ECOS 43 (3.2.1)- The UK Overseas Territories: moving away from colonialism in the environment?

Authors: Mike Pienkowski, Catherine Wensink (UK Overseas Territories Conservation Forum); Catherine Childs, Luke Harding (National Trust for the Cayman Islands); Quentin Groom, Sofie Meeus (Meise Botanic Garden, Belgium); Rebecca Machin (Leeds Museums & Galleries) 

Suggested citation: Pienkowski, Mike et al. “ECOS 43 (3.2.1)- The UK Overseas Territories: moving away from colonialism in the environment?” ECOS vol. 43 (3.2.1), ECOS 43 (3.2), British Association of Nature Conservationists, www.ecos.org.uk/ecos-43-3-2-1-the-uk-overseas-territories-moving-away-from-colonialism-in-the-environment/.

To view this article as a pdf, click here.

Introduction

The years from 1997 provided a period of potential change for the UK Overseas Territories (UKOTs, then called “UK Dependent Territories”), due to the transfer of Hong Kong to China, the volcano on Montserrat and the first change of UK Government for many years. In 1997-98, the UK Overseas Territories Conservation Forum (UKOTCF) edited a special edition of ECOS devoted to the UKOTs and the challenges they faced at that time: Dependent Territories – overseas, overlooked? More than 90% of the global biodiversity for which UK government is accountable internationally depends on the UKOTs, rather than domestic UK, with some territories having exceptionally high levels of species endemism.

In the introduction, Paradise mis-filed?¹, UKOTCF proposed ways by which UK Government could overcome the lack of attention that it had paid to the UKOTs and their natural environments. How has this changed in the quarter century since then? An example from another sector is the 2022 competition, to celebrate HM Queen Elizabeth’s 70^th year of reign, for towns in UK, the Crown Dependencies (CDs) and the UKOTs to apply to become cities. This is a sign of progress in that, in the 1990s, towns in the UKOTs and CDs would probably not have been included, nor awarded city status – as it was for Stanley (Falkland Islands) and Douglas (Isle of Man). As UKOTCF noted in Forum News 56², it was a little surprising that Gibraltar was not. As we started work on this article in August 2022, the news was released that HM Queen Victoria had granted Gibraltar city status in 1842, but UK government had lost the record for 180 years. We had not expected the titles of both the special issue and the introductory chapter still to be so relevant.     

This article takes an overview of the changes in the policy landscape and funding relating to the environment since 1997, the degree to which the published proposals have been acted upon and the outcomes. Our account is based on the 35 years of experience of UKOTCF – including 25 since the writing of the special ECOS issue – encouraging and witnessing changes in the conservation situation in the UKOTs, their organisations and the policy framework impacting conservation over this time. It is inevitably from a UKOTCF viewpoint because no other body has been involved across the range of UKOTs and CDs over this period. In recent years, more bodies have become involved. This has generally been positive, especially in cases in which those bodies have taken the trouble to engage with local bodies and other organisations with direct conservation experience in territories before launching in.

The article is framed through the lens of one such collaboration, a study of colonial legacies on the environments and cultures of the UKOTs and is written in part as an output of a current project³, run jointly by UK Centre for Ecology & Hydrology, UKOTCF, Montserrat National Trust, The National Trust for the Cayman Islands, Meise Botanic Garden (Belgium), and Leeds Museums and Galleries. The project is funded (grant AH/W008998/1) by the Hidden Histories programme of the UK Arts and Humanities Research Council and the Natural Environment Research Council. This project includes elements on the local communities’ interest in the natural environment by collecting oral histories and encouraging citizen science, with case studies in the Cayman Islands and Montserrat, focusing on the colonial heritages of invasive non-native species and on the uses of traditional medicinal plants, both native and introduced. Of particular importance for this theme of environmental colonial legacy, the project has developed a framework of best practice for environmental research and conservation for all UKOTs⁴, to support best practice in working on environmental issues in the UKOTs and to suggest mechanisms to decolonise funding for the UKOTs. This work was based on the recommendations of the UKOTCF-organised conferences⁵ of territory conservation practitioners and of the Council of Environment Ministers of UK Overseas Territories and Crown Dependencies⁶.

Environment Charters

The 1998 article Paradise mis-filed? reviewed the 1997 correspondence between UKOTCF’s Chairman, Dr Mike Pienkowski, and the Foreign Secretary, the Rt Hon Robin Cook MP. Although UKOTCF partners had been critical, including in the article, of the side-lining of environmental matters – and continued to point out the international treaty responsibilities and the manifesto on which the then new government had been elected – UKOTCF was impressed with the speed with which the then Foreign Secretary and his senior officials, having received this correspondence, corrected their position. Subsequently, officials of the Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO – which leads for UK Government on UKOTs) enthusiastically consulted NGO partners through UKOTCF in order to make policies appropriate and effective.   

In 1999, UKOTCF reported⁷ the early stages of the Environmental Charter process as follows:

“The year 1998/99 saw major progress on the part of the Forum. We are particularly pleased with the progress made in joint developments with UK Government. From a situation early in 1998 when the Forum had to deplore the lack of attention to the environment in the Government’s major policy statement, we have moved to a situation in which the environment forms a major – and widely commended – chapter of the Government’s White Paper on the UK Overseas Territories Partnership for Progress and Prosperity, published on the Foreign and Commonwealth Office site in March 1999.” [This was the previous excellent FCO website, which was replaced by the UK Government website in 2010. The White Paper is, however, still available elsewhere.⁸]

“In mid-1998, the Forum-edited special edition of ECOS, the journal of the British Association of Nature Conservationists (BANC), was published. This included a range of articles about the UK Overseas Territories as well as a set of recommendations for UK Government to address in respect of its responsibilities to the environment in UK Overseas Territories. It is pleasing to be able to commend UK Government for so rapidly and positively responding to our suggestions.

“The consultative approach adopted by the officials in the strengthened Environment, Science and Energy Department [soon to become Environment Policy Department, before being abolished a few years later, as FCO lost interest in the environment, including the UKOTs for which it had shared responsibilities with the territory governments] meant that they have been able to call frequently on the Forum’s expertise. Indeed, many ideas from the Forum’s “checklist” (published also in the Forum’s Annual Report for 1997-98⁹) have found their way into the White Paper, and more are likely to do so as the follow-up procedures continue. The Forum is working closely with UK Government on these. The purpose of these and other activities is to facilitate the work of our partners in conservation in the Overseas Territories.

