By Sarah Tulej, 8th August 2024
When you think about the UK’s biodiversity, what comes to mind? Hedgehogs? Red squirrels? Maybe an all-too rare turtle dove?
Altogether there are about 90 species living in the British Isles and nowhere else – so-called endemic species. But no less than a further 3,300 endemic species are known (so far) in the UK Overseas Territories (UKOTs)1 – comprising some 94% of the UK’s unique biodiversity.
The UKOTs host some of the world’s most delicate, complex and vulnerable ecosystems and habitats. Some 45.5% of their endemic species are considered threatened. They face a host of severe threats including climate change leading to hurricanes, droughts and the spread of pathogens, invasive species, pollution and urban development.
And yet, environmental projects to protect the incredible nature found there receive just 0.03% of total environmental giving from UK trusts and foundations.
A learning series about the UK Overseas Territories
This is why the Environmental Funders Network and John Ellerman Foundation have launched a new UKOTs learning series in 2024 to address this gap. It’s an opportunity for funders to discover more about these diverse and important environments, how and why they are under threat and what funders can do to radically increase the support for those working on the ground to safeguard their future.
The first event in July was all about sharing the incredible nature of the UKOTs, which together host every significant habitat type on earth, including rainforest, tundra, desert, coral reef and icefield, along with a quarter of the world’s penguins and the fifth largest marine estate on the planet.
To get a taster of these spectacular places, watch this five minute video.
What problems do they face?
Action to protect and restore these phenomenal natural environments receives extremely low levels of support, in large part because of their status as UK territory. Because the UK is a wealthy country, institutions such as the UN and EU have historically declined to fund work in the UKOTs. This creates an important role for the philanthropy sector in helping to plug this gap.
Given the importance and extent of biodiversity in the territories, relatively small amounts of funding can have a large impact – and there is a huge amount of work that needs to be funded.
John Ellerman Foundation has been supporting land-based and marine-related work in the Territories since 2013 through responsive environmental grant making. In 2021, the Foundation launched a £1.05m grant making fund for the UKOTs, and ran a second round of £794k in 2022. It is now focusing on making the wider environmental philanthropic sector aware of the incredible opportunities to fund impactful work in the territories, so that efforts can be scaled up further.
A spotlight on St Helena and Montserrat
In our July event, Helena Bennet, Director of St Helena National Trust described the incredible fauna and flora found on and around the island. St Helena is an extremely remote island in the middle of the South Atlantic, and has only been accessible once a week by plane since 2017 (and prior to this, only by ship). New species are continually being discovered when studies are possible, but this is limited due to the scarcity of funding for research. Far more could be done to understand the nature there, including its incredible 420 (and counting) endemic invertebrate species.
The island is in a Category Six marine protected area, which is now part of the Blue Belt programme. The St Helena National Trust is doing a range of conservation work including species protection, seed banks and reforestation.
Some of the main threats include invasive species (including termites and wasps), plastic pollution from outside the island, the spread of pathogens and of course climate change, which is inducing drought in the island’s cloud forest (which supplies water for islanders).
Sarita Francis, Executive Director of the Montserrat National Trust explained how the rugged, 50-sq-mile Caribbean island with a population of 4,000 has been affected by volcanic eruptions since 1995. The eruptions buried its capital and rendered two thirds of the island uninhabitable. The biodiversity on the island is threatened by the impact of the volcano (ash has buried reefs, and water sources and plants have been damaged by ash fall), and by new development for homes in the north. Montserrat is also affected by Atlantic storms and hurricanes.
The Montserrat National Trust must compete with rebuilding projects for funding and relies heavily on UK Government aid to maintain services for the population. The Trust is also working hard to protect the island’s endemic species. Sarita gave the example of the mountain chicken, one of the largest frogs in the world, weighing up to 1kg. It used to be widespread on seven Caribbean islands but is nearly extinct in the wild due to hurricanes, volcanic eruptions, hunting and most impactfully the arrival of the deadly chytrid fungus. It can now only be found living wild on Montserrat’s close neighbour Dominica. Despite efforts in Montserrat to reintroduce pairs bred in captivity in biosecure facilities in the UK, only eight individuals now survive in semi-wild conditions.
What’s happening next?
Having learned about the incredible nature across the UK Overseas Territories, our second event in September will be an opportunity to hear from people working on the ground (or ocean!) about the challenges they experience in delivering effective work to protect and enhance the natural environment, and what could be done to overcome those challenges.
We will be taking a system-wide view, exploring the challenges from different angles and addressing the enabling conditions needed to radically improve the fate of the UKOTs environments.
As with every event in this series, participants will be able to meet some of the people working in the UKOTs, and hear their views, priorities and concerns. They will also have the opportunity to connect with other funders from the UK and beyond and help to shape the future of this learning series.
Join our next event on Monday 9 September, 14:00-15:30 BST by signing up here. You can find out more about other events planned in the series here.
This learning programme is free and open to all funders interested in the UKOTs. Please note that, to allow for peer-to-peer sharing and learning, this series is for charitable trusts, foundations and philanthropic organisations and individuals only.
About Authors
Written by Sarah Tulej with support from James Tristan Goodman and Sophia Cooke, EFN, as part of our UKOTs learning series.
Footnotes
- The UK Overseas Territories have a combined population of around 300,000 people and cover a total area seven times the size of the UK. They include St Helena in the South Atlantic with its unique but threatened cloud-forest habitat; the Turks and Caicos Islands in the Caribbean including the region’s largest and most pristine uninhabited island; and South Georgia, also in the South Atlantic, with its incredible abundance of marine mammals and birdlife. ↩︎