Å®ÉúСÊÓƵ

Britain’s dependent territories – a ragbag of islands and other small
pieces of land left over from the British Empire – probably contain more
species of plants, animals and insects than the whole of the United Kingdom.
But a plan to ensure that the territories comply with international environmental
laws which they are being signed up to by the British government was removed
from the Biodiversity Action Plan at the last moment.

Stranger still, all references in text and tables to the British Indian
Ocean Territory – a group of islands under military control – disappeared
between the draft and the final text. The Department of the Environment
explained that the Foreign Office had insisted that the territory should
be excised from the report. ‘Given the unique circumstances’ of these islands,
says the Foreign Office, ‘it would not be appropriate to include them in
the ratification of the Biodiversity Convention’.

A draft of the Biodiversity Action Plan circulated in Whitehall last
year included 13 targets designed to ensure that the dependent territories
met their international obligations. Along with the targets were promises
of help from London, particularly on scientific matters. The final report,
however, contains only a single paragraph defining a ‘general strategy .
. . to encourage individual dependent territories’ to develop their own
strategies. There are no targets – and no commitment to help.

Targets 1 and 2 of the draft document called for the establishment
of working groups of scientists to ‘develop, fund and implement’ biodiversity
action plans for the territories, ‘with UK financial and technical support’.
Targets 3 and 4 called for the setting up of databases listing species and
habitats in each of the territories, and for a 10-year programme of research
‘with an identified source of funding, utilising the expertise of British
²õ³¦¾±±ð²Ô³Ù¾±²õ³Ù²õ’.

The draft listed as priorities for study the invertebrates, lower plants
and marine life of St Helena, as well as invertebrates in the Cayman Islands,
Gibraltar and Pitcairn. Other targets included drawing up local legislation
and harnessing British conservation expertise.

Many of the dependencies have tiny populations and few financial resources.
In some cases, their wildlife has never been catalogued. Most are islands,
with many endemic species not found elsewhere.

On Pitcairn Island (population 60), ‘about one-third of the insects
and probably all the land snails are endemic’, but ‘no thorough inventory
has yet been carried out’. The islands of Tristan da Cunha (population 300)
are ‘extremely important in terms of biodiversity conservation’, with dozens
of endemic liverworts, beetles and mosses. Ascension Island in the mid-Atlantic
is the only home of the rare Ascension frigate bird. In the Cayman Islands,
a tax haven through which billions of pounds pass each year, ‘conservation
of terrestrial habitats is now urgently required’.

The published version of the report states that ‘the dependent territories
have an international responsibility to protect a considerable number of
species which are found nowhere else in the world’. At one point, it says
that ‘responsibility for the implementation of international agreements
is retained by the UK government’, but two paragraphs earlier it claims
that ‘biodiversity conservation is primarily the responsibility of the Dependent
Territories Governments’.

The Department of the Environment said that the specific targets for
the dependent territories had been dropped to ensure ‘consistency of style’
within the document. More detailed targets could be included in the ‘next
²õ³Ù²¹²µ±ð’.