“As indicated above, a major area of work throughout late 1998 and 1999 has been the contribution of ideas and discussions to the development of the White Paper and its concept of an environmental charter. Even before publication, the Forum was working with governmental colleagues on the next stages. Forum officers have taken several opportunities to outline to both NGO partners and OT Government officials and ministers the potential advantages which the environmental sections offer if all can work together to grasp these. A first public manifestation is the major conference on the environment in UK Overseas Territories: This will need much follow up. As one example, the Forum and its partner, the Gibraltar Ornithological and Natural History Society, are working with the Gibraltar Government on a conference to be hosted by that government in 2000.”

In its 1999/2000 Annual Report¹⁰, UKOTCF commented: “The year started well with the successful conference “A breath of fresh air” held at the London Zoo on 29-30 June 1999¹¹, organised by FCO with Forum support. The subsequent slow development of the Environmental Charter has been disappointing to many of the participants in that meeting, both NGO and governmental. A general feeling from the OTs is that more guidance is needed. Forum Officers are exploring with FCO and OT partners ways of making real progress.”

The international conference on environmental conservation in small territories, Calpe 2000: Linking the Fragments of Paradise¹², was held 28th September to 1st October 2000, John Mackintosh Hall, Gibraltar, sponsored by the Government of Gibraltar, and organised by UKOTCF and the Gibraltar Ornithological & Natural History Society. The final session of this conference reached some conclusions, which included:

“For many of the OT delegates who were at the meeting in London A Breath of Fresh Air just over a year ago (June/July 1999), one of the major issues was how conservation action could be taken forward. At that meeting much was spoken of on what was referred to as the Environment Charter for the Overseas Territories. However, the essence of what we are talking about can be encapsulated in the term Strategic Environmental Action Planning, and this is applicable to all small territories, and indeed has been a major theme of this conference in Gibraltar.”

 “…government officers and NGOs in several of the OTs have flagged up the need to take forward in parallel some work to illustrate how these key principles would translate into real actions. This process would also help clarify the principles themselves. Consultations with several OTs have made clear that more facilitation is needed to assist people in the Territories to kick-start the process of developing their own action plans, up to now on hold due to the lack of time and human resources. Several OTs are discussing with the Forum the ways in which this facilitation might most usefully be provided, and FCO has indicated that it is supportive of this approach.”

It had become clear, but was not then publicly known, that less environmentally inclined senior FCO officials were trying to block or water down repeated drafts of the Environment Charters. Eventually, by early 2001, the Environment Policy Department managed to overcome this opposition, probably with the help of Foreign Secretary Cook, and detailed discussion on wording could start with the territory governments.

In late September 2001, Environment Charters¹³ were signed between UK and UKOTs. The texts of the Charters differ in minor respects (mainly removing references to education in uninhabited UKOTs). An example of the key two pages of the Charter is given here for the Turks and Caicos Islands (TCI):

These two pages include the document signed by representatives of UK government and the territory government and the commitments each party made. There were effectively no new commitments in the Charters, but they brought together conveniently international commitments into which UK and the UKOTs had entered. Charters were signed with Anguilla, Ascension, Bermuda, British Indian Ocean Territory (BIOT), British Virgin Islands (BVI), Cayman Islands, Falkland Islands, Montserrat, Pitcairn Islands, St Helena, South Georgia and the South Sandwich Islands (SGSSI), Tristan da Cunha, and the Turks and Caicos Islands (TCI). In 2006, Gibraltar adopted an Environment Charter very similar in content to the 2001 Charters. The British Antarctic Territory (BAT) does not have a Charter, but most of the needs are met under the Antarctic Treaties. The Cyprus Sovereign Base Areas (CSBA) do not have an Environment Charter; they are a UK Overseas Territory but are controlled by the Ministry of Defence, rather than FCO (merged in 2020 with the Department for International Development (DFID) into the Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office (FCDO)). The Crown Dependencies (Isle of Man, Jersey, Guernsey, Alderney and Sark) were not offered Environment Charters; they were linked to UK through the Home Office (now through the Ministry of Justice), rather than FCO.

Actions to implement the Charters

The signed Environment Charters are valuable commitments by the governments of the UK and of UKOTs. However, these were but one first element of the Charters as envisaged by the participants in the Breath of Fresh Air conference and by other stakeholders at that time. Still needed were the strategies or action plans to link these overarching documents to real progress on the ground. This need had been met earlier to some extent by the Conservation Priorities section¹⁴ of the Forum’s Conservation Review of 1996. UKOTCF partners in the UKOTs updated this material in the early 2000s.

However, more effort was needed in this area, and the signed Charters called for this process. UKOTs had repeatedly made clear that the reason for the similar process under the initiative of the Organisation of Eastern Caribbean States (OECS) progressing much more effectively was that OECS resourced facilitation. UKOTs had indicated repeatedly (e.g. at the Gibraltar conference) that similar facilitation was needed to assist people in the Territories to kick-start the UK Environment Charter process of developing their own action plans. They welcomed UKOTCF’s indication that it could help, provided that some costs could be covered. FCO asked the Forum to help in this way but, over the years from 1999 to 2002, had been unable to find a mechanism to provide the modest resources needed, despite its commitments under the signed Charters. Three years later, support was provided to facilitate the consultative development of pilot strategies for implementation, in the Turks & Caicos Islands (TCI) and later in St Helena.¹⁵

The first commitment of the UKOTs was to formulate a detailed strategy for action, and the first commitment of Her [now His] Majesty’s Government (HMG – the name by which UK Government liked to be known) was to help build capacity to support and implement integrated environmental management. Following discussions between UKOTCF, FCO, and some of the UKOT Governments, UKOTCF undertook a facilitation project to develop a strategy for action, to implement a first example UKOT to serve as a model to others, with support from FCO. The facilitation exercise in TCI comprised a series of activities covering two-to-three-week periods in territory, between which the facilitators analysed the results of consultations and discussions, clarified points as necessary with local colleagues, and prepared for the next round of consultations. The TCI Government (the partners in the pilot) subsequently adopted the resulting strategy (Strategy for Action to implement TCI’s Environment Charter¹⁶).

UKOTCF worked to help some other UKOTs to make use of this model. As part of the pilot exercise, and as a project output, the Forum facilitators, Dr Mike Pienkowski and Mrs Dace McCoy Ground, working with Mrs Michelle Fulford-Gardiner, Acting Director of Environment & Coastal Resources, had produced guidelines on the production of strategies for action to implement the Environment Charters. These were to provide guidance to the other UKOTs, based on the TCI pilot exercise, together with information available on the earlier stages of approaches elsewhere. These guidelines¹⁵ were not intended as a “recipe book”, not least because the situations in different UKOTs differ. Furthermore, UKOTCF believed that some measure of facilitation was likely to be needed in all cases. However, the guidelines reduced the amount of work needed in each case.

