St Helena : DFID's Gareth Thomas Sets Out Airport Views
Submitted by Saint Helena Herald (Juanita Brock) 18.01.2006 (Article Archived on 01.02.2006)
The Air Access Project Update depicts the views of DFID's views about the airport and access.
PRESS RELEASE – AIR ACCESS PROJECT UPDATE
DFID’s Gareth Thomas sets out airport views
As you may know from recent reports in the press, DFID was inundated with Parliamentary Questions on the St Helena airport project and associated issues during the autumn. A large number of the questions came from Norman Baker MP, the environmental spokesman of the Liberal Democrat party. DFID’s Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State with responsibility for St Helena, Gareth Thomas, decided that it would be useful to write to Mr Baker to set out DFID’s position on the airport and the environmental and social issues around the project. He also decided it would be a good idea to share this letter with Saints.
“Dear Norman Baker
When we met on 6 December on Nicaragua, we had a brief discussion of the proposed development of air access to St Helena. I promised to get back to you in more detail on a number of points you raised.
You expressed concern about the potential impact of the airport on St Helena and its people, issues that have also recently been raised in Parliament and in the press and explored with me whether an airport was really necessary.
The people of St Helena are facing one of the most difficult periods in their 500 year history. The island is in long term economic decline. The population has declined from over 5,500 in the early 1990s to less than 3,900 today. Since the collapse of the flax industry in the later 1960s, the island has had no economic base, and many families have been split up as parents seek employment overseas. The island is increasingly dependent on UK budgetary support.
St Helena is actively seeking to reverse this decline, and work towards financial self sustainability, an objective shared by the UK Government. Access is the single greatest obstacle to this. Its importance is reflected in St Helena’s own National Development Objectives, where it heads the list and these objectives were arrived at following extensive public consultation on the island. The people of St Helena have lobbied the UK Government for an airport for many years, and their preference for air access was clearly articulated in the 2002 referendum.
The airport, and any subsequent economic development, will provide significant benefits to Saints, providing employment and business opportunities, reuniting families and helping to tackle some difficult social problems that have resulted from recent population decline and economic emigration. Better access will allow those remaining overseas the opportunity to visit home more frequently, a further important consideration.
You explored with me whether the airport option that has been chosen was too large. In our judgement, the size of airport proposed on Prosperous Bay Plain is appropriate for St Helena, and is dictated by the long distances from any recognised regional hub, and the size of aircraft capable of providing a service over those distances. It is, for example much shorter than Mount Pleasant in the Falkland Islands, and of comparable length to the airport in Gibraltar. It will be able to cater only for aircraft up to the size of a Boeing 737, and not the larger long haul aircraft.
You drew analogies to the experiences in the Caribbean. An airport on St Helena is unlikely to attract the same level of traffic as any of the Caribbean islands. There are effectively no beaches on St Helena, and none of the facilities that attract mass tourism. St Helena’s appeal lies in its friendly people, natural beauty and its history, something that is well recognised by the St Helena Government and the UK Government, and is the foundation of the island’s 1997 tourism strategy. DFID is providing support to update this strategy, and early feedback confirms that the focus will remain on preserving those features that provide the island’s unique attraction. However, urgent action is required in the shape of this significant investment in an airport as the declining economy and competing needs for available funding currently limit St Helena’s ability to maintain its built and natural environment.
You asked about the options we considered. The 2004 Feasibility Study by Atkins, commissioned jointly by the St Helena Government and DFID, looked at a very wide range of options for maintaining access to St Helena, including the option of improving sea access. It also looked at providing shuttle flights from Ascension. A full list of options considered can be found in Appendix D to Atkins’ feasibility study, available at www.sthelenaaccess.com. Options were evaluated against a broad range of criteria including their impact on the environment, social and institutional impact, and their potential to support economic growth.
St Helena’s inability to reverse the current economic decline is to a large extent due to its dependence on sea access. To get from the UK to St Helena takes a minimum of five days via Ascension or more than a week via southern Africa, and there are a limited number of sailings a year. This severely restricts the island’s tourism potential, with few visitors being able to afford the time or the high cost of the long sea voyages, and makes it almost impossible for Saints living overseas to make regular home visits. Access to overseas markets is also severely constrained. The clear conclusion of the options study was that continued sea access will not be able to address either social or economic decline.
Consideration was given to providing a proper harbour that would allow St Helena to benefit from cruise passengers. However, the cost of a harbour is substantial, and cruise passengers bring little income to the islands that they visit; almost all of the benefits being retained by the cruise operators. A single tourist staying overnight on St Helena could be expected to bring in five to ten times the income to the economy when compared to that of a cruise passenger.
