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

To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, what steps the Government is taking to encourage other countries to improve their ambitions at the forthcoming Conventional on Biological Diversity COP.

At the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) COP15, to be held in Kunming, China in October 2020, the 196 Parties to the CBD are set to adopt a post-2020 global biodiversity framework.

The UK is seeking an ambitious post-2020 global biodiversity framework to spur global action, recognising the transformative change needed to halt and reverse biodiversity loss. The Government wants to see new targets agreed that are ambitious, implementable and measurable.

We are proactively engaging in the CBD process in the lead up to CBD COP15. UK officials are currently attending the second CBD Open Ended Working Group in Rome where negotiations on the proposed post-2020 framework are beginning. The UK is holding an extensive program of meetings with member countries to form ongoing working partnerships, to secure agreement for an ambitious post-2020 framework.

Outside of the formal CBD process ministers, officials and our diplomatic network will continue to press to raise ambition and secure ambitious outcomes and delivery, notably with China as the host of CBD COP15.

We are focusing, among other topics, on the contribution of nature-based solutions to climate change mitigation and on effective and supportive communications to spur global ambition in the time leading to CBD COP15. The UK is also leading the Global Ocean Alliance in support of a new global target of protecting at least 30% of the global ocean within Marine Protected Areas by 2030.

The UK-led Global Ocean Alliance is currently made up of 12 countries (Belgium, Belize, Costa Rica, Finland, Gabon, Kenya, Nigeria, Palau, Portugal, Seychelles, Sweden, Vanuatu) and we are proactively lobbying many more countries to join.