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UNCORRECTED TRANSCRIPT OF ORAL EVIDENCE To be published as HC 289-ii House of COMMONS MINUTES OF EVIDENCE TAKEN BEFORE ENVIRONMENTAL AUDIT COMMITTEE (TRADE, DEVELOPMENT AND ENVIRONMENT SUB-COMMITTEE)
TRADE, DEVELOPMENT AND ENVIRONMENT: The Role of the FCO
Wednesday 7 February 2007 MR MARCUS YEO and DR VIN FLEMING Evidence heard in Public Questions 39 - 69
USE OF THE TRANSCRIPT
Oral Evidence Taken before the Environmental Audit, (Trade, Development and Environment, Sub-Committee) on Wednesday 7 February 2007 Members present Colin Challen, in the Chair Mr Martin Caton David Howarth ________________ Memorandum submitted by the Joint Nature Conservation Committee
Examination of Witnesses Witnesses: Mr Marcus Yeo, Director of Resources and External Affairs, and Dr Vin Fleming, Head of Global and Overseas Territories Advice Programmes, Joint Nature Conservation Committee, gave evidence. Q39 Chairman: Welcome to this afternoon's session. It is good to see you both here. I wonder if you could introduce yourselves and briefly outline your perspectives on where the environment and sustainable development fit within the Foreign and Commonwealth Office and UK priorities. Mr Yeo: I am Marcus Yeo, Director of Resources and External Affairs of JNCC. Dr Fleming: I am Vincent Fleming. I am Head of the International Unit and I have responsibility for our Global and Overseas Territories Programmes. Mr Yeo: I will start by giving you our general perspectives on the FCO and also say a little about the JNCC's involvement in international work. We are, as you know, the statutory adviser to the Government on UK and international nature conservation. Our international work is broadly divided into four programmes. First, we have a global advice programme, which includes advice and support we give to government on the development and implementation of multilateral environmental agreements, such as the Convention on Biological Diversity. Secondly, we have a global impacts programme. This is a new area of work for us and this is concerned with evaluating the impacts the UK has on biodiversity globally - for example, from trade and tourism - and advising government on mechanisms to mitigate any adverse effects. Thirdly, and of particular interest to this sub-committee, we have a programme concerned with advice on biodiversity conservation in the Overseas Territories. Fourthly, we have a European advice programme, which is concerned with advising on the development and implementation of policies for or affecting the environment, principally within the European Union. We therefore work very closely with the UK Government on all aspects of our international work, and it is government ministers and officials who are our main customers for advice. The principal government stakeholders we work with are FCO, Defra and DfID. We have experience of working with FCO on a fairly wide range of environmental issues. The UK, we believe, is a key player on the world stage in terms of the environment. It has shown very strong leadership on some issues, notably global climate change, and we believe that the FCO has a crucial role in helping to implement the UK's international objectives in relation to the environment. It can act, for example, as the face of the UK Government abroad; it can help to provide an understanding of the social, political and cultural context of environmental policies in other countries; and it can also - and I think that this is particularly important - provide leadership across government for international issues. The FCO does undertake some very valuable work currently on the environment. Notable examples would be work on climate change; supporting biodiversity conservation in the Overseas Territories; measures to reduce illegal logging; and pressing for reform of the Common Agricultural Policy. However, the impression one gets when one reads documents such as the 2006 White Paper is that global environmental issues could have a rather higher profile within the FCO. For example, 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 only when you drill down into the specific responsibilities of the FCO that you find some reference to biodiversity conservation; and 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. We also believe that such an approach would be much more in tune with what has come out of the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment, which stresses that ecosystem services underpin economic growth and social equity. It is no surprise therefore that the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment states that, for example, environmental degradation is likely to hinder attempts to meet the Millennium Development Goals. Another key message from the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment is that reversing environmental degradation so that the flow of ecosystem services is maintained will require us to address the indirect drivers of biodiversity loss; so these are social, cultural and political factors. It will not be enough just to deal with approximate causes of biodiversity loss; we need to delve deeper and address the more intractable issues that are the root cause of environmental degradation. I am sure that these are messages which are very familiar to you from your recent inquiry