Written evidence submitted by the Joint
Nature Conservation Committee
1. INTRODUCTION
1.1 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. Our advice is set in
the context of the desirability of contributing to sustainable
development.
1.2 We comment both on the DFID White Paper
Eliminating world poverty: building our common future,
as well as the DFID Annual Report and Resource Accounts 2008-09 —referred
to hereafter as the White Paper and the Annual Report respectively.
2. GENERAL OBSERVATIONS
2.1 We welcome the prominence given in the
White Paper to ensuring environmental sustainability as a key
component of achieving the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs).
Likewise, we agree that the current economic down-turn provides
an opportunity to re-orient policies to low carbon and environmentally
sustainable growth and to integrate climate change concerns into
these (White Paper 2.84; 2.89).
2.2 The target of reducing the rate of biodiversity
loss by 2010 as a sub-target of MDG7 (environmental
sustainability) is relevant in this respect, especially as it
will be reviewed next year. Whilst it is not the role of DFID
to be concerned about conserving biodiversity per se, the
ecosystem goods and services provided by biodiversity collectively
are fundamental to poverty alleviation and sustaining the livelihoods
of not only the poor but many sectors of developing economies.
As such, we believe maintenance of ecosystem goods and services
(and the biodiversity which underpins them) is crucial to DFID's
overall aims, and we encourage further work by DFID in this area.
3. CLIMATE CHANGE
3.1 We recognise that climate change will
have significant impacts upon the prospects for development and
that it should rightly take high priority in UK international
development opportunities (3.27 in White Paper and 2.50-2.58 in
Annual Report). We also agree that climate and other environmental
change is largely due to failure to internalise the value of the
environment in decision making. A shift to including consideration
of the value of the environment in development policy and planning
(Annual report 2.48) is necessary if forests, biodiversity and
ecosystems, and the services they provide to society, are to be
maintained (2.93).
3.2 However, efforts to determine ecosystem
valuation need to be matched by equally determined efforts to
develop appropriate mechanisms and markets to enable such ecosystems
(especially forests, upon which a high proportion of those in
poverty depend) to compete against other forms of land use. Thus
we also support the emphasis on devising new ways of financing,
in particular, sustainable forest management and reducing deforestation
(White Paper page 58) which depend in turn upon improved governance,
transparency and security of tenure for forest communities. We
agree that progress needs to be made by recognising more fully
the economic value of forests so they prove to be more valuable
standing than when felled with the land converted to alternative
uses (3.45). Reform of the carbon market is required to support
inclusion of new sectors such as forestry (3.15). However, whilst
emphasis is rightly placed upon the potentially significant role
of forests in climate change mitigation and adaptation, the value
of peatland and wetland ecosystems as carbon stores, as well as
their contribution to livelihoods, should not be ignored. Moreover,
healthy, well-functioning intact ecosystems are more likely to
be resilient to climate change and associated extreme events,
thus enabling the societies and economies dependent on them to
better cope with future uncertainty.
4. ECONOMIC VALUATION
OF NATURAL
CAPITAL AND
ECOSYSTEM SERVICES
4.1 We strongly support the aim to help
countries to value their natural capital (White Paper page38)
and plan for environmentally sustainable growth. Recognising the
economic value of natural resources and ecosystems, and the goods
and services they provide (including their role in mitigating
and adapting to climate change) as critical issues for the livelihoods
of the poor, is more likely to encourage measures to avoid the
loss and degradation of such ecosystems. As highlighted by both
the White Paper and Annual Report, poor people suffer most from
environmental damage (especially in the context of climate change).
This is because, being largely marginalised from mainstream economic
activity and in the absence of formal social security systems,
they are forced to depend much more on natural resources for survival;
for those in extreme poverty this dependence may be especially
great in tropical forests (White Paper 2.90, 3.3).
4.2 Incorporating the value of the environment
into policy development and planning is essential if the Millennium
Development Goals are to be achieved. Accordingly, we support
the intention to build on the planned outcome of TEEB (the project
entitled The Economics of Ecosystems and Biodiversity),
subject to its final conclusions, and to invest in a new initiative
on valuing natural capital by providing tools to incorporate environmental
values into economic decisions (White Paper 2.94). JNCC has provided
such a toolkit for small island state[40],
focusing on Overseas Territories (funded jointly by FCO and DFID
through the Overseas Territories Environment Programme—see
7.2 below), and plan to contribute to further work in this
area. We are currently evaluating the use of this toolkit, are
preparing a DVD for policy makers, and will provide additional
and relevant techniques.
