UNEP-WCMC Annual Report
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UNEP World Conservation Monitoring Centre Annual Report 2007 UNEP World Conservation Monitoring Centre he United Nations WCMC 2000 Board of Trustees Environment Programme TWorld Conservation Robert Napier (Chair) Monitoring Centre (UNEP- Sir Rudolph Agnew WCMC) is the biodiversity Mr Alasdair Poore assessment and biodiversity Mr Patrick Haighton policy support arm of the United Nations Environment Dr Ray Gambell OBE Programme (UNEP), the world’s (Company Secretary) foremost intergovernmental environmental organization. The Centre has been in operation for over 25 years, combining scientific research with practical policy advice. UNEP-WCMC provides objective, scientifically rigorous products and services to help decision makers recognize the value of biodiversity and apply this knowledge to all that they do. Its core business is managing data about ecosystems and biodiversity, interpreting and analysing those data to provide assessments and policy analysis, and making the results available to both national and international decision makers and businesses. UNEP Welcome Achim Steiner Executive Director, UNEP United Nations Under-Secretary-General or the past 18 months UNEP has been in the midst of UNEP can also deliver expertise and a comparative the most fundamental changes that the organization advantage to progress key areas of international activity in Fhas seen for 25 years and more. UNEP-WCMC has support of its thematic priority concerns. In the area of been very much part of this: in many ways the Centre has climate change, for example, we will focus on the reinvented itself, ensuring that it is fit-for-purpose to address biodiversity and livelihood nexus that is likely to emerge the ever escalating biodiversity challenges faced by national from a fresh international focus on reducing deforestation governments and the global community. This has been and degradation – activities that are responsible for an achieved through the mobilization of the Centre’s own estimated 20 per cent of all greenhouse gas emissions. And capacity, taking place largely within its existing budgets and the biodiversity challenges that natural disasters and staffing levels. That the transition was made while producing conflicts can throw up were brought into sharp focus in the best financial performance for many years is an 2007 through the impacts of regional strife on mountain outstanding achievement. Congratulations are due to the gorillas and their forest habitat. whole team. UNEP-WCMC, with its 40-strong team of biodiversity In UNEP’s new Mid-Term Strategy (MTS), developed scientists and technologists, is well-positioned to support the during 2007 and approved by the Governing Council in UNEP-MTS. It is my strong expectation that the gains made early 2008, biodiversity has been mainstreamed into the six in 2007 will provide the springboard for more effective cross-cutting thematic priorities that will be our focus for the integration of the Centre’s outstanding work across all the foreseeable future. These are UNEP Divisions. I will certainly provide a supporting climate change; framework to encourage and facilitate this. disasters and conflicts; Finally, I would like to acknowledge the role of ecosystem management; Sir Rudolph Agnew, member and Chairman of the Trustees environmental governance; of WCMC 2000 for almost 20 years, in the formation and harmful substances and hazardous waste; and current success of UNEP-WCMC. I would like to thank resource efficiency (sustainable consumption Sir Rudolph for helping guide the Centre through some and production). challenging times and assure him and his successor, Robert Napier, of my determination to see our collaboration The whole point of UNEP’s focus on ecosystem strengthened so that UNEP-WCMC can grow and earn management is to address the disjointed approach to natural international acknowledgement as a centre of excellence system management that has led to the loss of biological supporting the global biodiversity agenda. diversity, the fragmenting of habitats and a marked decline in the ecosystem services critical for human well-being. 1 UNEP-WCMC in 2007 Jon Hutton Director UNEP World Conservation Monitoring Centre t the end of a financial year, the thoughts of the Director turn first and foremost to the balance sheet – and it is gratifying to be able to report that AUNEP-WCMC has made a modest, but important, surplus for the third year in a row. Thanks must go to all staff for their tremendous efforts in securing and implementing project work, and in particular to Programme Heads who both coordinated this work and helped to ensure that our costs were fully covered. My special thanks are due to our Finance and Administration team whose detailed monthly breakdown of the Centre’s finances, and subsequent production of a suite of performance indicators, provided essential and timely information for the effective management of the Centre. It is even more gratifying that the Centre achieved its financial success in 2007 while completing