into the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment. I also believe, or at least hope, that they are messages that are beginning to have a greater political resonance. We clearly believe that the FCO has a critical role to play in taking forward the UK's responsibilities for the environment internationally, but clearly it also cannot do that on its own. It must be supported by other government departments, in particular Defra and DfID, and also by bodies such as ourselves, who are well placed to give the Government scientific and technical advice on specific issues, and so ensure that policies are based on sound evidence. We therefore believe very strongly that government needs to put in place appropriate mechanisms and processes to ensure that there is effective collaboration between departments. Coherence between different policies, we believe, is essential; and we need strong cross‑departmental leadership on international environmental issues. The Inter-Departmental Ministerial Group on Biodiversity, which as you all know comprises ministers from FCO, Defra, DfID and the Chairman of JNCC, we believe offers an important mechanism for achieving this. We also recommend that shared targets, for example in departmental Public Service Agreements, may help with this process. That gives you a brief overview of where JNCC is coming from, what our role is and also our perspective on the work that the FCO does in relation to the environment. We would of course be very happy to talk in more depth about some of these issues. Q40 Chairman: Looking at your evidence, there is the suggestion there that the environment is taking a lesser priority in the FCO - so it is not being maintained at a certain level but it has actually gone down - at a time, as you have said this afternoon, when they should be increasing the priority given to the environment. What do you think has effected that change? What has made them perhaps not give it the attention that it deserves? Mr Yeo: It is certainly the case that there are fewer staff working directly on environmental issues within the FCO at the moment. There are fewer staff than there were just two years ago. This is following the establishment of a Sustainable Development and Business Group in place of the previous Environmental Policy Department. We do have close contacts still with some parts of the FCO, in particular the Overseas Territories Department where we have very good working relationships with officials; but, in general, the frequency of our contacts has dropped off considerably. I think that to some extent the lack of expertise within FCO can be offset by having expertise, for example, within Defra or within JNCC. We can offer that specialist advice. I also believe that there are considerable advantages in mainstreaming the environment within other policy areas. However, I have to say that, at the end of all that, I still believe that you need some central core within FCO that has responsibility for overseeing that integration and mainstreaming, and making sure it is effective. Q41 Chairman: Would they not argue that the appointment of John Ashton as the special representative on climate change perhaps provides some of that focus? Do you not welcome his appointment and the creation of that position? Mr Yeo: Absolutely. I think that is a very important appointment. It sends out a very strong signal of just how seriously FCO takes climate change; but that is just one environmental issue, after all, is it not? It is not dealing with core losses of biodiversity through other causes. Q42 Chairman: You could argue that it is the key issue to deal with. One could see some people saying that the loss of biodiversity is a consequence of climate change, so perhaps that is where our priorities should lie. Is that what the argument is, do you think, from the Foreign Office? Mr Yeo: I think there is some sense in that. It is abundantly clear from the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment that climate change will be the big driver of biodiversity loss over the coming few decades. It is only right and proper that FCO, and government more widely, puts appropriate resources into that. However, I would say that government still needs to put resources into other aspects of environmental protection and biodiversity conservation. I think also that the FCO needs to take seriously the interdependencies that exist between environmental, social and economic issues when addressing climate change. For example, taking some measures that will mitigate the effects of climate change or help the environment adapt to the effects of climate change can have benefits for biodiversity. To give a couple of examples, protecting ecosystems that are significant sinks for carbon dioxide, such as tropical rainforests and peat bogs, will help to mitigate the release of greenhouse gases but will also deliver biodiversity benefits. The protection of coral reefs, mangrove swamps and other coastal ecosystems will help to lessen the impacts of climate change through sea level rising, increased storminess, but, again, will deliver benefits for biodiversity. Measures such as this will also deliver social and economic benefits; for example, protecting the livelihood of local communities. Q43 Chairman: Does it really matter if the FCO does this work or not? Perhaps