The Government of St Helena volunteered to be the first UKOT to try to apply the guidelines and asked UKOTCF to facilitate the development of a Strategy for Action there. This was achieved during late 2004 and early 2005, with Dr Mike and Mrs Ann Pienkowski as facilitators, with some of the costs being met by UK Government’s Overseas Territories Environment Programme (OTEP). The resulting Strategy for Action to implement St Helena’s Environment Charter¹⁷ was welcomed in March 2005 by St Helena’s Legislative Council, which commended the Strategy to St Helena’s Executive Council for formal adoption. UKOTCF provided advice to several other UKOTs developing a strategy for action or other types of strategic plan. UK Government later stopped providing support for Environment Charter development, but subsequently realised the value of this approach.  Less than 5 years later, they initiated the similar “mainstreaming” programme – which was functionally almost identical, incorporating many techniques similar to those developed earlier by UKOTCF.

For Environment Charters to have real meaning, it is necessary to have some means of assessing progress in their implementation. In 2007, UKOTCF produced, with UK Government funding, a first collation of information¹⁸ on measures of performance. The UKOTs and UK Government welcomed this review, partly because UKOTCF is independent of the parties to the Charters. UKOTCF undertook further reviews in 2009¹⁹ and 2016²⁰ (the latter assessing also progress towards the Aichi Targets and relevant Sustainable Development Goals), the work being undertaken by unpaid volunteers. Although UK Government had declined to help fund these later reviews, it readily used results in its regular reports to Conferences of the Parties (CoPs) of international conventions. The 2016 review was adopted by the UKOT/CD Environment Ministers’ Council at their second meeting in Alderney in April 2017.²¹ The Council has requested UK Government to support UKOTCF in undertaking a further review, in time for the 20^th anniversary of the Environment Charters (and now later), but no funding has been received. UKOTCF still hopes to undertake a new review as soon as the necessary resources can be secured.

Progress can be assessed against the Environment Charter commitments using the 2016 review and its summaries (and its predecessors). Below, we recall the “check-list” of recommendations in Paradise mis-filed? and use the review and other material to summarise the extent to which these have or have not been fulfilled.

A check-list for the natural environment in UK Overseas Territories

In Dependent Territories – overseas, overlooked? UKOTCF wrote:

“The Forum and its partners have worked closely with the UK and UKOT governments over the years, and wish to continue to do so. It is in that spirit that I offer a first draft of a check-list on conserving the natural environment. The Forum looks forward to the Government adopting this approach so that we can work together on this, which is generally more cost-effective than separate routes. Each UKOT should have in place, and the UK Government should ensure and assist this:” [The list which followed constitutes the sub-headings below.]

Here, we take each of the 13 points in the list as a sub-heading, under which we discuss progress. In doing so, we rely heavily on the well-established long-term relationship between UKOTCF and the territories (both NGO and governmental personnel).

1. The inclusion of the Territory in UK’s ratification of appropriate international conservation conventions, including that on Biological Diversity

The confirmation of the 1998 joinings to the Ramsar Convention on Wetlands expected by Coffey & Pienkowski²² in the special issue, and checking back in Government records, have shown that only British Antarctic Territory is, possibly, not included in UK’s ratification, but most protection measures are anyway included in the Antarctic Treaties. In 2005, UKOTCF²³ reviewed designated and proposed Wetlands of International Importance (“Ramsar Sites”), in conjunction with the territories and partly funded by the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra). Before and since then, UKOTCF has, without grant support, helped territories arrange for the designation of 11 further Ramsar Sites, but over 60 qualifying remain undesignated and 6 territories still lack a single designated Site.

With checking of UK Government records, it seems that BAT is included in UK’s ratification of the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES), and Anguilla joined in 2014, leaving only TCI and the Cyprus Sovereign Base Areas (CSBA) out of this convention. Shortage of legal drafting resource is a current blockage in TCI. 

There has been no change with the (Bonn) Convention on Migratory Species, with Anguilla and BAT still not included, although BAT has signed up to the Agreement on the Conservation on Albatrosses and Petrels under that Convention.

All except BAT, BIOT, Guernsey and Jersey were – and are – included in the World Heritage Convention. Henderson Island in the Pitcairn Group, and Gough Island (extended in 2004 to include Inaccessible Island) in the Tristan da Cunha group were designated World Heritage Sites and in 2016 these were joined by Gorham’s Cave, Gibraltar (the last on cultural, rather than natural, grounds). Although Fountains Cavern in Anguilla and, currently, sites in St Helena and TCI have been on the UK’s official Tentative List, this has not received support from some UK government officials. These have strongly discouraged this both before and after their reaching the List; they indicated that this was through concern over supposed future costs to UK Government.

For 18 years, no territories joined the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) except those included in UK’s original ratification in 1994. Determined and long-term efforts by Isle of Man conservation officials, with help from UKOTCF and others, managed to overcome byzantine UK Government procedures to join in 2012, with SGSSI following in 2015 and the Falkland Islands in 2016. Anguilla, Bermuda, BAT (although covered by the Antarctic Treaties), BIOT, CSBA (possibly – records are unclear even to HMG), Guernsey, Montserrat, Pitcairn Islands, and TCI remain outside – although UK’s ratification means that its own actions in relation to all territories must fall within CBD’s requirements.

The United Nations believed that UK had included all its territories in the UN’s 1998 Convention on Access to Information, Public Participation in Decision-making and Access to Justice in Environmental Matters, usually known as the Aarhus Convention. This was because, contrary to its normal practice and that of other nations, it appears that UK officials did not list in its ratification either those territories included or excluded. Over a decade later, UK Government declared unilaterally that they were not included. 

Gibraltar has repeatedly requested UK Government to include it in other international agreements, notably the Barcelona Convention and the Paris Agreement, because this would help it address conservation measures removed by Gibraltar’s forced exit from the European Union – although, while this paper was being drafted, there were signs of movement on some of these.

