Asked by: Baroness Northover (Liberal Democrat - Life peer)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask Her Majesty’s Government what are their goals and priorities for the 2016 Commission on the Status of Women at the UN.
Answered by Baroness Williams of Trafford - Captain of the Honourable Corps of Gentlemen-at-Arms (HM Household) (Chief Whip, House of Lords)
The Government will use the 60th session of the Commission on the Status of Women to ensure that gender equality and women’s empowerment remain at the top of the global political agenda. We will negotiate with other United Nations Member States to agree a set of ambitious, action-oriented and forward-looking recommendations for governments around the world to accelerate progress on gender equality and ensure accountability. At the first session after the adoption of the Sustainable Development Goals, we will press for a meaningful follow-up process that places gender equality at the heart of the new agenda while ensuring that the Commission remains the prime global forum on gender equality and the laboratory of ideas that it is today.
Furthermore, we will enhance the UK’s reputation as a world leader in this area by promoting relevant national policies but also by exchanging ideas with other United Nations Member States. In line with the session’s themes this year, we will be focusing on women’s empowerment and on violence against women and girls in high level discussions, events and bilateral meetings.
In addition, the Government will host and support a number of events to raise the profile of certain issues which still prevent us from achieving equality such as inequality in the workplace, discrimination in all its forms and violence against women and girls.
Lastly, but very importantly, we are working with civil society to ensure their participation remains an integral part of the Commission on the Status of Women programme and their concerns are heard at the national and global levels.
Asked by: Tom Brake (Liberal Democrat - Carshalton and Wallington)
Question to the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy:
To ask the Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change, what plans she has to promote a global goal on adaptation to climate change.
Answered by Andrea Leadsom - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department of Health and Social Care)
Adaptation is a core component of the Paris Agreement, adopted by the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change in December last year. The Agreement includes a new long-term goal to strengthen adaptation and resilience and reduce vulnerability to climate change. This goal is aligned with the new Global Goals for sustainable development, particularly Goal 13 on climate action. Alongside this, the Paris Agreement includes commitments for each country to take action to adapt according to national circumstances, to share their adaptation planning and to cooperate to help those developing countries who need help to adapt to climate change.
The UK has been and remains committed to leading calls to increase support for adaptation, and we aim to use 50 per cent of our International Climate Fund (ICF) to support adaptation in developing countries. The UK has already taken significant action to support vulnerable countries to adapt to climate change and cope with climate-related events. For example, we have increased our support for climate risk insurance initiatives, such as the Africa Risk Capacity Initiative and the Pacific Catastrophe Risk Assessment and Financing Initiative. We are also funding actions that help build communities’ resilience, including through support for climate services and early warning systems which have an important role to play in helping poor and vulnerable communities be better prepared and more resilient to climate-related risks.
Asked by: Lord Hunt of Chesterton (Labour - Life peer)
Question to the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy:
To ask Her Majesty’s Government whether they will use their membership of UN agencies to establish relevant targets for reducing carbon emissions in (1) civil aviation, (2) shipping, and (3) agriculture and forestry, by 2020 as agreed at the Paris Climate Conference in 2015.
Answered by Lord Bourne of Aberystwyth
This Government is committed to tackling emissions from international aviation, international shipping and agriculture and forestry.
As inherently transnational in nature, international aviation and maritime emissions are regulated by the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) and the International Maritime Organization (IMO) and are outside of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) Paris Agreement. The UK is working through the ICAO and IMO to develop mechanisms which deliver emissions reductions, in line with the long term goal agreed in Paris of keeping average global temperature rise well below 2 degrees. In 2016, the ICAO is set to agree a global market based measure, to offset emissions post-2020. The UK government is engaged in this process.
The Government is also committed to tackling emissions from deforestation and forest degradation, and supporting the enhancement of forest carbon stocks (REDD+). The UK played a key role in the 2014 New York Declaration on Forests, which set ambitious targets for halving (by 2020) and halting (by 2030) the loss of natural forests and eliminating deforestation from the production of key agricultural commodities by 2020. The new UN Sustainable Development Goals, agreed in September 2015, also include targets to halt deforestation, sustainably manage and restore natural forests, and substantially increase afforestation and reforestation globally by 2020. At COP21 the UK endorsed a Leaders’ Statement on Forests which recognised the importance of these goals, as well as the progress on REDD+ under the UNFCCC.
Asked by: Barry Sheerman (Labour (Co-op) - Huddersfield)
Question to the Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs, what assessment his Department has made of possible links between trafficking of women and girls and the spread of the Zika virus.
Answered by David Lidington
We are aware of meetings this week in Geneva of the WHO International Health Regulations Emergency Committee, to consider whether the Zika outbreak should be designated a public health emergency of international concern. We are not aware of a connection being made with human trafficking. Were such a connection substantiated, it would be an added reason for taking firm action to eradicate this crime. Modern slavery is a global crime and requires a strong and collaborative international response. The Government's Modern Slavery Strategy commits the Government to tackle modern slavery by working with multi-lateral institutions, foreign governments, civil society organisations and faith groups. The Government and the Independent Anti-Slavery Commissioner have been successful in working with other Governments to include a commitment to end modern slavery in the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals. The UK government successfully pushed for a Commonwealth Heads of Government commitment on this issue. The UK was also the first country in the world to bring in transparency in supply chains legislation, through the 2015 Modern Slavery Act, which requires businesses operating in the UK with a turnover of over £36 million to report annually on what they are doing to prevent modern slavery in their global supply chains.