the argument could be made that their role is to open doors for other departments with much more specialist knowledge - Defra perhaps and DfID, perhaps even agencies like the Environment Agency - and that FCO should be there as the sort of diplomatic lubricant to make sure that those other departments have good access overseas. Mr Yeo: What is clear is that all these departments need to work together very closely. We have already talked about the relationship between FCO, DfID and Defra, and that really has to be a very close, almost seamless, working relationship, I believe, on international issues. One way of achieving that, which I have already mentioned, is this Inter-Departmental Ministerial Group on Biodiversity, which does have the potential to be highly effective in providing the co-ordination of policies on international biodiversity. What we recommend is that it needs to have a very clear focus, concentrating for example on the WSSD target to reduce the rate of global biodiversity loss by 2010, and also possibly to include a wider range of government departments; for example, perhaps DTI or the Department for Culture, Media and Sports. What is essential here, however, is that the FCO shows strong leadership; that it works across the range of government departments to make sure that we have coherent policies; not just on the environment of course, but on other issues as well. It is very important that FCO plays that leadership role, because, if they do not, there is a danger of having incoherent policies. To give an example that is quite topical at the moment, there is the issue about biofuels. At the moment, there is a big rush to increase the amount of biofuels that is used in the UK because it is a low-carbon energy source, but the impetus to do this can lead to the destruction of tropical forests through South East Asia and in South America. That can be tremendously damaging for biodiversity, threatening species such as the orang‑utan for example, and also loses the forests' capacity to store carbon, so that actually the advantages for climate change may be rather slight. It is an example of where we need policy coherence across different departments. It is also a good example of the impacts that the UK has globally through activities within the UK, which we think is something that the FCO should take very seriously. Q44 Chairman: You say that the FCO staff have been less frequently involved in international negotiations on those national environmental agreements. Mr Yeo: Yes. Q45 Chairman: Why is their involvement at that level so important? Dr Fleming: I can perhaps offer some experience from my participation in UK delegations to some of these MEAs, for example CITES, the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species. I think that, in some earlier evidence you took from the International Fund for Animal Welfare, they talked about the basking shark proposal from the UK, which went to two conferences of the CITES parties. I was a member of the UK delegation to those conferences, in our role as a CITES scientific authority. I think that what we saw there, from the input from the FCO staff member who was part of that delegation, was that they played a fairly key role in lobbying, helping to bring other parties together, and perhaps acting as an honest broker, if you like, which I think is a role where the UK is held in high regard in a number of areas. As well as having an FCO member on the delegation, FCO, before that, had been able to lobby through its posts throughout the world, to find out what the views of other parties would be on voting, and so on, but also to gather intelligence on their views on the proposal beforehand; so that when we went to the conference we were then able to know which countries we may wish to target, to persuade, or where other countries would be more difficult to persuade. I think that sort of network, having the FCO support at the conference, was quite important. Also, having the back-up of the FCO network of posts was equally vital. Coming to the future, I am sure that FCO will continue in some supportive role, but I understand that it is as unlikely to be as intensive in future. Q46 Chairman: Is that to be made up somewhere else, by some input from somewhere else in government? Is it simply a swapping of responsibilities within the departments, or is it a net reduction in our involvement? Dr Fleming: It is not necessarily a net reduction in the UK's involvement but, looking at FCO participation in those sorts of negotiations, it seems to be somewhat diminished. Of course, those UK delegations are multi-departmental. There will be people from Defra there, ourselves, the Royal Botanic Gardens at Kew, perhaps Her Majesty's Customs and Revenue, and so on. So there are other members of the delegation who can try and fill the gap. However, in terms of the FCO role there, we would reiterate that in our experience - or in my experience, at least - they played a fairly helpful and important role. Q47 Chairman: I was going to ask if there had been any noticeable difference in our success or otherwise in international negotiations. You can have a large delegation but it is totally ineffective; you can have a very small one that is very effective. Has that impacted on our effectiveness in these negotiations? Dr Fleming: As you