Fern is an NGO which aims to improve European Union activities in order to achieve

The above mentioned NGOs welcome the opportunity to comment on the draft discussion paper for the EC's Biodiversity Action Plan (BAP). However, we regret that NGOs were involved at such a late stage and would hope that in future EC services make a clearer commitment to consult NGOs in Europe and in the recipient countries.

· We welcome the statement that biodiversity issues should be well integrated in other EC policies and the recognition that many of these policies (trade, agriculture) have a big impact on biodiversity loss in developing countries. Nonetheless the tone of the document is on 'where should we invest to protect biodiversity', rather than on 'how can EC economic and development cooperation contribute to the conservation and sustainable use of biodiversity while empowering local communities and alleviating poverty'.

· We very much welcome the recognition of biodiversity conservation as a development opportunity rather than as a development constraint. However, the strategy does not give indigenous peoples and local communities the central role they play in maintaining biodiversity. The Biodiversity Action Plan (BAP) should refer to the EU's Council Resolution on indigenous peoples and develop clear actions in this context on Biodiversity and indigenous peoples (see annex).

· There should be a clear commitment and mechanism to involve European NGOs and NGOs in recipient countries in the review, monitoring and implementation of the Action Plan and initiatives springing from it. This should begin with the circulation of all background documents and assessments used in the preparation of the Action Plan.

· The Action Plan should implement the objectives mentioned in the EC's Biodiversity Strategy for development co-operation and should therefore provide ations for each of the objectives mentioned[1], with clear targets and deadlines, which are currently missing. The current draft also does not clearly refer to how the Action Plan has built on the review of existing policies and instruments (as required under Section IV paragraph 9 of the EC's Biodiversity Strategy[2]).

· A majority of the actions mentioned refer to reviewing plans, researching impacts, donor coherence and capacity building within the EU and the EC. Although we acknowledge that these activities are necessary, we feel that there is too much emphasis on these sort of actions (which will take up a lot of funds from the environment and other budget lines) and too little on capacity building in developing countries, specifically at the local level.

· The Biodiversity Action Plan should acknowledge the findings and recommendations made by recent evaluations of EC development cooperation [3]. The constraints such as lack of human resources and technical expertise, lack of co-ordination between departments, lack of EIA/SIAs and pressure to spend must be dealt with.

· Sentence (page 5): "This process requires investment at local, national and international levels, and this Biodiversity Action Plan describes ways to operationalise these investments to achieve CBD objects" gives the impression that increased flows of funding are the answer. It should be made clear that other actions, including increased co-ordination, better EIAs, training of staff and ensuring political commitment amongst others are as important as investment in projects. (Page 5)

· This section focuses on the role of biodiversity in poverty alleviation. However, the BAP should recognise that poverty elimination needs to address issues beyond cash income levels. The BAP would benefit from stressing the importance of development co-operation with local communities and indigenous peoples.

· The ongoing evaluation of EC projects would benefit from similar evaluations in all member states. The evaluation process should enable stakeholders in partner countries and other actors (researchers, NGOs, consultants) to state their experience of EC and EU policies and initiatives and make recommendations for improvement. A low-cost method might be to include information/reports on a web-site for comment. The BAP should provide a possibility to develop more detailed actions once the evaluation is completed.

· Expert groups and member states groups should be open for experts from the North and the South. The same goes for a consultative workshop. It is unusual that the first action in the Biodiversity Action Plan refers to funding member states.

· There should be a deadline for the review of synergies between EC investments and GEF activities. The scope of such a review should be discussed with all stakeholders including NGOs.

· The Commission should publish or put on its web-site the current review of EC funded projects and discuss results with other stakeholders including NGOs. Better reporting and tracking of the allocation of EC funds is needed.

· Any review of EC budget lines should incorporate considerations on how this will implement the EC' s Biodiversity Strategy.

· We welcome the statement that the incorporation of biodiversity issues in national Indicative Programmes (NPs) and Country Strategy Papers (CSPs) should be assessed. Incorporating biodiversity issues into NIPs and CSPs needs to be an action point with clear targets and a clear timetable.

· Indicators for annual reporting at the global, regional and national levels need to be developed.

· To carry out a Strategic Environmental Assessment (SEA) and review of the impact of EC agriculture, trade and fisheries policies on biodiversity in developing countries is extremely important. To ensure that such EC policies do not lead to biodiversity degradation in developing countries a support, alert or help unit needs to be set up. However, securing enough staff for such a unit will be a key challenge. Secondments, redeployment of current staff, greater use of local experts and possible increase in overall staff for the Commission all need to be considered.

