A policy analysis of biodiversity conservation in the Overseas Entities of the European Union

Abstract

The European Union (EU) includes 34 Overseas Entities (OEs): nine Outermost Regions and 25 Overseas Countries and Territories. As most OEs are tropical islands, over 80 % of the EU’s biodiversity resides in OEs, with an overall very high endemism level. OEs mostly thus represent regions of high conservation relevance. OEs cover an area of 4.4 million km² (with Greenland constituting about half of this area), equivalent in size to continental Europe. With over 15 million km², their combined Exclusive Economic Zone make it the most extensive in the world. The European Union’s Overseas Entities are linked to six Member States: Denmark (Greenland), France (e.g. French Guiana, Réunion, French Polynesia), the Netherlands (Curaçao and other Caribbean islands), Portugal (Azores, Madeira), Spain (Canary Islands) and the United Kingdom (e.g. islands in all oceans, such as Saint Helena, Ascension and Tristan da Cunha in the Atlantic, Pitcairn Islands in the Pacific, or Cayman Islands in the Caribbean). There are significant differences between the OEs themselves in terms of the degree of autonomy from the Member States they are linked to, their economic and social development as well as their particular geography and climate. However, they do share common characteristics, among others: parliamentary democracies, lack of political sovereignty, and very small populations. As regards biodiversity conservation, there is a policy gap - the EU Nature Directives apply only in the Outermost Regions Canary Islands, Azores and Madeira. Otherwise, the OEs have their own individual conservation regulations, many of these relatively weak. Similarly, the cooperation in conservation governance differs between the association of EU member states and corresponding OEs. The 34 OEs are widely scattered, which may a prominent reason for a concurrent knowledge gap of biodiversity and conservation policy in OEs among conservation biologists. This lack of knowledge may have a comparable dimension among non-Europeans, i.e. in the regions where the OE are situated, except in their more immediate vicinity. This lack of knowledge translates in a conservation advocacy gap. This work represents the first ever policy analysis of biodiversity conservation in the European Union’s Overseas Entities. It intends to raise awareness among conservation scientists of how many OEs exist, their identity, where they are situated, the conservation status of the local biodiversity and existing management regimes, including protected areas.