2. Appropriate legislation, and mechanisms to implement this, which fully meet these international obligations

Meeting international obligations is a shared responsibility between territory governments and UK government, because UK government is responsible for international relations. Despite this, various UK governments have repeatedly given the impression that the territory government is solely responsible for the environment (but, interestingly, not for some other shared responsibilities). Fortunately, in recent years, the frequency of mention of this claim seems to have been reduced. Nevertheless, resources to draft and implement legislation in some territories have been lacking. In some territories, priority in the deployment of legal draughtspersons has gone to the drafting of agreements with overseas developers which territory governments may hope to generate high short-term financial income. UK government has not prioritised additional resourcing to assist with the drafting of environmental legislation in territories. Even in some of the territories in which UK government controlled the finances or, temporarily, the whole government, priority in legal drafting has often not included environmental matters, even where environment protection is crucial to the economic basis of the territory. For example, in TCI around the turn of the millennium, UK government supported financially some environmental work, on the condition that the TCI government added 1 percentage point to its visitor tax and earmarked this for an environmental fund. After local consultations, this was implemented. Although there were some problems in the management of this fund, it made significant funding available for environmental protection and management. However, in the years 2009 to 2012, UK government was in direct control of TCI government and, without consultation, it cancelled the environment fund, setting back conservation significantly.

In some situations, local political resistance has been a major factor. For example, it took about 20 years, until 2013, for the Cayman Islands to pass its National Conservation Law, and there were delays in implementation as administrations changed. The law now in place is proving effective and something of a model. In other territories also, changes in elected government have led to a wide and deep set of environmental laws and policies, as witnessed in Gibraltar.

The situation therefore is rather mixed across territories. UK government seems to have lost interest in monitoring the various territories’ implementation of international commitments, beyond the basic reporting requirements to CoPs of each convention.

3. A properly staffed department, headed by a Minister or equivalent, within each UKOT government, with responsibility for ensuring the conservation of biodiversity and the natural heritage

It has relatively recently become the case that each UKOT has a unit within its administration with responsibility for the natural environment. “Properly staffed” would be over-stating it a little much in most cases. Some of the smallest territories have significantly less than one full-time equivalent staff member. In several cases, capacity has been enhanced by support from NGOs and sometimes temporarily by project grants from UK government or others.

Most of the governmental environment departments in the territories have worked closely with local and UK-based NGOs, so as to boost their capacity to achieve progress. Such an approach is the norm, for example, in Gibraltar, the Cayman Islands and the Crown Dependencies, as well as elsewhere. The amazing success of the removal of introduced rodents from South Georgia²⁴ was organised by an NGO, the South Georgia Heritage Trust, working with the support and encouragement of the Government of South Georgia and the South Sandwich Islands.

In terms of ministerial responsibility, there is generally a clear ministerial lead (or lead councillor for those territories without ministerial systems) for the environment, although typically in territories a minister has responsibility for a much wider range of issues.

In 2015 in Gibraltar, in association with the UKOTCF-organised conference of UKOTCF and CD conservation practitioners, Gibraltar’s Minister for Education, Heritage, Environment, Energy and Climate Change, Prof. John Cortés, initiated the UK Overseas Territories and Crown Dependencies Environment Ministers’ Council. This has met almost annually since, either in person or online, with UKOTCF providing the secretariat.²⁵ It provides an opportunity for ministers or lead councillors to exchange ideas and benefit from each other’s experience.

4. An environmental NGO, supported and consulted by government, to provide an independent voice on conservation matters

The four elements of UKOTCF’s approach to supporting conservation in the UK Overseas Territories and Crown Dependencies have long been:

1. Help local people form a conservation NGO if one did not already exist;
2. Help this NGO (and often also the usually small territory official conservation body) organise and run itself;
3. Help local bodies develop strategies for conservation, design programmes and projects to implement these, help find funding for the projects and help run them, at the same time building up local capacity towards reducing the need for external support. This applied both to projects within a single territory and those across several or all the UK territories.
4. Raise awareness in UK of the environmental importance of the territories, and UK’s shared responsibility for their effective conservation.

With much input from UKOTCF, by the first decade of this millennium, all the inhabited UK territories had at least one conservation NGO²⁶, except for the two with the smallest human populations, where effectively the whole population was the NGO. By around the same time, the second approach had also been completed, although occasional further support was needed because of the tiny number of personnel in some territories leading to temporary setbacks if key personnel became unavailable. Even some of the larger official conservation bodies had also benefited from UKOTCF’s guidance; at UKOTCF’s Bermuda conference in 2003, government officials reported that they had reorganised Bermuda’s environment departments in line with documents from UKOTCF. Approach 3 continues, with different territories at greatly different stages in terms of the level of support needed. The scale of the task in approach 4 is huge. However, significant progress has been made: almost all UK MPs and many members of the House of Lords are aware of the biodiversity importance of UK’s territories, and many are supportive, especially through the House of Commons Environmental Audit Select Committee, the Foreign Affairs Select Committee, and various All-Party Parliamentary Groups. By comparison, in the 1990s, some ministers with responsibilities covering aspects of the UK Overseas Territories were found not to know what UK Overseas Territories were.

Many territory governments provide modest financial support for the environmental NGO in their territory, and a few make it clear to the NGO that this is not intended to mute their independent voice. However, in some cases, the latter is not the situation and NGOs may have to walk something of a tightrope to navigate their way.

5. Plans for the conservation of biodiversity throughout the land and sea areas of the Territory, and the incorporation of biodiversity conservation in the plans for all sectors of the economy

With the agreement of the Environment Charters in 2001, planning for the incorporation of biodiversity conservation into all aspects of the economy started well. FCO, which has the UK policy lead on UKOTs, agreed to resource a facilitation exercise by UKOTCF in a pilot territory, and TCI volunteered to be this territory. A three-person team, consisting of a UKOTCF person from UK, another based on the territory, and a TCI environment official, facilitated interviews and meetings across a very wide range of sectors with personnel from government, NGOs, businesses and other interests. This resulted in the agreement of a strategy for action to implement the Environment Charter, and implementation started locally. At the request of other territories, UKOTCF undertook similar facilitation for them or otherwise advised. FCO asked in 2004-5 whether a similar exercise would be needed in all territories, because they wanted to reduce expenditure on this. Despite UKOTCF advising that this might not be necessary for territories which had adopted another approach to developing a strategy, and identifying some to which this applied, UK government withdrew funding for this approach.

A few years later, new personnel in UK government realised that the approach advocated by UKOTCF was needed for all territories, and asked their agency, the Joint Nature Conservation Committee (JNCC, which had recently started work in support of UKOTs), to implement this. Unfortunately, staff and organisational turnover meant that the new personnel were unaware of the previous exercise and they did not enquire. So the wheel was reinvented in the “mainstreaming” exercise, resulting in some duplication of work. Resources could have been saved by consulting territories as to what they needed, rather than UK officials deciding what was necessary without consultation. A few years later, a further round of strategic planning was initiated from UK government. It was noted by several territory governmental officials that it would be better for UK government to provide support for the implementation of existing strategies, rather than calling for the production of new strategies every few years, apparently having forgotten the previous exercises.