say, the effectiveness of delegations can vary and it does not necessarily depend on the size of the delegation. Of course, it is a question of how you measure effectiveness. You may work very hard as a team, and so on, and still not be able to persuade sufficient other countries to your way of thinking. I think that it is a little hard for us to say what impact there has been, because some of these changes are fairly recent, and conferences of the parties are at two to three-yearly intervals. So, in the CITES example I gave you, our next conference of the parties will be in June this year in The Netherlands. There will be some FCO support, but I do not think that it is likely to be of the nature that we have had hitherto. Q48 Chairman: Given that this involvement from the FCO, as you say , is so important, has there been any stated reason given for this reduction? Mr Yeo: I do not believe so. I have not heard an explicit reason; just that reorganisation within the FCO has been in line with their White Paper and their strategy. Q49 David Howarth: Other witnesses have said to us that the problem has been with the internal restructuring of the FCO; that the Environmental Policy Department was subsumed into something called the Sustainable Development Business Group and that contributed to a loss of focus and perhaps a loss of expertise in FCO. Is that your view too? Mr Yeo: Yes, to a large extent. I would reiterate the points I made: that to some degree FCO can rely on Defra, JNCC and other bodies for specialist expertise; but I would re-emphasise that I still believe there is a role for some central co-ordinating function within FCO that has oversight of its environmental responsibilities. Q50 David Howarth: You mention those other departments, Defra - and DfID as well, presumably, although we have had an interesting time investigating DfID's involvement in environmental issues - but I suppose the crucial question is this. If FCO is relying on those other departments, how effectively does it work together, especially that threesome? And, if it is not working particularly effectively, how can that be improved? Mr Yeo: It is working very effectively in some areas. A very good example would be the Overseas Territories Environment Programme, which is jointly administered by DfID and FCO, and which I believe has been very effective in helping to implement Environment Charters within the territories. Overall, however, there are areas where those three departments and others could work more closely together. Having mechanisms such as this Inter-Departmental Ministerial Group on Biodiversity can therefore help and also, I believe, having shared targets - in particular, shared targets in Public Service Agreements, which would really ensure that departments have a clear goal that they were both aiming for. Q51 David Howarth: Might it be a good idea, for example, for all those departments to have a climate change objective? Mr Yeo: I would be very much in favour of that or, for example, commitments entered into at the World Summit on Sustainable Development. I think you can make a strong case there that you could have a shared target, at least between Defra and FCO. Q52 David Howarth: In your memo, you particularly mention Europe and the FCO's role in our relationship with Europe. You say that there is a problem with the EU pursuing the Lisbon Agenda, because that focuses on conventional economic goals and perhaps draws attention away from the broader sustainable development picture. Are you saying that the FCO is responsible for this, because it is not emphasising the Government's environmental goals, or are you saying that it is the Government's problem and not the FCO's? That the FCO is carrying out its mandate and that is where the problem is, or is it to do with the FCO itself? Mr Yeo: I have no criticism of the FCO in this respect. In my experience, the main problem is within the European Commission. We occasionally get rhetoric, for example from Barroso, that sustainable development is what the European Union is all about and that is the overarching framework for all European policy. In reality, however, that does not seem to be the case. It is the Lisbon priorities of jobs, the economy and competitiveness that seem to take priority. I think that this overlooks the fact that there is now a substantial body of evidence that good environmental management and good environmental regulation can stimulate the economy; it can foster innovation; it can lead to the creation of jobs; it can create new markets. Strong environmental policies, therefore, do not hinder economic growth. Q53 David Howarth: We have another example of this today, do we not, with emissions standards from cars? On the one side there was heavy lobbying by car manufacturers, and perhaps the governments of countries that manufacture the cars; on the other side there was lobbying from environmental groups. The outcome is often, from the environmentalists' point of view, not particularly satisfactory. Could you criticise the British Government, the FCO in particular, for not coming strongly enough and lobbying on the environmental side? Mr Yeo: That is not an area I have any experience of. Q54 David Howarth: What about in general? Does the FCO put itself about in Brussels on behalf of the environment? Mr Yeo: They obviously