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

To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, what steps he is taking to encourage greater international environmental conservation.

This Government is seizing the opportunities of our G7 and COP26 Presidencies to drive international action on the environment. We have negotiated a historic 2030 Nature Compact committing to halt and reverse biodiversity loss by 2030, agreed by Leaders at the G7 Summit in Carbis Bay, and G7 Climate and Environment Ministers' agreed an ambitious communique with over 120 commitments. The UK is also committed to playing a leading role in developing an ambitious post-2020 global biodiversity framework to be adopted at CBD COP15 and to secure ambitious environmental commitments at UNFCCC COP26.

The UK also played a leading role in developing the Leaders' Pledge for Nature which I am pleased to report that 89 world leaders have now signed. Furthermore, 80 countries now support an international target to protect at least 30 per cent of the world’s ocean by 2030 through membership of the UK-led Global Ocean Alliance or the High Ambition Coalition for Nature and People, which the UK co-chairs with Costa Rica and France.

We are leading by example. We have committed to spend at least £3bn of International Climate Finance on nature over the next five years and launched the £500m Blue Planet Fund. Domestically, we are introducing a world-leading legally-binding target for species abundance by 2030 in the Environment Bill, aiming to halt the decline of nature.