Some territories have now developed their own plans, although not all of these are readily available.

6. Clear mechanisms to deliver these conservation plans, and for the provision of adequate funding

Most territory administrations provide some resources for their environment departments and most also give modest support for a local conservation NGO. However, as noted by UK Parliament’s Environment Audit Committee²⁷, the small economies and human populations of the territories require that UK Government contribute too if international commitments are to be met. This applies even to those territories with high GDP per capita because the low capita (population numbers) prevent economies of scale. UK Parliament’s Foreign Affairs Committee²⁸ agreed: “We agree with the Environmental Audit Committee that the Government does not appear to have carried out any kind of strategic assessment of Overseas Territories’ funding requirements for conservation and ecosystem management. We conclude that, given the vulnerability of Overseas Territories’ species and ecosystems, this lack of action by the Government is highly negligent. The environmental funding currently being provided by the UK to the Overseas Territories appears grossly inadequate and we recommend that it should be increased. While Defra is the lead Whitehall department responsible for environmental issues, the FCO cannot abdicate responsibility for setting levels of funding given its knowledge of Overseas Territories’ capacity and resources. The FCO must work with other government departments to press for a proper assessment of current needs and the level of the current funding gap and then ensure increased funding by the Government through Defra, DFID or other government departments is targeted appropriately.”

Much of the income of UKOT conservation bodies depends directly or indirectly on revenue from tourists, effectively stopped for several years during the Covid-19 pandemic. A few territories have tried to establish environment funds usually based on a tourist tax (a rare tax that can actually be popular with those paying it). However, these hypothecated funds tend to be resisted strongly by UK Treasury which hates hypothecated funds, as these reduce later freedom to redirect the resources away from their intended purpose. In section 2 above, we describe how UK government first encouraged such a fund in TCI and then unilaterally terminated it.

Much conservation activity in Britain has benefited from funding from the National Lottery. However, UKOTs are not eligible for this, despite over 20 years of lobbying by UKOTCF, RSPB, other NGOs and even FCO. There is no legal blockage, but the Lottery bodies’ (which, early in the lobbying, demonstrated that they did not know what UKOTs are) have policies and administrative procedures which prevent successful applications relating to UKOTs. The overseeing Department of Digital, Culture, Media & Sports has chosen not to make any direction to them.

UKOTCF, together with equivalent umbrella environmental bodies for overseas territories of other European Union (EU) states, successfully lobbied early in the millennium for a substantial EU fund for the overseas entities of EU Member States. However, access to this by UKOTs was lost when UK left the EU.

From 2017, UK Government did put more resources (mainly by redirecting effort of some of its agencies) into UKOT marine conservation in the form of its ‘Blue Belt’ programme, but this impacted negatively on the already limited funds for terrestrial conservation (where most endemic species are found). The Blue Belt programme did not provide resources for long-term sustainable management of the large resulting marine protection areas or the income of territory inhabitants. The forward-thinking of UKOT communities, such as Tristan da Cunha and Pitcairn, in closing most of their fisheries, meant that alternative income streams are required. This has depended on bodies like Blue Marine Foundation, RSPB, National Geographic, working with funding bodies and commercial interests to generate long-term financial schemes.²⁹

7. A requirement for independent environmental impact assessment [EIA], open to public consultation and scrutiny, for any major development in the Territory, with expert evaluation to ensure that the common faults of such assessments are avoided

There is a wide variety of situations in different territories. For example, about 10 years ago, Gibraltar Government improved EIA requirements on developments (including imposing these on its own proposals even before it had passed laws to require this). Cayman’s National Conservation Law 2013 includes strong provisions in this regard. Most of the other UKOTs have EIA requirements in law but the degree to which these are implemented, monitored or enforced is variable, in part due to limited resources. In 2012, the Bermuda Ombudsman concluded that the 2008 Development Plan was in breach of international commitments in allowing the Development Applications Board discretion as to whether to require EIAs for major development proposals, and that these are mandatory. This was because of the Environment Charter commitments, statements by both UK and Bermuda Governments, the Rio Declaration and international best practice. The Bermuda Supreme Court supported the Ombudsman’ decision that Environment Charters are binding and EIAs required. The Eastern Caribbean Supreme Court came to the same decision in respect of a case in Anguilla.³⁰

8. A system of site-safeguard for the most important areas for biodiversity, with clear management plans developed and implemented in consultation with environmental NGOs

One of the problems, even in Britain, of assessing this sort of measure is the wide variety of forms of protected areas. UK’s National Committee of IUCN³¹ attempted in 2010-2014 to match Britain’s protected areas to IUCN’s international standard definitions, but limited resources at the time prevented the study from including UKOTs or CDs. The exercise is being repeated at the time of writing; IUCN and UKOTCF are exploring with the UKOT/CD Environment Ministers’ Council and individual territories the possibilities of including territories in this exercise.

As noted earlier, UKOTCF’s 2005 review of actual and potential Wetlands of International Importance in the territories helped in this regard, as does its periodic reviews of implementation of the Environment Charters. If the IUCN exercise does include the territories, these will be built on usefully.

9. The development of biodiversity targets, including restoration and recovery of damaged ecosystems and threatened wildlife populations, and action plans to achieve these

About a third of territories have active biodiversity strategies and action plans. At least another third are developing or updating these.  

There has been considerable progress on major restoration initiatives of species and ecosystems devastated by human-introduced aliens or by direct destruction by humans.³² Examples include:

• Bermuda petrel (cahow) – slowly increasing in numbers and range after the rediscovery in 1951 of a tiny population of this bird, thought to have been extinct for over 300 years;
• The restoration of seabird colonies, including an endemic species, on Ascension Island;
• The endemic blue iguana of Grand Cayman;
• St Helena’ Millennium Forest, re-establishing gumwood trees and the species which depend on them;
• The re-establishment of sea- and land-bird populations and native vegetation on South Georgia by removing invasive rodents and reindeer;
• The restoration in parts of its native range of Turks & Caicos Islands’ native national tree, the Caicos Pine, after almost total destruction in the early 2000s by an accidentally introduced pest; 
• The clearing of invasive rodents from two of the four islands in the Pitcairn Group, and several in Anguilla, the Falkland Islands and BIOT – but challenges remain for the World Heritage Sites of Henderson (Pitcairn) and Gough (Tristan da Cunha) Islands and many small islands.