have the permanent representation there in Brussels and JNCC has good, close links with them. I am really not in a position to say just how effective they are in promoting environmental issues within the Commission and other institutions. Q55 Mr Caton: You have been very positive about the sustainable development attaché network. These posts, as I understand it, deal with sustainable development in general. How well do they address environmental sustainability specifically? Dr Fleming: I think that the sustainable development attaché network began as an environmental attaché network and it subsequently changed its title and its role a little bit. Our experience with them has always been fairly positive. It seems to us to be a very useful network for sharing information, experience, and so on, within and between posts, and is probably quite useful as a buffer or maybe as a reservoir of institutional knowledge which, when there is often fairly rapid turnover of staff, can be very useful. To get back to your question of how important the environment is in that, I have to say that, again, our links with the network has probably diminished somewhat of late. We do see their regular newsletter, and I believe they have annual conferences still. From the content of their newsletter, there does seem to be a fairly broad focus on the sustainable development agenda across all its pillars. Environment certainly does appear in that sort of perspective, therefore. Q56 Mr Caton: Can we turn to the work of our overseas posts, like our embassies, on the environment agenda? Other witnesses have expressed concern about, for instance, the closure of the Madagascar embassy, with the significance of that country for biodiversity. Do you believe that we need posts in other countries that have environment close to the top of their agenda? Dr Fleming: It is not an issue that we have looked at in great detail. Clearly, there may be advantages in having posts maybe in every country, but I assume that is not feasible technically or from a resource perspective. In some respects I do not think that we can offer any significant comment on that. I think that there is merit in focusing on priority countries from a variety of different perspectives, and the environment might be one of those. In some of the work that we have done related to our global impacts work, and indeed for work with the Inter‑Departmental Ministerial Group, we try to highlight what countries might be the most important if you were interested in conserving tropical forests or if you were interested in conserving tropical marine habitats, and so on. Very often, there is quite a strong overlap with those countries which are already priorities from an FCO, DfID or other departmental perspective. I do not feel able to offer a particular comment on the Madagascar situation, but clearly we recognise that FCO have to prioritise where they place posts and retain embassies, and so on. Q57 Mr Caton: I guess that what some of our other witnesses felt was that, when you are prepared to close an embassy in somewhere like Madagascar, with its huge environmental importance, that tells you something about the priority order we have in the Foreign and Commonwealth Office - but you do not have to comment any more on that. You have already mentioned your supporting work in the implementation of the Overseas Territories Environment Charters. How successful have these proven to be in protecting the environment in those places? Dr Fleming: I think that the Environment Charters were a very important first step. The fact that they set out guiding principles and reciprocal obligations or duties on both the Government of the United Kingdom and the governments of the territories was clearly valuable, in terms of setting down goals, objectives, principles, and so on, that the territories might abide by and by which the UK Government might support them. The question of how you measure their effectiveness is a little more difficult. First, we would be a lot poorer without them; so I think that we should welcome the fact that they exist. There perhaps does need to be a mechanism to follow up and monitor their implementation and their success. As I recall, that was one of the recommendations from the review of the Overseas Territories Environment Programme. One of the principles from the charters was that territories should establish stakeholder groups and develop their own strategies to implement the charters. I am aware that some of these are underway or are happening. OTEP have supported such strategies being developed in the Turks and Caicos Islands and for the Falkland Islands. I think that work is underway in St Helena. Bermuda has developed its own biodiversity strategy, and the Cayman Islands are also developing a biodiversity strategy of their own, supported by the Darwin Initiative. These are the next steps, which enable the territories to set out clearly where they intend to go and maybe how much that might cost them. We are always very conscious that the territories are self-governing and autonomous, and I think it is important that they own the charters and seek to lead and develop action plans, and so on, from them. Q58 Mr Caton: How does the JNCC provide direct support for Overseas Territories? Dr Fleming: We have done a number of projects over the years. As