Save the Chagos Archipelago!

Here's how the CCT is thinking about the proposed MPA:

The Government’s proposal

The British Government has an extraordinary opportunity to make the Chagos Archipelago (British Indian Ocean Territory), including its 200 mile Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ) a Protected Area and Strict (i.e. no-take) Marine Reserve. If the entire EEZ were protected, it would be the largest marine protected area in the world, and would more than double global coverage with protection. This proposal was put forward by the Chagos Environment Network* at The Royal Society. The aim of establishing a large Marine Reserve to protect this archipelago and all its surrounding waters was strongly supported by a scientific workshop held at the National Oceanography Centre, Southampton in August 2009, in which many of the UK’s leading marine scientists participated. Now, before it’s too late, there is an opportunity to save this precious natural environment.

The Chagos Archipelago

The Chagos islands and surrounding waters in the centre of the Indian Ocean are a UK Overseas Territory (directly administered by the Government). They comprise Diego Garcia and 54 other tiny islands totalling only 16 sq km of land, spread over a total oceanic EEZ of 544,000 sq km (this is an area twice the size of the UK’s land surface). Since the 1960s they have been exclusively set aside for defence purposes, with no inhabitants except for the military personnel and civilian contractors on Diego Garcia. Most of Diego Garcia is a Ramsar site and five islands and their reefs are Strict Nature Reserves. The Chagos contains the world’s largest coral atoll and is the site of greatest marine biodiversity in the UK and its Territories. The Archipelago provides important habitat for marine wildlife and seabirds for all or parts of their lives. It also has one of the healthiest reef systems in the cleanest waters in the world, supporting half the total area of good quality reefs in the Indian Ocean. As a result, the ecosystems of the Chagos have so far proven resilient to climate change and environmental perturbations. The area includes deep sea habitats such as 6000 m deep trenches, oceanic ridges and sea mounts, each harbouring specially adapted species. Despite a Fisheries Conservation Management Zone with commercial catches limited by licence, legal and illegal fishing has impacted the area, for sharks, sea cucumbers, turtles and fish are known to have declined as a result of illegal fishing and by-catch from legal fishing. An increased level of environmental protection and enforcement is now urgently required.

The Benefits of a Chagos Protected Area

Creating one of the world’s greatest conservation areas

The Chagos Protected Area would be as important as the Galapagos or the Great Barrier Reef and with the EEZ included, would be the world’s largest Marine Reserve. Extensive protected areas which include many types of habitat and species are most effective in maintaining links between ecosystems and supporting viable populations. These include open ocean systems, deep sea habitats, shallow reef environments and island biota including seabirds, reptiles and mammals. A holistic system of protection is essential in the face of uncertain threats such as those of climate change.

Saving coral reefs

The Indian Ocean is surrounded by developing countries, where millions of people are dependent on coral reefs for food, building materials, coastal protection and financial security from recreation and tourism. Reefs in many coastal areas are degraded because of the direct impact of human activities, and a changing climate. The reefs of the Chagos have been affected by sea warming, but because of the lack of direct human impacts, they have recovered faster than most reefs in coastal areas. The Chagos Protected Area would therefore protect a core of the world’s most resilient coral reefs at a time when scientists fear that coral reefs face rapid decline due to pollution, warming and ocean acidification. If the Chagos is managed well, then these reefs may last for 20 to 40 more years, giving time for global climate change mitigation measures to be implemented, and space for marine life to seed recovery and potentially replenish degraded reefs.

Saving marine wildlife

The Chagos Protected Area would maintain the pure and unpolluted waters of the Chagos, providing a safe refuge for its wonderfully rich marine life, including many threatened species, such as turtles and sharks. Just 29% of Indian Ocean coral reefs are considered at low direct threat from human activity, and half of these are in the Chagos. The deep sea habitats around Chagos are expected to be intact and important refuges for deep sea biodiversity, since other areas of the Indian Ocean are known to have been exploited.

Rebuilding fish stocks

World fish stocks have declined catastrophically because of destructive and unsustainable fisheries exploitation. A large ‘no take’ protected area would assist stock recovery, potentially increasing fish populations over a much wider area due to the overspill of adults, juveniles and their larvae. The protected area will also provide temporal refuge from exploitation for migratory species such as tuna, simultaneously enhancing their feeding opportunities in the area, and protecting them from fisheries in other feeding grounds.

Food and jobs for people in the region

The protected area in the Chagos at the centre of the Indian Ocean will contribute to a richer ocean and should benefit people in the long term living in and around that ocean, in East Africa, and the rapidly developing areas of the Middle East and South Asia.

Science: a platform and benchmark for crucial research

The Chagos is one of the few marine locations in the world where direct human impacts are minimal, providing a crucial opportunity to assess the effects of climate change on relatively healthy marine ecosystems. The managed protected area would therefore provide a platform for a scientific programme of global importance, aiding understanding of climate change effects on tropical marine ecosystems, and how management can protect these systems.

Discovering secrets of unexplored, deep, pristine ocean

The deep oceanic waters around the Chagos Islands out to the 200 mile EEZ include an exceptional diversity of undersea geological features, almost certainly in pristine condition. Although these deepwater habitats surrounding the Archipelago have not been explored or mapped in any detail, work elsewhere in the world has shown that high physical diversity of the sea floor is closely linked to a high diversity of species.

Safeguarding internationally important breeding seabird colonies

The British Indian Ocean Territory holds internationally important colonies of breeding seabirds. Over 150,000 pairs of seventeen species of seabirds breed on the atolls. This has resulted in ten of the islands receiving formal IUCN recognition as Important Bird Areas and, a further two islands have qualified for this status and are awaiting designation. With further conservation management of the atolls, involving eradicating rats and clearing the monoculture stands of coconut palms left over from the plantation days, the seabirds of BIOT have the opportunity to be restored to many of the islands on which they formerly bred.

A major UK contribution to planet-saving commitments

The creation of the Chagos Protected Area would be an important contribution by the UK to various international environmental conventions such as The Convention on Biological Diversity, The United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, The Ramsar Convention on Wetlands of International Importance, the Bonn Convention on the Conservation of Migratory Species of Wild Animals; and to global commitments such as halting the decline of biodiversity by 2010, establishing marine protection networks by 2012, and restoring depleted fish stocks to sustainability by 2015.

Chagos Islanders and Conservation

‘Strong support for this initiative for conservation’ was expressed on behalf of the Chagos Islands All-Party Parliamentary Group and by both Chagossian leaders who spoke at the meeting on 9 April at The Royal Society. Involving Chagos Islanders and others in the conservation is important. The creation of a protected area would clearly be without prejudice to the outcome of the pending legal case in regard to Chagos Islanders and the arrangements for the protected area could be modified in the light of the judgment.

Finance

Establishing and managing a Chagos Marine Protected area should not add a significant additional cost for the UK Government, since the area is already subject to restrictions and to enforcement patrols. However limited additional recurring finance would be required to replace current income from the sale of tuna fisheries licenses and to strengthen the management and enforcement of the area. Sustainable means of financing are under discussion.

*CHAGOS ENVIRONMENT NETWORK The Chagos Environment Network is a group of conservation and scientific organisations (The Chagos Conservation Trust, The Linnean Society of London, The Pew Environment Group, The Royal Society, the RSPB, the Zoological Society of London and Professor Charles Sheppard of Warwick University.) There is much wider support within the UK and internationally, including from a scientific workshop held last August in Southampton as well as by IUCN, Ramsar and UNEP.