Chagos Islands’ ‘pristine ocean’ must be protected, warns Emily Thornberry

Senior Labour MP Dame Emily Thornberry has urged the Government to ensure the “pristine ocean” around the Chagos Islands is protected after the handover to Mauritius.

Dame Emily, chairwoman of the Foreign Affairs Select Committee, told the PA news agency ministers had been “distracted by Tories jumping up and down and talking about (how) this is like Gibraltar” and are “forgetting their responsibility towards the marine life on the islands”.

She said the Chagos Islands are a crucial resting point for wildlife, including the critically endangered Hawksbill sea turtle, and that the area has an unusually healthy coral reef that acts as a “reseeder” for other reefs in the Indian Ocean.

For the past 15 years, there has been a no-take zone around the Chagos Islands, protecting it from commercial fishing and providing “the most extraordinary sanction” for wildlife, she said.

The UK Government signed an agreement in May to cede the Chagos Islands to Mauritius.

The deal ensures a joint UK-US military base will remain on the largest island, Diego Garcia, for at least 99 years, at an average annual cost of £101 million in today’s prices.

The Government plans to draw up a memorandum of understanding with the Mauritian government to lay out plans for protection of the marine environment.

However, Dame Emily said she is worried that this may not provide “lasting confidence” that there are the necessary safeguards to protect the ecosystem for decades to come.

She said: “There’s no funding mechanism in place that ties the hands of the Mauritians. I just worry it’s all going to fall apart.

“If Mauritius does go back on its word – let’s say we have a new government, or let’s say that there’s a misunderstanding as to just how strong the commitment from the Mauritians really was – what can Britain do about it?

“I mean, once we’ve handed them over, I don’t think there’s anything we can do.”

The Chagos Islands, a group of seven atolls comprising more than 60 islands, and the 640,000 square km of ocean around them possess huge biodiversity, including the world’s largest coral atoll and 800 species of fish.

Dame Emily said the islands are a “meeting point from east to west”, providing a “resting point for apex predators that are flying across the Indian Ocean” and a place where the critically endangered Hawksbill turtle can “forage and take a rest”.

She added: “Obviously we’ve got this warming world, we’ve got more acidic seas, and we see coral reefs around the world dying off at a terrible rate.

“But the coral reef in the Chagos is actually relatively healthy, and it acts as a sort of reseeding bank for other reefs in the Indian Ocean.

“And also you get larvae coming in one direction, and then you get larvae coming from the other direction, and they meet up in the Chagos Islands, because there isn’t really anywhere else.

“It’s got a massive number of species that we don’t know what would happen to them if the islands were actually under threat.”

Despite “warm words” from the Mauritian government on the subject of conservation, Ms Thornberry said the ecosystem around Mauritius itself has been substantially “degraded”.

The UK government set up the Chagos Marine Protected Area in 2010, with patrols enforcing the no-take zone, and other activities to protect the unique habitats and rich marine biodiversity.

This legal status has always been opposed by Mauritius and was even ruled as illegal by a UN tribunal in 2015, which said it violated Mauritius’ right to fish there.

A cable exposed by WikiLeaks in the same year the Marine Protected Area was established revealed a US official said it would be “the most effective long-term way to prevent any of the Chagos Islands’ former inhabitants or their descendants from resettling”.

Dame Emily acknowledged it has been “very much tarred with neocolonialism”, but urged: “Don’t blame the Hawksbill turtle.”

She said: “We just have to look at what the situation is now. For whatever reason, this is a unique part of the world, and we need it, and we need it for the health of our oceans, and we have an absolute duty to do everything we can to protect it. And we’re not.”

Dame Emily, who held numerous shadow cabinet positions when Labour were in opposition, said she is concerned that, without proper guarantees in place, the marine area around the Chagos Islands could see a spike in fishing and a loss of pristine ocean.

The memorandum of understanding must include a funding mechanism to ensure the protection of the marine environment, she said.

“I think that private money could be raised for this. I think there are people who understand how serious this is and want to make sure that we save this part of the ocean and I think with a bit of effort that could happen. It could be gingered up with a bit of public money too.”

She said some of the public money being given to Mauritius should have conditions attached about marine conservation, but acknowledged she did not know “how far down the line we are on that, whether that can be tweaked at this stage”.