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

To ask Her Majesty's Government what steps they are taking to tackle global deforestation.

The UK continues to take a leading role in working with global partners to halt and reverse forest loss. At COP26, the UK led the way in securing an agreement from over 140 world leaders, representing over 90% of the world’s forests, to halt and reverse forest loss and land degradation by 2030 under the Glasgow Leaders’ Declaration on Forests and Land Use. This was backed by almost £14 billion of public and private funding, including $1.5 billion to protect the forests of the Congo Basin, an area of critical importance to global efforts to address climate change.

In February 2021, the UK and Indonesia established the Forest, Agriculture and Commodity Trade (FACT) Dialogue, bringing together major producer and consumer countries of agricultural commodities to protect forests while promoting development and trade. At COP26, 28 governments including Indonesia, Colombia, Brazil, Ghana, the EU, UK and USA launched the FACT Roadmap, committing to advance sustainable production and trade, and outlining actions to incentivise sustainability, support smallholder farmers, improve transparency of supply chains and drive innovation.

The UK has introduced ambitious due diligence legislation through the Environment Act to help tackle illegal deforestation in UK supply chains. This new law is one part of a wider package of measures to improve the sustainability of our supply chains and will contribute to global efforts to protect forests and other ecosystems. It will make it illegal for larger businesses operating in the UK to use key forest risk commodities produced on land illegally occupied or used.

We have also doubled our international climate finance to £11.6 billion, of which at least £3 billion will be spent on nature, including solutions that protect, restore and sustainably manage forests. FCDO, BEIS and Defra share the forests portfolio which aims to specifically reduce emissions from deforestation and land use change and help forest communities adapt to climate change through sustainable farming and land use practices.