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Mystery still shrouds the Darwin Initiative, John Major’s surprise contribution
to the Earth Summit last month. Major promised to put Britain’s expertise
to good use in helping developing nations to draw up inventories of their
most important species and habitats, as required by the Biodiversity Convention.

But this week, at the launch of three reports on biodiversity at the
Natural History Museum – one of the country’s centres of such expertise
– environment minister Michael Howard was unable to put flesh on the bones
of Major’s scheme. It is ‘far too early’ to say how the scheme would work
or what its budget might be, he said.

According to senior civil servants, neither an administration nor a
budget is likely to materialise before the next public spending round is
finalised in the autumn.

The UN Environment Programme has calculated that developing countries
will need up to $20 billion a year to fulfil the terms of the convention.
The Department of the Environment has tentatively proposed an annual budget
of between £2 million and £10 million.

Robin Pellew, director of the World Conservation Monitoring Centre in
Cambridge, was critical of the initiative, which so far seems to consist
of nothing but a name. ‘How they are going to synthesise this God only knows,’
he said. He believes the initiative needs a budget of at least £5
million a year.

The Royal Botanic Gardens at Kew are expected to play a central role
in the initiative, but its director, Ghillean Prance, warned that the demands
to carry out conservation projects outstripped their human and financial
resources. He said that his researchers were keen to get involved with
the government’s plans once they were spelt out more fully. ‘We earnestly
hope that the initiative will release new funds for basic and applied research
into bio-diversity and sustainable development of the world’s ecosystems.’

At the Natural History Museum, Howard simply repeated the words of his
department’s briefing notes handed out at the Earth Summit: ‘We want the
Darwin Initiative to promote international cooperation in technology and
techniques for the conservation and sustainable use of biological resources
. . . and to support measures to build the capability to man-age biological
diversity in other countries.’ The goals are ambitious, he said, ‘but they
need to be so.’