In regard to shuttle flights from Ascension, these would indeed require a shorter runway, but would bring many of the same impacts as the moderate runway proposed, at a higher proportionate cost, and without the associated benefits. Wideawake Airfield on Ascension Island is run by the US military, and there are severe restrictions on civilian use. The current air-bridge arrangements, operated for the RAF, have very limited availability and are unsuited to tourist or civilian traffic. None of the aircraft which currently operate into Wideawake would be able to land in St Helena, and any service would require a dedicated aircraft (and back up).
You raised the issue of interest groups buying up land in anticipation of the airport and associated development. There has been no significant increase in land sales in recent years, although there is an application pending from a potential investor, the St Helena Leisure Company (SHELCO), which hold an option on land in the Broadbottom area, purchased a few years before the decision to build an airport.
Both the St Helena Government and the UK Government recognise the importance of putting in place polices and regulatory mechanisms to protect the island against uncontrolled and inappropriate development. DFID is providing technical support to the St Helena Government to update its land registry, providing advice on land values and land policy; to update its tourism strategy to ensure that St Helena both preserves and capitalises on its unique built and natural environment; and to develop a clear and transparent investment policy to ensure that the island itself gains real benefit from future development. We have agreed with the St Helena Government that until these policies are in place, no negotiations should take place over significant inward investment. Contrary to what has been reported in the press, there is no agreement with any potential investor, including SHELCO, for construction of tourism facilities, and indeed my statement to Parliament in March this year made it clear that any future interest would be treated on an equal footing. Once appropriate policies and procedures are put in place, the St Helena Government will consider any applications from potential investors based on the long term interests of the island, and in consultation with the UK Government.
Turning now to your points on environmental issues, you asked for more details on the environmental assessments we had conducted, what further ones were to take place and what action would be taken to mitigate any environmental impacts. You also asked why the environmental impact assessment was being undertaken after, and not before, the airport development had been approved.
As I have already noted, the possibility of establishing air access to St Helena and various options for the construction of a runway and associated facilities, have been under consideration and investigation for a number of years. This has included close attention to environmental issues. A number of environmental baseline, screening and scoping studies, have been undertaken since the mid-1990s as options have been identified and refined.
Formal environmental screening of the options of a runway on Deadwood Plain or Prosperous Bay Plain (or by seaplane to James Bay) was undertaken by the St Helena Government in 1999. This concluded that a full environmental impact assessment (EIA) would be required were an air access project to go ahead. It also recommended that in preparation for this, additional detailed surveys of invertebrate taxonomy and ecology should be undertaken at Prosperous Bay Plain, and that the outputs of a project on the status and ecology of the endemic St Helena Wirebird, due for completion in 2001, should be fed into the EIA.
In 2000, DFID appointed consultants High-Point Rendel to undertake a comparative study of the various options for air and sea access then being considered. This included identification and more detailed scoping of the key environmental issues apparent at the two potential airport sites.
In 2001, as part of a project funded under Defra’s Darwin Initiative, Dr Neil McCulloch, an expert on the St Helena Wirebird, produced a report comparing possible impacts on this species of the establishment of an airport at the two potential sites. He concluded that the Wirebird population at Deadwood Plain was the ‘cornerstone of species survival’ and that if it was unavoidable that an airport had to be built ‘the conservation of the Wirebird would be best served by the selection of Prosperous Bay Plain’. He also noted, among other things, that should access routes to Prosperous Bay Plain impinge on Deadwood Plain, great care would need to be taken to minimise adverse effects on the main Wirebird population there. He also drew attention to the opportunity that existed for the restoration of degraded habitat formerly holding significant numbers of Wirebirds.
Because of some continuing uncertainty over the current population status of the Wirebird, DFID has this year contracted the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds to arrange for Dr McCulloch to revisit St Helena to undertake additional fieldwork and update his earlier report. Fieldwork necessarily has to be undertaken during the main breeding season and is therefore not due for completion until February 2006. The results will feed into the main environmental impact assessment.
During 2003, Dr Philip Ashmole and Mrs Myrtle Ashmole, specialists in the invertebrate faunas of arid areas and joint authors of the standard textbook on the natural history of Ascension Island and St Helena, undertook, with FCO funding, further studies on the invertebrate fauna of Prosperous Bay Plain. Their interim report, issued in December 2003, included observations and recommendations as to how potential adverse environmental impacts of airport development might be mitigated. Their final report was published in December 2004. In addition to its importance as a baseline study, the report provides valuable ecological information about the proposed airport site. It also sets out recommendations for actions to minimise adverse impacts and, where possible, to restore and further protect environmentally sensitive habitats on the Plain. This work has already influenced the outline design process.
The Atkins feasibility study, mentioned earlier, included a comprehensive appraisal of all the earlier environmental work, supported by further environmental field analysis on St Helena, and recommended a fully justified preferred option to SHG and DFID.