Current promising work includes:

• The increasing sustainable and carbon-reducing developments in the urban nature of Gibraltar;
• The facilitation of local people taking the lead in restoring native species in Montserrat via the Adopt a Home for Wildlife project, even though much of the island cannot be accessed because of volcanic risk;
• Further initiatives on The Peaks and also the invertebrates of St Helena.

However, much remains to do to build on the successes – which rely on well-coordinated funding and activities, with leadership by those with good knowledge of local conditions and of scientific conservation. The lack of core or long-term support from HMG remains.

10. The development of a time-tabled plan to compile existing data, to survey biodiversity and to conduct cross-sectoral reviews of policies that relate to biodiversity use and conservation

There is increasing interest in several territories in compiling existing data. The CDs and several UKOTs are well advanced and others seeking resources.

Cross-sectoral reviews of policies were a key feature of the Strategies to Implement Environment Charters noted above. These, and exercises which followed, suffered from falling off of interest, possibly due to the policy of rapid staff turnover, at FCO, such that they are rarely completed across territories. Perhaps recognising this, some individual territories have undertaken local approaches, some with great success. Furthermore, HMG now rarely refers to the Environment Charters, but these are legally binding agreements of great value to conservation, as noted in section 7 above.

11. Ecological studies necessary to inform plans for sustainable use and conservation

Such studies are limited because most UK research funds are not accessible to territory bodies or NGOs, but only to certain UK-based bodies (see also final section of this paper). UKOTs are not only excluded from UK research funds, but also funds aimed towards low-middle income countries, such as the GBIF Biodiversity Information for Development programme.³³ Outside researchers tend to be interested in their own research questions, rather those generated by territory need. An exception is BAT which, partly for historical political reasons, has the well-resourced British Antarctic Survey. Certain areas, such as marine research in Bermuda and more recently in Cayman, have fairly long-established specialised units. Several Caribbean UKOTs have links to the University of the West Indies but not major campuses. There are also some long-term links between some UKOTs and individual university groups or other research and conservation bodies. These can be invaluable also when major threats arise suddenly.³⁴ An interesting recent development, showing potential, is the establishment of a variety of types of research bodies in some UKOTs, such as the University of Gibraltar, the Jersey International Centre of Advanced Studies, the St Helena Research Institute, and the Falklands-based South Atlantic Environmental Research Institute.

12. A system for monitoring and reporting publicly (including in fulfilment of international commitments) of the state of biodiversity and any impacts upon it

Individual territories vary greatly in their capacity to monitor and report, a few having systems that are probably at least as effective as in UK (which is itself far from perfect), while others remain under-resourced. As noted earlier, UKOTCF (initially with some UK Government funding but not in the later reviews) has collated information from territories on fulfilment of international commitments, and UK Government and its agencies have drawn on this and individual territories’ information for their regular reports to CoPs. It recently emerged that JNCC had started a different collation system for data from some UKOTs, but for about two years had not told others nor UK coordinating bodies (including one which it chaired) that this was happening, Fortunately, in this case a duplication of work has been avoided, although only because of alertness in a UKOT.    

13. Plans for training programmes for key personnel and the integration of biodiversity conservation into education curricula and public awareness programmes

UKOT bodies have traditionally been enthusiastic for education, as that is widely accepted locally as a key way to overcome their long-term challenges. On environmental matters, there has been good joint working in many territories between Education and Environment Departments, local and supporting NGOs and individual teachers to develop effective material. For example, in 2008 the Director of Education of the TCI was concerned that pupils did not have an adequate understanding of water in what are effectively desert islands. He approached UKOTCF for its personnel with a teaching background to seek resources to work with some of his teachers to develop a curriculum-integrated series of courses, eventually called Wonderful Water.³⁵ This broke new ground in that all the wildlife and environmental illustrations were taken locally. Previously, for financial reasons, illustrations and examples were from either UK or Jamaica, a very different Caribbean situation. The course materials were used in all state and some private schools and in the community college. There are good examples in other territories.

There are technically good materials produced by some outside conservation bodies, However, unless these are developed in consultation with local communities and integrated with the curriculum, it is difficult for teachers to make effective use of them.

There was a setback in 2010, when UK Government officials misinterpreted the incoming UK Coalition government’s instruction to suspend all funding to information technology consultants as banning spending on environmental education. It took some 7 years of lobbying by UKOTCF, UKOTs and others to reverse this error, in part because the turnover of officials meant that those now in post had no idea why the ban was there.

There has been an increase in training opportunities for environmental personnel, although there has been criticism from some territories that the support offered by UK Government agencies and some large NGOs tends to be what the donor bodies decide, rather than the needs identified by UKOTs themselves. UKOTCF and others have long found that it is best to develop proposals in close discussions between local bodies and UK supporting ones, rather than decide remotely in UK.

Overall changes in the UK Government approach to UKOT and CD environmental conservation in the quarter century since the ECOS special issue, and some remaining priorities

As we have outlined above, in the last few years of the 1990s and the first few of the 2000s, UKOTCF and its member organisations worked more closely with UK government departments than was achieved before or since, in an extremely productive period. However, later in the first decade of this millennium, UK Government began to decrease its engagement.

There are several possible reasons for this, including FCO closing down its Environment Policy Department, and the moving of DFID’s Overseas Territories Department from London to Scotland. (There is nothing necessarily wrong with East Kilbride, but the move caused a loss of all existing staff, most of whom had family reasons not to move.) DFID then cancelled its single-person post dealing with environment in the UKOTs, while encouraging some UKOTs to abandon environmental impact assessments for some DFID-sponsored projects. Another factor was an unexpected consequence of success in that, earlier, FCO officials and UKOTCF had put much effort into drawing in other departments and agencies with an involvement in the UKOTs. There was increased involvement by DFID, the Ministry of Defence, the Department of Digital, Culture, Media and Sports, and the bringing in of JNCC which had not had significant involvement in UKOTs until about 2008. FCO and UKOTCF failed to secure much engagement with the Ministry of Justice, so that the increasing involvement of CDs in HMG/NGO meetings tended then to decline. However, the increased number of UK Government bodies becoming involved resulted in more intra-governmental discussion, at the expense of engaging with the NGOs. In 2008, FCO unilaterally ended the twice-yearly meetings jointly chaired by FCO and UKOTCF, which had been a very efficient way to share experience, coordinate efforts and avoid duplication. Meanwhile, FCO decided to try to pass its environmental responsibilities in UKOTs, but not its funding, to Defra, pulling out its staffing before Defra had agreed. In fact, this level of coordinated staffing was never restored by any Department. Even by 2012, the Defra Director with responsibilities for UKOTs and CDS told UKOTCF at a meeting that Defra personnel dedicated to UKOTs would be twiddling their thumbs much of the time and they would be part-time at best. The many changes in HMG approach to UKOTs over the years has led to UKOTCF modifying its role to try to fill gaps, but resources for this underpinning work, rather than projects, has always been extremely difficult to secure, with consequent overloading on unpaid personnel. This was not helped when some of the less helpful HMG personnel tried to undermine even those limited resources. Papers later released under a Freedom of Information request from another body showed that, around the same time, some senior FCO officials dealing with UKOTs had secretly been trying to undermine UKOTCF as an umbrella body chosen by UKOT bodies. The 2008-9 financial crisis also hit UK Government funding support for UKOT environmental work badly.