you are probably aware from previous evidence, we have recently recruited a post - who started work on 1 February and so is very new, but who came to us from Ascension Island. Her role will be entirely on supporting Overseas Territories work. We are also initiating a range of different projects, some of which depend on external income, which at this stage is not yet guaranteed, that would, for example, look at helping to provide guidance on how to do economic valuation of the environment in some Overseas Territories. That is in collaboration, hopefully, with Montserrat, the Cayman Islands and Bermuda. It may help to answer questions such as, how much is a mangrove swamp worth to the economy and environment in hard cash figures? That may help them ---- Q59 Chairman: Do you have an answer to that question? Dr Fleming: No, that is what the projects are designed to find out - but, hopefully, over the next few years. We have started work already on producing a toolkit for economic valuation for environmental services, for ecosystem services, and so on. The hope, subject to OTEP approval, is that these projects will take place over the next couple of years and will maybe conclude with a workshop, which helps to bring these examples together as case studies, which can then perhaps be promoted elsewhere within the territories. We are also aiming to support work. We have done a review of all the non-native species across the Overseas Territories. Non-native invasive species are of course one of the major causes of biodiversity loss within the territories, especially in the small island environments, which characterise most of our Overseas Territories. We hope to support work on looking at mitigation of climate change. We are also hoping to establish a post based in the Falkland Islands, which would support work on the agreement on the conservation of albatrosses and petrels within the South Atlantic Overseas Territories. Again, it is subject to some OTEP funding but this would be a jointly funded post between Defra, the Overseas Territories in the Atlantic themselves, and the JNCC. So we are putting in place a number of projects like that, to try to build and enhance our support; again, stressing that we seek to do so in a collaborative way; that we are not able, nor do we wish to, to go out to the territories and say, "You should do x, y and z"; that we seek to build on areas where (a) we have the expertise within JNCC; (b) where there is a demand from the territories themselves, and (c) where we can put together a good, collaborative project to provide support. As an example of that, I was in the Cayman Islands last week where, at their request, they were looking for support in implementing their new legislation on CITES, which has been passed by their government but has not yet been brought into effect. Together with a colleague from Defra, who was from the CITES Management Authority in the UK, we spent a few days over there, looking at the fairly substantial issues they have to address on trade in endangered species, trying to help them get the processes in place which they can implement in future. Those are a few examples of where we want to be going, therefore. To summarise the sorts of areas where we want to work, ideally we want to look at projects which have a strategic overview across the territories. We have limited resources ourselves, of course, and we will probably not engage in a single‑species project in this territory and then another somewhere else. We may therefore be looking at projects that take a strategic overview, which may then help to advise on the implementation of OTEP or where resources might be targeted; and also examples where we might get involved with in-territory projects but those which have a broader application elsewhere. We hope to engage with economic valuation work over the next couple of years - and I should add that we have recently appointed an environmental economist and this will be a substantial part of her work, perhaps up to 50 per cent of her time if everything comes together. So there are projects like that, which look at issues within territories but then may be exported to other territories, or indeed also the UK, for broader application. Mr Yeo: Perhaps I could add a couple of points, to indicate the scale of resources that JNCC is intending to put into the Overseas Territories. From 2007-08 onwards, we are aiming to direct at least £200,000 per annum towards work on the territories; that is including direct costs as well staff costs. About half of this is dependent on funding from external sources such as OTEP; so it is approximately £100,000 per annum from core government funding. It is small beer in the grand scheme of things, but we are able to make a small amount of money go a long way. Q60 Mr Caton: That really leads me on to my next question. In your written evidence to us you said that the Overseas Territories do not have the financial capacity to deal effectively with their environmental challenges. Have you assessed the level of funding that is required? Dr Fleming: The simple answer to that is no, but I think it is an important question, because various figures are being suggested and I am not entirely sure of the grounds for those. I think that it is an important step to take and one which could, and should, arise from