In reaching our decision to commit to this major investment for the island, DFID Ministers have taken very careful account indeed of the environmental assessment work. As you will recall from my Written Statement to the House at that time of our announcement, the Government’s decision to provide air access to St Helena was subject to satisfactory contract bids and a rigorous environmental impact assessment. The project memorandum is publicly available on DFID’s website. (www.dfid.gov.uk).
In October 2005, following an international open competition, Faber Maunsell Ltd were contracted to supply specialist environmental services to the Government of St Helena throughout the life of the air access project. The first phase of the work is to undertake an environmental impact assessment up to the outline design stage, building on all the earlier work. An environmental management plan and a public consultation and disclosure plan will be developed in parallel with the impact assessment. A four-person multidisciplinary team visited the island during October and November and is due to report in January.
Subject to the outcome of this work and in accordance with best practice, Faber Maunsell will work closely with the contractor, when appointed, as the detailed designs are developed. This is to ensure that actions to avoid, mitigate or compensate for any adverse environmental effects identified in the EIA, are taken fully into account in detailed design. The implementation of the public consultation and disclosure plan will ensure that there is proper and transparent consultation, and that there is in place a mechanism both for the dissemination of environmental information as the project progresses, and the receipt of feedback from interested and affected parties.
The contractor’s compliance with the requirements of the environmental management plan, including the implementation of mitigation measures will be included as obligations of the contractor in the contract for the construction and operation of the airport. The contractor’s performance will be closely monitored during both these phases.
As you can see from the foregoing, a substantial amount of environmental assessment work was undertaken on the options under consideration, which, along with other factors, enabled the decision to choose air access to be made. We are continuing to pay close attention to environmental factors as we move to the next stage. The adoption of a design and build approach to construction of the airport means that it is not possible to complete all aspects of environmental impact assessment in advance of a contract. We are fully aware of the need for continual environmental assessment and mitigation throughout the design and construction process, and this is why Faber Maunsell have been contracted to provide support throughout.
You referred to the limited availability of legal representation on St Helena. DFID provides funding for a Public Solicitor in St Helena. Neither DFID nor the St Helena Government restricts access to the Public Solicitor for anyone in St Helena. However, like any other lawyer, the Public Solicitor is required to avoid conflicts of interest and can therefore only act for one party in any matter. In one particularly high profile case, the Public Solicitor has been engaged by a private company, registered on St Helena, and a number of people have raised concerns that they are unable to access legal advice in relation to applications being made by that company to acquire an Immigrant Landholding licence.
There are alternative arrangements in place to provide a level of legal assistance in cases where advice cannot be secured from the Public Solicitor or the Attorney General. St Helena has set up a Legal Assistance Fund, independent of government and managed by a Board of Trustees, which covers honoraria and expenses for lay advocates on the island. The lay advocates may also use this fund to seek overseas legal assistance. It is recognised that this is not an ideal situation, and it is one that we are seeking to improve.
The Public Solicitor, in accepting instructions to act for the company, acted in accordance with his current Terms of Reference. The recruitment of his successor is about to commence, and the Terms of Reference are being carefully reviewed with particular regard to this issue. In the meantime, we are making specialist legal advice available to the St Helena Government in its consideration of the Immigrant Landholding application.
Lastly, you questioned why the Freedom of Information Act is not applicable in St Helena. St Helena is a self-governing UK Overseas Territory with its own Executive and Legislative Councils, and it own legislation. It is not obliged to adopt UK legislation. In areas where local legislation does not exist, St Helena uses (under its English Law (Application) Ordinance) those parts of English law which are suitable to local circumstances. Earlier this year, local elected Councillors agreed (only one of the twelve was of the contrary view) that the UK Freedom of Information Act was not appropriate to local circumstances because St. Helena had not (and could not) provide the resources to operate the procedures required under the Act. Nevertheless, the St. Helena Government committed itself to principles of openness and transparency and to observing the broad principles of the Act. Residents of Overseas Territories have, of course, the same rights as anyone else to make Freedom of Information requests to public authorities in the UK.
In conclusion, I strongly believe that establishing air access to St Helena offers the only viable route to securing the long term future of the island. Our decision has been warmly welcomed by the Island, and by many Saints who have found it necessary to leave their island to secure a livelihood. It responds to the clear call from Saints over many years. At the same time, stronger economic development in St Helena will reduce the need for long term support from the UK Government. Furthermore, I am confident that we are taking all necessary steps to protect the natural environment in St Helena, recognised as a key asset to the island, and essential to its future.
Given the wide interest these matters have attracted recently, I am sure you will not mind me copying this letter to my Ministerial colleagues in the Foreign Office, members of the All Party Group for the Island of St Helena, and other members of the Group, as well as other parliamentary colleagues who have had past interest in St Helena. Given the interest on the island too, I am similarly intending to make this letter available there also. Please let me know if this causes any difficulties for you.
Yours Sincerely
Gareth Thomas MP“
Sharon Wainwright
St Helena Access Project Manager
17 January 2006
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