Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs:

To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, with reference to her Department’s press release entitled UK leads global efforts to help communities save the ocean and beat poverty, published on 26 January 2026, over what period the £14 million allocated to the second round of the OCEAN Grants Programme will be spent.

The following projects have been funded under Round Two of the OCEAN Grants Programme. Funding comes from Defra’s Official Development Assistance budget and is projected to be spent between January 2026 and March 2029. The Round Two projects with signed grant agreements have been awarded the following amounts:

• Empowering traditional micro-retailers as refill stations to reduce plastic pollution, Indonesia: £93,155
• Eco Kolek, The Philippines: £249,973
• Solar-Powered Coastal Recycling Hubs: Transforming Plastic Waste into Construction Materials, The Philippines: £93,632
• Climate-smart initiatives for sustainable Coastal youth and women livelihoods, Tanzania: £95,000
• Iluminar el Mar, Ecuador: Reducing bycatch in Ecuador's Artisanal Gillnet Fishery: £150,000
• Empowering Coastal Communities Towards Inclusive Management of Ghana’s First MPA, Ghana: £250,000
• Mangrove restoration empowering women fisherfolks cooperatives in Sundarbans, Bangladesh: £243,073
• Blue Hispaniola: Protecting Coastal Ecosystems of the Northern Haitian-Dominican Corridor, Haiti and Dominican Republic: £2,999,192
• Scaling Community-based Resource Management through GEDSI-Empowering Information, Learning and Action, Fiji, Solomon Islands and Papua New Guinea: £2,989,340

A final list of projects will be available on the OCEAN website in due course.