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

To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, what progress she has made on Target 14 of the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework.

The package agreed at COP15, including the Kunming Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework, represents a historic step forward towards addressing the biodiversity crisis.

Internationally, the UK has committed in our latest International Development Strategy to taking steps to ensure our bilateral Official Development Assistance becomes ‘nature positive’ in alignment with the Framework.

To help drive action by businesses, the UK Government supports the market-led Taskforce on Nature-related Financial Disclosures (TNFD) initiative, which is on track to launch a clear, user-friendly risk management and reporting framework on nature-related impacts, dependencies, and risks by September 2023. The TNFD will support the realignment of financial flows towards nature-positive outcomes by integrating biodiversity into economic decision-making.

In England, we have set four legally binding targets for biodiversity: to halt the decline in species abundance by 2030; then to reverse declines by 2042; to reduce the risk of species extinction by 2042; and restore or create more than 500,000 hectares of wildlife-rich habitat, also by 2042. We have set out our plan to deliver on these ambitious targets, along with our other environmental targets, in the revised Environmental Improvement Plan (EIP23) published 31 January 2023.