UK Overseas Territories
Background
Kew has been involved with UKOTs since the 18th century when the then patron and benefactor of Kew, Sir Joseph Banks, initiated Kew’s overseas collecting programme. In the 19th Century this was continued by Banks's successors, Sir William Hooker and his son Sir Joseph Hooker. The Library and Archives at Kew contain important collections of letters, reports and other documents relating to the status of habitats and plants within some of the present Overseas Territories.
Much of the earliest involvement revolved around the strategic location of St Helena. In 1787 a new garden was founded on St Helena as a repository for specimens, orchestrated by Kew, and managed by the Governor. Sir Joseph Banks pioneered the transfer of plants within the colonies, from species rich areas to species poor, often using St Helena as a midway point. The island was used as a convalescent home for plants being transported by ship from Australia, China and India. Many remained on the island, while others were re-potted and continued their journey on other ships. Sir Joseph Hooker, Kew’s second Director, visited Ascension Island, the Falkland Islands and St Helena in 1845, from where he compiled his Flora of the Falkland Islands. William Burchell was resident schoolmaster and acting botanist on St Helena from 1805 to 1810. Kew acquired his herbarium in 1865. Burchell was also a gifted artist and he completed many botanical sketches and watercolour drawings of St Helena landscapes. Burchell’s daughter gave Hooker these drawings in 1878, and Hooker gave them to Kew. They are an important archival collection of the island and its original vegetation. This tremendous wealth of historical literature and other information is a major data-repatriation challenge and opportunity for Kew and the UKOTs programme in the future.
Over the years the Living Collections at Kew continued to receive specimens from UKOTs and from expeditions to UKOTs, and the floras of Ascension, Bermuda, British Virgin Islands, Cayman Islands, Falkland Islands, Gibraltar, Montserrat and St Helena are currently represented in the Living Collections. The Horticulture and Public Education Department (HPE) has been working on cultivation protocols for threatened species for many years using both conventional techniques and micropropagation. Much of the early development in this area was through working on the endemic flora of St Helena such as Trochetiopsis erythroxylon and T. ebenus. These activities are now part of a co-ordinated programme to identify key species, collect seeds for long-term banking, investigate genetic diversity and bring selected UKOTs species into displays in the living collections at Kew, in order to help raise awareness of the important biodiversity in these far-flung parts of the UK.
The 1999 White Paper, 'Partnership for Progress and Prosperity', set out the British Government’s policy for strengthening and modernising its relationship with the Overseas Territories, to take the partnership into the new Millennium. With respect to the environment, the White Paper stated that 'the common objective must be to use the environment of the Overseas Territories to provide benefits to the people in them, and to conserve our global heritage by managing sustainably all the Overseas Territories’ natural resources'. RBG Kew made significant inputs into the environmental aspects of the White Paper, mainly through its membership of the UK Overseas Territories Conservation Forum (UKOTCF). The UKOTCF exists to promote the ‘co-ordinated conservation of the diverse and increasingly threatened plant and animal species and natural habitats of the UKOTs. It aims to do this by providing assistance in the form of expertise, information and liaison between non-governmental organisations and governments, both in the UK and in the Territories themselves’. RBG Kew is a founder member of the UKOTCF, which was established in 1987. UKOTs staff are represented on the Council and working groups of the UKOTCF.
To help address these sustainable development issues, the Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO) has developed Environment Charters to establish the action to be taken on implementing sound environmental management practices in UKOTs. Signed in 2001, the Environment Charters contain guiding principles which recognise the need for a healthy environment for the well-being of livelihoods, wise and equitable use of natural resources and solutions aimed at benefiting both the environment and development. To enable the Charters to be implemented the FCO and Department for International Development (DFID) launched a joint funding programme, the Overseas Territories Environment Programme (OTEP) in 2003.
RBG Kew is active in other areas of national and international policy by providing advice to the UK Government in areas concerning access to, and the use of and management of, plant resources in all their different forms. The Convention on Trade in Endangered Species (CITES) and the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) are particularly important and have great impact on our activities. Not all Territories have enacted local legislation to enable the UK's ratification of CITES and CBD to be extended to the Territories. This is a high priority for the Government and Kew will do all it can to help implement this process.
The Global Strategy for Plant Conservation (GSPC) is a particular focus for our work. The UKOTs were specifically excluded from the UK’s response to the Strategy and the publication of the 'Plant Diversity Challenge' in 2004. We are working with others to raise awareness of the GSPC within the Territories and to help develop an implementation strategy. Recent activities include a regional Caribbean workshop in 2006 (funded by Defra), a workshop at the UKOTs and Crown Dependencies Conference in Jersey in 2006, and we are seeking funding to develop a co-ordinated response from UKOTs along the lines of the Plant Diversity Challenge.
We are in regular contact with the FCO, Defra and DFID over UKOT matters either through our UKOTCF activities, OTEP involvement or directly on plant related conservation issues. This includes commenting on and developing strategy, for example the preparation of position papers and country reports for SBSTTA and CBD COPs as well as CITES COPs. We have also been asked to take part in the briefing and orientation of new Governors and senior staff going out to UKOTs to take up new posts, organised by the FCO. FCO staff also come out to Kew for away-day scenarios and we have hosted days for both the FCO Overseas Territories Department (2005) and for the FCO UKOT Biodiversity Team (2004).