Environmental Sustainability: UK-Indonesia Collaboration

Debate between Kerry McCarthy and Anneliese Dodds

Tuesday 23rd June 2026 Westminster Hall

[Kerry McCarthy]

The hon. Member makes a very important point. At Foreign Office questions last week, I had the first question on the Order Paper, which was very ably answered by my hon. Friend the Minister. My question was about the Tibetan plateau, the environmental degradation there and what China is doing to divert water sources. Obviously, Nepal is part of that situation, as it is in the Himalayas. I think that a fifth of the world’s population depends on the Tibetan plateau for water sources.

If the hon. Gentleman seeks out the answer that the Minister gave me on that occasion, he will see that we have quite a few international initiatives that try to ensure that people get access to the water that they need.

If Indonesia is under threat environmentally, that affects us all, as I think some interventions today have already illustrated. Over recent decades, Indonesia has lost hundreds of thousands of hectares of forest each year. The main drivers of that loss are unsustainable agriculture, especially palm oil production, legal and illegal logging, mining, and rapid urbanisation.

[Anneliese Dodds (Oxford East) (Lab/Co-op)]

My hon. Friend will recognise that where there is such degradation, huge amounts of biodiversity are lost. Indonesia is one of the most biodiverse countries in the world, and I am grateful to the Indonesian Government for the work that they have been focused on in this regard.

My hon. Friend will also know that forests in Indonesia are home not only to flora and fauna, but to people as well. The Indonesian Government agreed to a visit from the UN Human Rights Commissioner six years ago—that visit has not happened yet. I hope that the UK Government can keep pushing on that. Does she agree that protection for flora and fauna, which she is talking about so eloquently, has to go alongside protection for people as well?

[Kerry McCarthy]

I absolutely agree. I have just come from an event that Fairtrade is hosting in the Inter-Parliamentary Union room, at which people were talking, among other things, about the forest risk commodities legislation—I will come on to that later, because the Government have announced regulations today—and about the cost to smallholders and indigenous communities of complying with it. Of course, we want to ensure sustainability and stamp out deforestation in the supply chain, but we have to remember that there are small farmers and indigenous communities whose livelihoods depend on that.

At Easter, a number of us went to Indonesia—Borneo, in particular—and met communities doing agroforestry projects. We were looking at how we could support them. It was mostly about orangutans, which I will talk about at some length in a moment, but the people matter very much too.