UK Overseas Territories

What are the UK Overseas Territories?

The UK Overseas Territories (UKOTs) are spread across the globe, from the Caribbean to the South Atlantic, hosting 94% of the UK’s unique wildlife species, from blue iguanas to giant tree daisies. They are home to approximately 320,000 people and encompass every major habitat type on Earth – rainforests, tundra, deserts, coral reefs, and icefields. As if this wasn’t enough, they are home to a quarter of the world’s penguins and collectively form the fifth-largest marine estate in the world.

Key: 1 – Bermuda; 2 – Cayman Islands; 3 – British Virgin Islands; 4 – Anguilla; 5 – Turks & Caicos Islands; 6 – Montserrat; 7 – Pitcairn Islands; 8 – British Antarctic Territory; 9 –Falkland Islands; 10 – South Georgia & the South Sandwich Islands; 11 – St Helena; 12 – Ascension Island; 13 – Tristan de Cunha; 14 – Gilbratar; 15 – Akrotiri & Dhekelia Sovereign Base Areas.

What funding is available for the UKOTs?

The UKOTs face unique challenges related to climate change, conservation, and sustainable development, making them a critical focus for environmental protection. Despite this, efforts to protect and restore these remarkable natural environments receive minimal support. The status of the UKOTs renders them ineligible for many international funding sources and Brexit removed their access to most EU funding. Therefore, the primary source of funding for environmental projects in the UKOTs is the UK Government’s annual Darwin Plus programme. However, this is insufficient to meet all the needs of the Territories and is constrained in the topics and approaches it supports. 

Consequently, philanthropy plays a crucial role in supporting the UKOTs. Yet in recent years, only 0.03% of total environmental funding from UK trusts and foundations has been directed to these areas. Meanwhile, the small communities of the UKOTs do not have capacity to fund this work themselves. If this situation continues, we risk losing globally important species and habitats for which the UK bears a profound responsibility.

The efforts of EFN and John Ellerman Foundation 

John Ellerman Foundation has been awarding grants for transformative and locally-led environmental work in the UKOTs for over a decade. Between 2013 and 2020, they issued approximately £1.8 million of grants across the UKOTs. In 2020 they funded a secondment to EFN which resulted in a case for support publication The UK Overseas Territories: An unparalleled opportunity for global environmental impact and accompanying video, bringing to life the sheer potential for environmental funding in the UKOTs. 

One year later, as part of their 50th anniversary celebrations, John Ellerman Foundation launched the UKOTs Fund, with support from EFN. Operating as a pooled fund with John Ellerman Foundation as one of five funders, it distributed another £1.8 million across two rounds in 2021 and 2022.

The achievements of the UKOTs Fund

In 2024, we led a full review into the first two rounds of the UKOTs Fund, resulting in our report The UK Overseas Territories Fund: An unparalleled opportunity for environmental philanthropy (accompanied by a blog post). Key findings include:

• The UKOTs Fund has catalysed urgent conservation activities such as invasive species eradication, habitat restoration and the protection of both marine and terrestrial ecosystems. 
• Specific achievements include the creation of coral biobanks in the Turks and Caicos Islands, the creation and expansion of National Parks in the Falkland Islands and Anguilla, and groundbreaking research on whale sharks in St Helena. 
• Funding has also bolstered the capacity of local environmental organisations, enabling them to deliver more impactful and sustained conservation efforts, and leverage further funding. 
• Grant-holders highlighted the ease of interacting with the UKOTs Fund and its flexibility, particularly in providing much-needed core cost funding, rarely available from other sources.
• The role of the UKOTs Fund in filling a crucial gap in the environmental funding landscape was made extremely apparent, and the positive feedback received adds to John Ellerman Foundation’s reputation as a progressive and responsive funder – the exact approaches most needed for work in the UKOTs.
• The achievements of the UKOTs Fund relative to the level of funding provided, highlight the potential for funders to facilitate significant conservation benefits in an extremely cost-efficient manner in these unique areas. 

The UKOTs Fund also fosters collaboration, creating a network of stakeholders and enabling funders to work together. As highlighted in our recent report Increasing the effectiveness of environmental funder-fundraiser relationships, such partnerships are vital for amplifying the impact of environmental philanthropy.

A call to action for funders

The successes listed above are just the beginning. John Ellerman Foundation aims to launch a new funding round in 2025, a move strongly supported by our review findings. A new funding round would not only sustain the momentum of current projects, and allow scaling of efforts, but would also provide opportunities for other initiatives across the UKOTs. Going beyond 2025, if the UKOTs Fund were to evolve into a long-term initiative, its potential impact would be unparalleled.

To support this ambition, we worked with John Ellerman Foundation to run a UKOTs learning series for funders in 2024. Across four events, we brought funders together to learn more about the UKOTs, meet those working on the ground, learn about innovative environmental practices, and contribute to the development of the next stages of the UKOTs Fund. Recordings and accompanying blog posts from the three online events are available below.

The cost-to-impact ratio shown by the UKOTs Fund has demonstrated the potential for relatively modest investments to yield substantial conservation benefits in these biodiversity-rich regions. As such, it provides a unique opportunity for funders at all scales to make a meaningful difference. The due diligence work undertaken by John Ellerman Foundation also means little research time is needed on behalf of contributing funders. For any funder looking to help protect globally significant ecosystems and at-risk species, joining the contributor base for the UKOTs Fund is therefore an obvious, strategic and efficient choice.