far away from any form of
modern-day living to be tangible. This leads to doubts about the
abilities to model current trends against such scenarios and whether
there is any likelihood that the scenarios could ever exist. A
more reasoned extension of current trends through a modelling
and hindcasting approach, set in context by a clear discussion
of the types of interaction or event that could disrupt the model,
would have been more useful.
9.4 The delay in final publication and release
of synthesis reports before the main body of evidence was available
to substantiate the conclusions was regrettable.
9.5 Any consideration of future assessments,
eg as planned for the 9th CBD Conference of the Parties, should
try to relate the requirement to scientific assessment needs,
and should not recommend assessments more frequently than once
per decade. It will also be important to ensure that scientific
assessments are explicitly undertaken in full collaboration with
other related initiatives, such as the International Mechanism
of Scientific Expertise on Biodiversity (IMoSEB), progress reporting,
publication of biodiversity indicators, etc.
October 2006
1 COM(2005) 504 final. Back
2
COM(2005) 670 final. Back
3
COM(2006) 216 final. Back
4
SEC(2006) 621. Back
5
http://www.biodiv.org/decisions/default.aspx?m=COP-08&id=11023&lg=0 Back
6
http://www.ukgecc.org/Documents/Biodiv%20SG/MA%20documents/Recommendations%20from%20the%20MA%20Workshopv2.pdf Back
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