· Perverse incentives and policy conflicts are key issues for the implementation of Biodiversity Action Plans and Strategies. These issues need to be addressed before a national biodiversity strategy can be implemented. Issues related to land right and customary are key issues and need to be resolved first. As indicated by the success of the COAMA project, winner of the Right Livelihood Award last December, any strategy should be developed in a bottom-up process including all stakeholders.

· All strategies, projects and programmes need to be participative. This also includes the development of EC policy and country/regional strategies, NIPs/RIPs etc. The EC needs to lead by example rather than merely preach participation.

· While it is important to review the effectiveness of Biodiversity Action Plans, this should be achieved through capacity building in developing countries (as highlighted in the third action). The EC could, however, fund initiatives to share best practice, exchange experience and carry out research on approaches which have been successful.

· As mentioned above, we encourage the setting up of a support unit. If there were sufficient resources such a unit could also play a role in supporting the development of Biodiversity Action Plans in developing countries.

· We applaud the proposed review of integration of biodiversity /environment issues into the different DG development sector policies with a view to establishing and remedying deficiencies: this is absolutely critical. See also our comments under 5.1.

· There is a need to refer to the (still unfinished?) environment manual with regards to the streamlining of EIA procedures. It has become clear that EIAs are still not being carried out properly. Furthermore EIAs should be made available for public scrutiny before a decision for funding has been made, particularly to allow local participation in the assessment of EC funded projects.

· Issues relating to food security, TRIPs and bioprospecting/biopiracy are missing, or only mentioned in passing. It is important that the EU makes a strong stand on these issues. NGOs are happy to provide information.

· Higher yields are not the result of the GMOs presently used, quite the opposite in some cases (i.e the RR soybeans).

· The area of natural habitat cleared for large scale industrial agriculture should be reduced. The focus on intensification of production is ambiguous and may be contradictory with statements on protection of the biodiversity of agriculture. The role of extensive agriculture and biodiversity should be addressed.

· EC development co-operation should support partner countries to build the necessary competence to prevent detrimental effects from GMOs on their environment and public health and to implement and make full use of the Biosafety Protocol.

· Instead of supporting the development or even release of GMOs into the environment, EC development co-operation should aim at providing the potential to develop environmentally and socially adapted and safe methods of using biotechnology, including the use of latest technologies such as genomics and marker aided breeding technologies. It should not support the release of GMOs into the environment in partner countries.

· The negative impact of poaching is missing from the discussion. The traffic should be monitored and actions should be developed to reduce poaching with the participation of local communities from inception through to implementation.

· There is no reason to assume that wildlife equates to (large) mammals. Birds can generate considerable income from tourism and butterfly farming has been used for income generation.

· Participatory procedures should be developed and implemented. However, care needs to be taken not to assume that ‘local’ off-take will always be sustainable.

· There is a need to fund initiatives to support better benefits from non-consumptive uses of wildlife such as training of local people to act as tourism guides. This links with work to reduce financial leakage of tourism revenues. EC activities should ensure that the resource on which the activity (tourism or hunting) depends is being used sustainably.

· An action plan must be developed to address the widespread problem of illegal logging, a regrettable omission in this document. Illegal logging results not only in forest destruction and loss of local livelihood, but also robs national governments as well as local communities of considerable revenues and benefits, distorts timber markets, and is generally an impediment to sustainable forest management. The EU and its Member States must take innovative steps to supervise and control the overseas activities of EU companies and their affiliates; as well as to ensure the legality of timber imported into the EU market.

· Increased production of wood from industrial plantations to reduce pressure on natural forests is a theory not proven. There is no evidence that plantations reduce the pressure on natural forests. On the contrary, there is evidence that natural forests are cleared to make room for plantations, and furthermore that plantations provide a source of raw material to feed pulp mills, which then need more timber etc. (see developments in Sumatra, Chile and Brazil where plantations have led to the construction of pulp mills, which consequently have eaten up the rest of the forests).

· Like the World bank's Forest Policy the Biodiversity Action Plan should ensure there will be no EC funding for logging, or indeed any other large scale industrial activities -road building, mining etc- in primary forests.

· The reform of the CFP in 2002 should be mentioned as a key opportunity to improve mainstreaming of biodiversity and securing policy coherence. In particular there is the need for coherence between internal and external EC fisheries policies and identifying clear objectives in EC Fisheries policy.

· The Action Plan should also cross refer to the action plan being prepared for fisheries.

· The Action Plan should refer to the text from COM(1999)363 on ‘Fisheries Management and Nature Conservation in the Marine Environment.’

· The first action should address the need for EIA, not just fish stock assessments, before fisheries agreements are drafted. While the protection of the biodiversity of fisheries stocks is an issue, the impacts on wider biodiversity for example non-target species and the ecosystem are also vital.