5. AGRICULTURAL
RESEARCH AND
BIOFUELS
5.1 We welcome the intention to focus greater
attention on agricultural research as a means to enhance food
security and promote resilience to climate change (2.76). As part
of this we recognise, in particular, the need to clarify the impact
of biofuels on sustainable food supply (2.82). JNCC recognises
the positive contribution biofuels could potentially make to reducing
greenhouse gas emissions, ensuring energy security and supporting
rural livelihoods. However, we are also concerned that, without
appropriate safeguards, the rapidly growing biofuel industry and
trade—driven by incentives from the European Union's biofuels
target—will add another significant pressure on ecosystems
and the services they provide with the potential to undermine
achievement of Millennium Development Goals. For example, an otherwise
beneficial shift to carbon-neutral biofuels, derived from soya
or sugar cane, that then stimulated the further clearance of tropical
forests for agriculture would be counter-productive (by losing
the carbon storage and other ecosystem services of forests). We
have contributed to the debate on social and environmental sustainability
criteria for biofuels[41]
and we plan to continue to contribute to this debate.
6. OTHER RESEARCH
6.1 We believe there is a need for better
research to inform the extent to which poverty and the environment
interact and to resolve such issues as to role of biodiversity
in sustaining ecosystem services and the resilience of those ecosystems
in the context of climate change. Given the dependence of many
of the world's poorest upon natural resources (White Paper 2.90 and
2.93) we feel this topic merits greater study. Accordingly, we
welcome the proposed International Institute for Environment and
Development and World Conservation Monitoring Centre conference
on this topic in London in 2010. We note DFID's contribution to
the study on Ecosystems for Poverty Alleviation (ESPA) although
this is not explicitly mentioned in the Annual Report. We also
welcome the establishment of centres of research, for example,
the forthcoming Centre for Climate and Development, and we hope
to see the contribution of the natural environment (especially
functioning ecosystems) recognised as core to the success of this
venture and others like it.
7. OVERSEAS TERRITORIES
7.1 There is little reference in the Annual
Report to DFID's role in some of the UK Overseas Territories,
though we note the Government affirms its continued responsibilities
to Overseas Territories in the White Paper (7.14). Whilst DFID
support to these Territories may be small relative to the Department's
responsibilities elsewhere, we feel that greater recognition in
future Annual Reports of DFID's role in supporting the sustainable
development needs of the Overseas Territories is deserved, especially
given the typical dependence of small island territories on marine
and coastal ecosystems and their vulnerability to climate change.
7.2 Ministers from Defra, DFID and FCO have
recently agreed a strategy on the conservation and sustainable
use of biodiversity in the Overseas Territories which notes that
biodiversity underpins many of the ecosystem goods and services
which provide economic and social benefits to local populations
(noting, for example, the importance of sustainable fisheries
to Tristan da Cunha and forested watershed to Montserrat). JNCC
has supported projects to value economically the services provided
by such ecosystems.[42]
We are in the process of evaluating the use of this toolkit and
are producing a DVD for policymakers on the use of valuation.
We hope to continue to support such studies and aim to continue
to provide appropriate and additional techniques.
7.3 Amongst its other support to Overseas
Territories, DFID, jointly with FCO, funds the Overseas Territories
Environment Programme, with an annual budget of £1million,
supporting small projects in the Territories that contribute to
sustainable development and the environment; this has proved a
vital source of funding. Given the recent reports of the Environmental
Audit Committee (January 2007[43]
and November 2008)[44]
and the Foreign Affairs Committee (July 2008),[45]
some greater prominence in future Annual Reports to the support
provided by DFID and the Department's goals for the Territories
is desirable.
40 http://www.jncc.gov.uk/page-4136 Back
41
http://www.jncc.gov.uk/page-4136 Back
42
A JNCC position statement on biofuels is available at http://www.jncc.gov.uk/page-4201 Back
43
http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm200607/cmselect/cmenvaud/197/19702.htm Back
44
http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm200708/cmselect/cmenvaud/743/74307.htm Back
45
http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm200708/cmselect/cmfaff/147/147i.pdf Back
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