This module is currently unfinished; information on biodiversity and legislation for territories is patchy and not necessarily completely up to date.
Small Islands present particular challenges and have unique requirements due to generally low capacity and a lack of 'fit for purpose' IA tools, combined with incredibly important and threatened biodiversity.
CBBIA and the UK Overseas Territories Conservation Forum organised a workshop and training course to review capacity building needs. Key challenges identified in the Jersey meeting included the following:
- Lack of coordinated strategic planning frameworks/processes that integrate biodiversity concerns and a reactive approach to development planning and IA;
- Weak institutional frameworks in some cases;
- Lack of information and guidance on good impact assessment processes (with the appropriate checks and balances) that will ensure transparency and accountability;
- Lack of capacity to provide effective input to EIA, to enforce mitigation requirements and other provisions and conditions or to ensure monitoring and follow-up;
- Lack of any independent review facility to provide advice on the quality and content of EIAs;
- Lack of good practice standards, contributing to poor quality;
- Shortage of capacity and resources to gather and maintain biodiversity-related data upon which to base well-informed EIA decisions;
- Shortage of advice on how to design and ensure appropriate community participation, involvement and consultation in impact assessment;
- Few opportunities for training for those engaged in or assessing EIAs (help is needed to develop skills in valuation techniques, mitigation etc);
- Sharing of impact assessment experiences and information between island territories, dependencies and states needs to be improved: at present there is no established mechanism for this.
There is an urgent need for capacity building in the majority of small islands worldwide to help strengthen the priority given to biodiversity, ecosystem services and the needs of the poor. There is much that can be done to provide training, advice on community participation techniques for use in IA, communication tools and better networks for sharing information and experiences. This needs to be organised locally, to reduce travel times and resource implications of participation.
Although the site is currently based around the UK Overseas Territories, it is developing to take in other SIDS as well.