territories doing their own action plans or strategic plans to implement the Environment Charters. If you set out the steps that you want to take, then you are better able to cost them and to estimate what resources may be involved. So I think that it is an important step to do that sort of analysis of what is current funding, what is desired funding and maybe what is necessary funding, and to see how big the difference between them actually is. The question then is where might those resources come from, and we are not necessarily able to say. Equally, however, there is another important point in relation to resources, namely that, regardless of how much resource you have available - and that may be funding, it may be help in other ways - it is quite important that it is targeted effectively and that it has a strategic direction: where do you want to spend this money? One of the - I would not like to use the word "difficulties" - with OTEP is that, in the past, it has largely been applicant‑driven. There is nothing wrong necessarily with that; but equally, when a fund is being driven by applicants, it does not necessarily take you in the strategic directions that you may wish to take. This year, for example, OTEP have set out fairly clear guidance that they want to provide support "in the following areas", and most of the applications that I have seen are falling very closely into those categories. I think that it is therefore quite important that you focus your money on strategic priorities, and maybe seek to guide applicants towards those, but it is also important to see what returns your money has provided. In other words, there should be some form of follow-up monitoring; some form of looking at what legacy previous projects have provided, and how successful they were or not - because, of course, failures are sometimes as instructive as successes. If you look at the Darwin Initiative, they have similar processes of post-project monitoring; equally, they have to look at this challenge of legacy: how do you determine what the legacy from your spend has actually been? Mr Yeo: Perhaps I could make one additional point. It is certainly the case at the moment that most of the support the UK provides to the territories for biodiversity conservation is through time-limited projects; primarily through OTEP, but also to some extent through the Darwin Initiative. This is very valuable but it is not any substitute, in the end, for much more secure, long‑term support for biodiversity conservation and environmental protection within the Overseas Territories. We firmly believe, therefore, that the resources that are made available to the territories for biodiversity conservation must be commensurate to the challenge - and the challenge is enormous. The global importance of the territories for biodiversity conservation is undoubted and it is huge. If the Government are really going to deliver their contribution towards the target to reduce the rate of biodiversity loss by 2010, it is clear to us that more resources are needed to support suitable measures within the territories. Q61 Mr Caton: Yes, more resources are needed, but as you said, Dr Fleming, it might not necessarily be financial resources. Is enough being done to build up institutional and knowledge capacity within the territories themselves? Dr Fleming: That is fairly difficult to answer without having a detailed knowledge of all the territories. Within the territories, we see very talented and very dedicated staff on the environmental side, but very often limited by the size of the territories themselves. Even those territories which have high GDP per capita, clearly if there are only 50,000 people in the territory it does not generate an enormous amount of income to use internally; and, of course, some of the territories themselves have very small populations. Therefore, how you generate internal, institutional capacity is potentially quite difficult. Q62 Mr Caton: Would one way be for the FCO or DfID to directly fund environmental posts in the territories? Dr Fleming: Clearly, some means of supporting posts, regardless of who it came from, might be desirable. It does not happen at the moment, to my knowledge. Q63 Mr Caton: What about those Overseas Territories that are not inhabited, by humankind at least? Are funds and management at the required level, and are there particular problems with these because of the remote nature of the territories? Dr Fleming: The remoteness of some of the territories does give rise to particular challenges. If you take some examples, within the Tristan da Cunha group or within the Pitcairn Island group there are inhabited islands but there are also uninhabited ones. Some of the uninhabited ones are some of the most important seabird islands in the world, of course. I think that you have heard from earlier evidence that non-native species - maybe rats in the Pacific, maybe house mice and other species on Tristan, or Gough Island in particular - pose a significant threat to breeding seabirds, albatrosses and petrels in particular. Clearly, they pose significant logistical challenges in terms of undertaking conservation action. You have to get people out there and, if you were seeking to do an eradication programme, you would need to be able to ship out tonnes of poison, and so on. Certainly for