most of the activities laid out in our Transition Plan, developed by staff in early 2006 shortly after I joined as Director. None of these activities was without cost, if only in terms of staff time, and some were financially ambitious. The rebuilding of our Informatics Server Room is a case in point. With in-kind assistance valued in excess of US$ 250,000 from technology partners including Microsoft and Sun-Microsystems, we managed to reduce our hardware by around 50 per cent, simultaneously upgrading our technology and cutting our greenhouse gas emissions by nearly 10 per cent overall. During the year we also successfully introduced a range of other measures that involved significant financial risk, including the creation of two new Centre- wide foci for our activities – the One Ocean and Climate Change programmes – and the re-establishment of an informatics programme bringing together our geographic information systems, databases, web services and other technologies. The new programmes are essential for providing UNEP- WCMC with the capacity to address the key issues of our time, keeping our work on global biodiversity both fresh and relevant. There were a number of other important gains at the Centre in 2007, but here I will just highlight the Proteus initiative, the first phase of which came to an end in 2007. This five-year agreement between the Centre and business leaders in the oil and gas, mineral and mining, and banking and technology 2 UNEP/WCMC sectors was established to improve the delivery of biodiversity information to decision makers. I am delighted to be able to report that during 2007 this unique partnership was renegotiated and strengthened, with new participants. Proteus 2012 recognizes that more needs to be done to deliver comprehensive protected area information, and that the task of effectively linking different biodiversity datasets has barely begun. The goal is for decision makers in industry and elsewhere to have access, by 2012, to the best possible data and information on the location and distribution of biodiversity of the highest value, Our vision… as determined by globally important priority setting frameworks. a world where biodiversity counts. When Proteus first started it was controversial. Indeed, to this day, the suggestion that UNEP-WCMC sells data still surfaces from time to time. I suppose that this perception grew because we were amongst the first of the biodiversity Our mission… organizations to work closely with the business community. Times change, to evaluate and highlight the however, and nowadays it is normal for business to work in partnership with many values of biodiversity and those who can help it improve its environmental performance. With the benefit put authoritative biodiversity of hindsight, UNEP-WCMC was in the vanguard and we look forward to knowledge at the centre of pioneering other new approaches that will strengthen the business case for decision-making. sustainable development. Finally, I would like to remind everyone that UNEP-WCMC is a hybrid institution, led by UNEP but implemented through WCMC 2000, a UK Charity Our goal… established to support the Centre. The role of WCMC 2000 is often overlooked to be an internationally recognized – which is not necessarily a bad thing from the Director’s perspective because Centre of Excellence for the it implies that the relationship is relatively seamless. Happily, this remains the synthesis, analysis and dissemination case, and over the last year I have yet again been fortunate to enjoy the of global biodiversity knowledge, unstinting support of the Trustees of WCMC 2000, and of its senior staff. During providing authoritative, strategic 2007, Sir Rudolph Agnew stood down after 19 years of outstanding service as and timely information for Chairman of the Charity. He continues as a Trustee but was replaced in the conventions, countries, chair by Robert Napier who recently retired as CEO of WWF-UK. Robert brings organizations and companies his enthusiasm, thoughtfulness and a wealth of relevant experience to the to use in the development and Centre. I look forward to working with him and his team to make 2008 even implementation of their policies more successful. and decisions. 3 Financial report UNEP-WCMC financial results, year end 31 December 2007 NEP remained the Centre’s largest financial supporter, providing around 50 per cent of funding, made up of 30 per cent of project funding, 16 per cent contributed via UNEP from the Global Environment Facility (GEF) and U4 per cent from UNEP Treaties such as the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES) and the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD). Income from intergovernmental organizations and treaties fell to 0.3 per cent from 16 per cent in 2006 because project income from the European Community was not due for payment during 2007, whilst income from the corporate sector remained stable at 21 per cent. The Centre plans to increase its future stream of income from multiple sources, which may INDEPENDENT AUDITORS’ reduce the percentage of funding from UNEP.