Financial support from UK Government to environmental work in the UKOTs provides a good example of the increasing setbacks after the effective years around the turn of the millennium. In fact, a 2021 collation³⁶ of views from across UKOT bodies included the comment “During Mao Zedong’s long rule in China, he followed a policy of ‘perpetual revolution,’ but it is surprising to see elements of this in UK Government’s approach to funding conservation in the UKOTs.” This resulted from detailing the seven major changes from one responsible fund to others in the 12 years from 2000 to 2012.  In 2012, without consultation and against informed advice, UK Government absorbed its tailored funding programme into the more general Darwin Initiative. The external consultancy Defra employs to run the Darwin Initiative has found it difficult to offer advice to, and answer questions from, applicants regarding frequent changes to administrative procedures, which do not always seem to be thought through by Defra.

This move was a culmination of the shift from the approach of FCO’s Environment Fund for Overseas Territories (EFOT), which was established to meet a commitment in the 1999 White Paper and the resulting 2001 Environment Charters. The philosophy of EFOT was that FCO, the UKOTCF network and the UKOTs were a team with a shared responsibility for, or commitment to, conservation in the UKOTs. Thus help was available from FCO and/or UKOTCF to prepare proposals and implement the work. The Charters, signed in September 2001, include UK Government’s Commitment 8: “Use the existing Environment Fund for the Overseas Territories, and promote access to other sources of public funding, for projects of lasting benefit to the Territory’s environment.” Less than a year after the signing of these, FCO unilaterally cancelled this fund, having apparently overlooked the signed commitment, which it had itself drafted.

With the incorporation of FCO- & DFID-funded grants into the Darwin Initiative after 2012, there remained very few members of the advisory panel for the UKOT “Darwin Plus” element closely familiar with current UKOT issues and involved with most of the on-the-ground work in UKOT conservation. This was determined retrospectively because, unlike for the main Darwin panel, Defra declined for several years to name the Darwin Plus panel. It therefore became very much a them-and-us exercise. This may have been exacerbated in that the Darwin Initiative tends to have quite an academic panel, used to working in highly competitive research council situations, rather than the collaborative conservation attitude which prevailed under EFOT and, to some extent, the earlier stages of its successor fund, OTEP. While this model may be effective for projects in developing countries, with UK playing a role as a good citizen of the world, it is far removed from the originally-intended responsibility-sharing model more appropriate for UKOTs.

Even when funding was increased, there were major setbacks. UK Government’s ‘Blue Belt’ initiative was a welcome boost to marine conservation in the UKOTs. However, in the same process, the existing limited funding to terrestrial conservation, on which most UKOT-endemic species depend, was seriously squeezed, also causing ill-feeling between colleagues within UKOT conservation bodies.³⁷

Over the past twenty years, whilst there has been an increase in the numbers of people working on biodiversity and sustainability in the UKOTs and CDS, the decision-making in UK Government grant-funding moved away from people closely involved with, and knowledgeable about, effective conservation in UKOTs, towards personnel with little knowledge and involvement, and the exclusion of NGOs that had undertaken much of the work (although in mid-2022, there seem to be the first small signs of possible change). To try to reverse the negative trend, the territory conservation practitioners’ conference of 2021 made a series of recommendations³⁸, which were supported and built upon by the following meeting of the UKOT/CD Environment Ministers’ Council.³⁹

Framework on Best Practice in environmental and other research in UK Overseas Territories

An opportunity to build further on this was partly under the funding call ‘Hidden Histories of Environmental Science: Acknowledging legacies of race, social injustice and exclusion to inform the future’, made jointly by UK’s Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC) and Natural Environment Research Council (NERC). The organisations of the authors of this paper and others were successful in gaining support for the project From blue iguanas to blue vervain: sharing the colonial histories from the UK Overseas Territories. Generally, this is concerned with understanding environmental research in the context of historical colonialism and making recommendations. Community and non-academic partners are a core part of this and UKOTCF’s other projects to assist the pursuit of excellent research, and to engage wider communities including the public where relevant. Some aspects involve developing citizen science and benefiting from traditional knowledge.

One aspect is to build on the work of the online conference of the UK Overseas Territories Conservation Forum (UKOTCF) in March 2021, Staying Connected for Conservation in a Changed World, as well as from other conferences in the series, the experience of NGOs in the UKOTs themselves and researchers based around the world, and the Statement of 4th UK Overseas Territories and Crown Dependencies Environment Ministers’ Council Meeting, 28 – 29 April 2021. This is to develop a framework of best practice to enable increased prospects of resourcing for environmental work in the UKOTs, addressing needs agreed by workers in the UKOTs. If these are adhered to, both by those planning work and applying for funding and permissions and by the funding bodies, there are good prospects of moving towards a more equitable system.

This framework was developed using consultation techniques evolved during UKOTCF’s conferences for conservation practitioners, which recognise the high demands on the time of territory personnel. A group of people involved across the territories prepared a first draft, using existing material (including the earlier recommendations noted above). These drafts, and successive ones addressing comments received, were then circulated to bodies active in the UKOTs (both governmental and NGO), followed by an online workshop on it on 25^th July 2022 to confirm the document.

The framework⁴ follows the process of designing and delivering research and conservation work, from the call for funding applications, through the involvement of partners, the development and consideration of applications, designing and undertaking the work, reporting it and ensuring access to the results. It was supported by the Council of Environment Ministers of the UK Overseas Territories and Crown Dependencies at their meeting on 7^th October 2022⁴⁰, and the Council encouraged all to adopt it. This Framework is available to be adopted by any organisation which wishes to strengthen equity in environmental work.  