Gough Island there is a study underway at the moment into the feasibility of eradicating mice. That will come up with a cost-benefit analysis and also a costed action plan. I suspect that the resources required to do that will be substantial and above the level that is available through OTEP at the moment. With these big challenges, therefore, some means ideally need to be found to be able to support them. OTEP can fund the feasibility studies perhaps, but it would probably take more than its annual resources to undertake the task which would deliver the greatest conservation benefit. Q64 Chairman: Do we share some of this knowledge with other countries, which may themselves only be at a developing status - I am thinking of the Galapagos Islands - which also have serious problems in terms of biodiversity being threatened by, in that particular instance, tourism and the arrival of cruise ferries, and hordes of Americans trampling over everything? Is there a good mechanism for sharing our knowledge and expertise? Dr Fleming: There are a variety of mechanisms for sharing knowledge. I will come back to tourism and cruise ships in a moment but, coming back to non-native species, New Zealand has the greatest capacity and technical knowledge for eradicating non-native species from islands. New Zealand specialists have been used in these various feasibility studies that I have referred to. There is also, through the World Conservation Union, an invasive species specialist group, a global invasive species database - all of which enable knowledge to be shared throughout the entire community of those interested in non-native species. On the tourism side, clearly that issue is quite a significant one, especially for our Caribbean territories where cruise ship tourism is very high. I am less certain about the mechanisms for sharing information on that, but there are some web-based knowledge-sharing mechanisms. The Global Island Network, if I have remembered it correctly, is one such means. I think that there have been sustainable tourism initiatives, initiated in part by FCO in the past, which can clearly help with that. However, I have to say that the tourism side per se is not really my main area of expertise. Q65 Chairman: So your organisation may not have made any representations on that sort of thing, where we hear now that green tourism is the way out of poverty for many of these areas? Dr Fleming: We may not have made many representations on that side of things in the past; but, as I mentioned before, we now have an environmental economist on our staff who is able to help look at that. We are also very interested in taking the ecosystem approach to a whole range of issues involving biodiversity. One of the advantages that the Overseas Territories have is that they are fairly small, discrete units, which enable you to take a holistic view of the planning and management of development and the environment, without having the complications of being a country the size of Britain with a population our size. Perhaps in future, therefore, we will look increasingly to advise on that. I think that the ecosystem approach as promoted by the Convention on Biological Diversity is one such means to try to take this bigger picture, tied in with valuation of the environment. It is also important to consider that, as you suggested in your question, the reason people go to Caribbean islands is not necessarily to see thousands of other people; it is for those features which make those islands special, and those features are very often linked to the natural environment. People go to dive on coral reefs or perhaps to enjoy bird-watching, and so on. Q66 Chairman: Do you think that there are areas of biodiversity which are not related to climate change but which, in terms of the FCO's priorities, may lose out because of more of a focus on climate change? Mr Yeo: If all the environmental resources of the FCO were directed to climate change, it would mean that there was not much left to address issues such as non-native species, which are such a big issue for Overseas Territories and other small islands. So, yes, certainly an exclusive focus on climate change would be to the detriment of other areas of environmental work. Q67 Chairman: I just want to come back briefly to the issue of where the environment sits as a priority in the work of the FCO. If we have seen, as you have suggested, this reduction in effort at the core of the FCO, is that also filtering out into our overseas posts? Dr Fleming: It is very hard for me to comment on that, not having a great deal of contact directly with overseas posts. Where we do have such contact, it tends to be through someone in Whitehall and therefore I do not feel qualified to answer that. Q68 Chairman: The concerns that you do have, though - and no doubt you have expressed those to the FCO - what has been their response, if any? Mr Yeo: Their response is simply that they are aligning their structures, their priorities, with the 2006 White Paper and their Sustainable Development Strategy. That is what is guiding their work and the structures to deliver it. Q69 Chairman: So they are listening kindly, but not necessarily paying attention? Mr Yeo: Possibly. Chairman: Thank you both very much for coming and giving us your evidence this afternoon. That concludes the session. |