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

To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, what progress his Department has made in protecting against biodiversity loss; and what steps he plans to take to encourage global partners to take steps to reverse biodiversity loss.

Alongside our world-leading Environment act, which introduces ambitious measures to address the biggest environmental priorities of our age, the 25 Year Environment Plan set out clear goals for habitats and species in England. To help meet these ambitions, in the last year we have created a new Somerset Wetlands super National Nature Reserve that will protect 6,140 hectares of precious habitats, completed the Back from the Brink programme with 96 priority species moving towards recovery and launched 5 more landscape-scale nature recovery projects, including the G7 Nature Recovery Legacy Project in Cornwall.

The United Kingdom works across a number of geographies and partners to support global ambition. For instance, the United Kingdom is committed to playing a leading role in developing an ambitious post-2020 global biodiversity framework to be adopted at COP15 of the Convention on Biological Diversity in Montreal during December this year.

The United Kingdom will be advocating for ambitious global targets to halt and reverse biodiversity loss globally by 2030. This includes targets to ensure at least 30% of the land and of the ocean is protected, ecosystems are restored, species population sizes are recovering, and extinctions are halted by 2050. The United Kingdom is calling for this ambitious set of targets to be supported by increased finance for nature from all sources (public and private) and at all levels (domestic and international), and for strengthened reporting and review mechanisms to facilitate the achievement of targets and hold Parties to account to their commitments.