· The proposed second action should stress the need to develop locally appropriate technical measures.

· EC funding should support innovative fishing practices for example provide incentive schemes for small scale but high value initiatives. Innovative processing and marketing techniques should also be supported.

· Support should also be aimed at local delivery of initiatives even if this is done under the umbrella of a national scheme.

· Water abstraction and pollution also affect other aquatic biodiversity. This also needs to be addressed.

· One of the most important criteria for a proper cost-benefit analysis is that is chooses a sufficiently broad and equitable set of indicators to establish the impact on third country waters and economies, so that we can establish to whom these agreements are of most benefit, and at what cost.

· There is a need to integrate the management of fisheries resources into other national and regional plans.

· The EC should involve southern civil society groups in policy advisory groups.

· We applaud the statement that local communities need to be fully involved in nature conservation projects. There have been many cases in which local people have been evicted or dispossessed[4]. Protected areas should only be established with the full and informed consent of local communities. Full participation in the decision making process at all stages (e.g. from identification to implementation) is essential.

· There is a need for a policy framework on TRIPs. The removal of genetic resources from the lands of indigenous peoples should only take place with their full and informed consent.

· The EC should support land demarcation and promote secure land tenure and access to resources by local communities and indigenous peoples, as local communities often hold the key to biodiversity conservation. All over the tropics local people, and their environment, are threatened by government funded development schemes, logging and mining concessions, plantations etc.

We often know why biodiversity loss is occurring. Future research should therefore be focused on actions to halt or reverse this process. Much of the research mentioned does not have that clear intention.

The proposed actions in this section should not be exclusively focused on internal audiences or decision makers. EC funding should support work on education for sustainable development. This could be through support for curriculum development, teacher training, preparation of materials. Public awareness and understanding is vital (and identified in Agenda 21). Biodiversity (and environment) needs to be mainstreamed into the EC’s work on education.

· Why is there no mention of actions to strengthen the capacity of relevant agencies as well as local people who hold, in many countries, the key to the protection of biodiversity.

· Despite statements made in the Biodiversity Action Plan that biodiversity issues should be well integrated in other EC policies as well as the recognition that many of these policies (trade, agriculture) have a big impact on biodiversity loss in developing countries, there is no mention of concrete actions, targets and deadlines to mainstream biodiversity conservation into development projects across different sectors of the economy in recipient countries.

· The EC's Biodiversity Strategies requires also actions in accession countries. Is DG Enlargement developing a plan for this aspect?

Annex:

Articles 5 and 6 of the Council Resolution on Indigenous Peoples.

December 1998.

5. The Council recognises that cooperation with and support for the establishment of partnerships with indigenous peoples is essential for the objectives of poverty elimination, sustainable development of natural resources, the observance of human rights and the development of democracy. The Council notes in particular:

• the key role played by indigenous peoples in the conservation and sustainable use of natural resources;

• the positive contribution of indigenous peoples in the development process;

• the vulnerability of indigenous peoples, and the risk that development programmes may disadvantage them;

• that indigenous peoples have the same rights as everybody else to a secure livelihood, and the lifestyle of their choice, and should be treated equally in the legal framework; they should also have access, on a non-discriminatory basis, to the opportunities and natural resources required to achieve these aspirations, as well as multilingual education and health services;

• that indigenous peoples have the right to choose their own development paths, which includes the right to object to projects, in particular in their traditional areas. This includes compensation where projects negatively affect the livelihoods of indigenous peoples.

6. The Council acknowledges that the development cooperation should contribute to enhancing the right and capacity of indigenous peoples to their "self-development". This implies integrating the concern for indigenous peoples as a cross-cutting aspect at all levels of development cooperation, including policy dialogue with partner countries and enhancing the capacities of indigenous peoples' organisations to take an effective part in the planning and implementation of development programmes.

[1] These include: support sustainable use of natural resources; strengthen capacity of relevant agencies (and local communities); further integrate EIAs; provide funding for biodiversity on bilateral aid programmes as well as for international mechanisms; ensuring coherence and complementarity between member states and developing countries as well as other donors; promote schemes for integration of biodiversity into agriculture in accession countries

[2] A European Community Biodiversity Strategy Com (1998)42 final.

[3] ERM, ECO ACP, MEDA ALA evaluations.

[4] See the range of documents in the series' from Prinicples to Practice' by IWGIA and FPP based on case studies presented at different seminars in Latin America and Asia: ISBN 87-90730-18-6. Other publications include Indigenous Peoples and Protected Areas by Elizabeth Kempf (Earthscan) and Salvaging Nature by Marcus Colchester (UNRISD)