As is evident from the above, there has been progress on some major conservation issues in UKOTs and CDs. However, a great deal remains to be done. It is encouraging to see the greatly increased skills-base and experience of NGO and official conservation bodies in most territories (although they lack the necessary volume of staff), and the major progress they have made in restoration²⁸. UKOT governments are making more mention of the environment, and many are acting on this. UK Government in recent years has increased its support for marine conservation in some UKOTs, and NGOs based in UK or elsewhere have more than matched this. However, terrestrial conservation, on which most endemic species depend, has received rather little attention or increased support. In 2008, UK Government unilaterally cancelled its twice-yearly meetings with NGOs, after a two-decade period of profitable meetings. Overall, decision-making in UK Government bodies about funding and priorities for UKOT conservation has drifted away from involvement of NGOs and others familiar with these issues in the UKOTs, and with experience of running conservation projects. In this sense, as noted by the UKOT/CD Environment Ministers’ Council⁴¹, UK Government’s approach has become more colonial in nature, not less. Possibly, some slight signs of change in 2022 may be built upon.

Application of this Framework would tend to reverse the long unfortunate trend, and help fulfil some of UK’s commitments under various international treaties, including the Convention on Biological Diversity and its Nagoya Protocol on Access to Genetic Resources and the Fair and Equitable Sharing of Benefits Arising from their Utilization to the Convention on Biological Diversity which aims at “sharing the benefits arising from the utilization of genetic resources in a fair and equitable way”.

References

¹Pienkowski, M. 1998. Paradise mis-filed?– Editorial and Introduction.  ECOS 19(1) Dependent Territories – overseas, overlooked?, pp. 1-11. (Article available at https://www.ukotcf.org.uk/other-papers-and-reports/)

²https://www.ukotcf.org.uk/newsletters/forum-newsvers2/

³https://www.ukotcf.org.uk/key-projects/blue-iguanas-to-blue-vervain/

⁴https://www.ukotcf.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2022/11/Framework-of-bestpractice.pdf

⁵https://www.ukotcf.org.uk/our-conferences/

⁶https://www.ukotcf.org.uk/environment-ministers-council/

⁷https://www.ukotcf.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2020/04/1998-1999.pdf

⁸https://www.ukotcf.org.uk/env-charter/historytexts/

⁹https://www.ukotcf.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2020/04/1997-1998.pdf

¹⁰https://www.ukotcf.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2020/04/1999_2000.pdf 

¹¹https://www.ukotcf.org.uk/our-conferences/breath-of-fresh-air-london-1999

¹²https://www.ukotcf.org.uk/our-conferences/calpe-2000-linking-the-fragments-of-paradise-gibraltar-2000

¹³https://www.ukotcf.org.uk/env-charter/

¹⁴http://www.ukotcf.org/cp/index.cfm

¹⁵https://www.ukotcf.org.uk/env-charter/implementation-strategies/

¹⁶https://www.ukotcf.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2020/05/TCIEnvChtrFrom9.pdf

¹⁷https://www.ukotcf.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2020/05/XStrategyWithAnnexes.pdf

¹⁸https://www.ukotcf.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2020/05/INDICATORS0707e-1.pdf

¹⁹https://www.ukotcf.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2020/05/indicatorsrev0912-1.pdf

²⁰https://www.ukotcf.org.uk/env-charter/progress/

²¹https://www.ukotcf.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2020/06/UKOTCD_Environment_Ministers_Alderney_2017_20170519_v4a.pdf

²²Coffey, C. & Pienkowski, M. (1998) Biodiversity laws in the EC’s associated territories. Ecos 19 (1): 36-41 (Available at https://www.ukotcf.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2020/04/EcosCoffey.pdf) 

²³https://www.ukotcf.org.uk/conventions/ramsar-2/

²⁴ https://sght.org/habitat-restoration-project/

²⁵ https://www.ukotcf.org.uk/environment-ministers-council/

²⁶https://www.ukotcf.org.uk/member-and-associate-organisations/

²⁷House of Commons Environmental Audit Committee (2007) The UN Millennium Ecosystem Assessment, First Report of Session 2006–07. HC 77, incorporating HC 1686-I and HC 1686-II, Session 2005-06, by authority of the House of Commons. London: The Stationery Office Limited.

House of Commons Environmental Audit Committee (2007) Trade, Development and Environment: The Role of the FCO, Fifth Report of Session 2006–07. HC 289, by authority of the House of Commons. London: The Stationery Office Limited.

²⁸House of Commons Foreign Affairs Committee (2008) Overseas Territories, Seventh Report of Session 2007–08. HC 147-I Published on 6 July 2008 by authority of the House of Commons. London: The Stationery Office Limited

²⁹https://www.ukotcf.org.uk/ukotcf-online-conference-2021-download-proceedings/

³⁰Brock, A. (2015) Legal requirements for EIAs. pp 337-345 in Sustaining Partnerships: a conference on conservation and sustainability in UK Overseas Territories, Crown Dependencies and other small island communities, Gibraltar 11th to 16th July 2015 (ed. by M. Pienkowski & C. Wensink). UK Overseas Territories Conservation Forum, http://ukotcf.org/large/SustainingPartnershipsSmall.pdf

³¹https://www.iucn.org/resources/publication/putting-nature-map-report-and-recommendations-use-iucn-system-protected-area

³²https://www.ukotcf.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2020/04/46.pdf

³³https://www.gbif.org/programme/82243/bid-biodiversity-information-for-development

³⁴Wensink, C.M. & Pienkowski, M.W. (2022) Big ocean, big opportunity, big responsibility. Marine Biologist 21: 14-15

³⁵https://www.ukotcf.org.uk/environmental-education/wonderful-water/

³⁶ Pienkowski, M. (2021). Can UK Government grant-funding be made more effective for UKOT conservation? – comments from UKOTs across the UKOTCF network. pp 279-292 in Staying Connected for Conservation in a Changed World: UKOTCF’s 6th conference on conservation and sustainability in UK Overseas Territories, Crown Dependencies and other small island states, 2nd, 3rd, 9th & 10th March 2021 – Proceedings (ed. by M. Pienkowski, C. Wensink, A. Pienkowski & J. Males) UK Overseas Territories Conservation Forum, ukotcf.org.uk/ukotcf-online-conference-2021-download-proceedings/

³⁷Small Island, Big Impact: World Ocean Day event. Forum News 56 (2022): 10-11 (https://www.ukotcf.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2022/07/Forum56_July2022j.pdf)

³⁸https://www.ukotcf.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2021/03/UKOTCFconf2021_ConcRec_210311.pdf

³⁹https://www.ukotcf.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2021/05/UKOTCD_4thEnvMinCo_Statement-1.pdf

⁴⁰https://www.ukotcf.org.uk/environment-ministers-council/fifth-meeting-2022/

⁴¹https://www.ukotcf.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2020/05/Isle_of_Man_Statement_February_2018.pdf