29th Meeting of the Ramsar Standing Committee

29^th Meeting of the Ramsar Standing Committee
Gland, Switzerland, 26-28 February 2003

Agenda item 10.1

DOC. SC29-9
Addendum

Report on the Bureau's costs related to Ramsar COP8

1. At the request of the Government of Japan, the Bureau has prepared a report on the Bureau's costs related to COP8 in time for its consideration at the 29th meeting of the Standing Committee.

2. The budget lines in the report are those used in the Memorandum of Understanding signed with the Ministry of Environment of Spain.

3. It will be noted that there are several budget lines where expenditure was considerably higher than expected, as follows:

a) Production and distribution of documents before COP: i) in general, considerably more documents had to be prepared for COP8 than anticipated; ii) several documents were the subject of consultations with Contracting Parties before the final drafts were ready for submission to the COP, which increased copying and distribution costs; iii) there was an additional meeting of the Subgroup on COP8, which in effect constituted another full meeting of the Standing Committee (May 2002) and which had not been foreseen at the time of preparing the budget in early 2000 - which also implied more copying and more distribution of documents; iv) costs were also higher due to the production in printed form of the last draft of the Strategic Plan distributed to CPs in April 2002, with the request that they prepare provisional national targets for the triennium 2003-2005; and v) costs were also increased with the use, for all meetings, of special courier service to distribute documents, in particular to faraway countries where normal postal services are very slow.

b) Interpretation service during the COP. The reasons for the over-expenditure were: i) fees were higher than calculated in early 2002 when the MOU was signed; ii) due to an oversight, the cost of interpretation during the daily meetings of the Conference Committee were not included in the provision; and iii) interpretation was provided to the COP Committee on the Strategic Plan due to the high significance of this Committee, a cost that had not been budgeted for.

c) Rooms and per diems. At the time of budgeting in 2000, it was not known in which hotel the Ramsar staff was going to be staying and consequently the provision made was not sufficient.

4. Other budget lines were not fully used, in particular those for consultants and temporary staff.

5. The MOU with Spain included a provision of SFR 150,000 for the production of the COP proceedings. With the over-expenditure in the other budget lines there are practically no resources left for the production of the proceedings, which are planned in the form of a revised series of the Ramsar Manuals for the Wise Use of Wetlands. The Bureau is in consultation with the Ministry of Environment of Spain on this matter.

Ramsar Bureau - Project Report
COP8 Provisional Report


INCOME
	Budget	Actual
Spanish Government Contribution	721'000	721'000
Miscellaneous Income		568
Total Income	721'000	721'568

EXPENDITURE

Translation of documents before and during the COP and COP proceedings	200'000	-187'306
Reproduction and distribution of documents before COP and shipping of materials to Valencia	60'000	-175'307
Consultants and experts:	65'000
Bill Phillips - Managing non-Technical Sessions Draft Resolutions during COP8		-11'063
Tim Jones - COP8 Rapporteuring and assistance with Draft Resolutions		-8'079
Thymio Papayannis -Preparation of Cultural Values Guidelines and Draft Resolutions		-15'879
Temporary staff	25'000	-9'331
Interpretation services during the COP	65'000	-94'308
43 return tickets for Ramsar staff, interpreters and translators	30'000	-39'532
Rooms and per diem: 43 persons (Ramsar staff, interpreters and translators)	96'000	-137'308
COP proceedings and publication in three langauges	150'000
Miscellaneous	30'000	-29'546
Total Expenditure	721'000	-707'661

Balance	0	13'907