Asked by: Jim Fitzpatrick (Labour - Poplar and Limehouse)
Question to the Department for International Development:
To ask the Secretary of State for International Development, whether her Department plans to take account of the conclusions of the United Nations/World Health Organisation Second Global High-Level Conference on Road Safety when preparing the UK's response to the next set of Sustainable Development Goals.
Answered by Desmond Swayne
Road traffic injuries cost developing countries an estimated 1-2% of their gross national product, equivalent to over US$100 billion annually, with a widening of the disparity between advanced and developing countries. Road accidents kill an estimated 1.3 million people and injure up to 78 million people each year.
We are pleased that the burden of road crashes has been recognised in the Sustainable Development Goals and we are committed to supporting the international community to achieve the target of halving the number of global deaths and injuries from road traffic accidents by 2020.
DFID recently increased its funding to the Global Road Safety Facility (GRSF) hosted at the World Bank and will contribute £4.5 million between 2013 and 2017. The GRSF provides funding, knowledge, and technical assistance that lever road safety investments into transport sector programmes.
We also focus on road safety through our research and evidence portfolio. For example our programme on High Volume Transport and the programme “Research for Community Access Partnership” (ReCAP) both have strong road safety research components. DFID also supports a programme in Nepal working to improve road infrastructure for road safety on a critical section of Nepal’s national network.
Asked by: Anne-Marie Trevelyan (Conservative - Berwick-upon-Tweed)
Question
To ask the Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change, what assessment her Department has made of the importance of trees and tree planting to achieving carbon capture.
Answered by Andrea Leadsom - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department of Health and Social Care)
Forests play an important part in mitigating climate change (as well as in adapting to its impacts). Domestically, forestland is a net sink in the UK, removing 17 Mtonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent in 2013) and the amount of carbon stored in UK trees increased from 1990-2013. Forestry inventory projections indicate an increasing trend in net removals by UK forests and then a decline towards mid-century as forests mature (in mature forests carbon uptake is reduced) and more trees are harvested. Nonetheless, forests will remain a net sink in the UK, at least beyond the middle of the century.
Forestry policy is devolved, and all four countries have established policies for woodland creation, co-financed through the EU Rural Development Program. The revised UK Forestry Standard, published in November 2011 provides that ‘forest management should contribute to climate change mitigation over the long term through the net capture and storage of carbon in the forest ecosystem and in wood products’. The Committee on Climate Change has estimated that by 2030 an additional 1 megaton of carbon dioxide a year could be abated through afforestation activities.
Internationally, deforestation causes 10 per cent of global greenhouse gas emissions. Reaching the goals of the New York Declaration on Forests – ending forest loss by 2030 and restoring 350 million hectares – is estimated to reduce between 4.5 and 8.8 billion tonnes of CO2 per year in 2030. Over 1 billion poor people depend on forests for their livelihoods, they provide essential ecosystem services and support up to 80 per cent of terrestrial biodiversity. The United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) has taken a number of steps to mitigate forests emissions and enhance sequestration. In the second commitment period of the Kyoto Protocol (2013-2020), all countries with emissions reductions commitments (including the European Union) are required to account for all forest related emissions and removals, and are therefore incentivised to sustainably manage their forests.
For developing countries, the UNFCCC has established ‘REDD+’ as a mechanism to reduce emissions from deforestation and promote the conservation of forest carbon stocks, sustainable management of forests and enhancement of forest carbon stocks by rewarding countries who protect their forests with a payment based on verified emissions reductions. The UK’s £3.87 billion International Climate Fund supports developing countries address deforestation, including programmes which support REDD+, governance and market reforms, curbing illegal and unsustainable use of forest resources, and investments in sustainable forestry, agriculture and land management.
Asked by: Lord Hunt of Chesterton (Labour - Life peer)
Question to the Department for International Development:
To ask Her Majesty’s Government what are the main humanitarian and technical objectives that they will be promoting at the forthcoming United Nations World Conference on Disaster Risk Reduction to be held in Sendai, Japan in March 2015.
Answered by Baroness Northover
The UK is an active supporter of the current Hyogo framework. The Department for International Development (DFID) and Cabinet Office have a joint lead in shaping the Government’s policy and technical objectives ahead of the 3rd UN World Conference on Disaster Risk Reduction to be held in Japan on 14-18 March, where a new post-2015 framework for disaster risk reduction will be finalised. Negotiations are still on-going, and it will not be possible to confirm final outcomes until the meeting in Sendai itself.
The Government’s main objectives build on the priorities set out by the UK representative at the May 2013 Global Platform meeting in Geneva. These are:
The UK has engaged actively in the negotiation meetings on the successor to the Hyogo framework for action. In shaping its approach, the Government has drawn heavily on the UK’s own experience of disaster risk management, which has demonstrated the importance of a multi-agency and multi-sectoral approach.
Asked by: Lord Blencathra (Conservative - Life peer)
Question
To ask Her Majesty’s Government what international action they are taking to press the case for global re-afforestation in order to act as a carbon sink.
Answered by Baroness Verma
The UK supports protection and conservation of global forests through our £3.87 billion International Climate Fund (ICF). To date, over £500 million has been committed to support a range of initiatives, including supporting forest governance; sustainable forestry, agriculture and land management, community forest management, and developing knowledge and evidence that can contribute to effective and coordinated policies and strategies. The UK also supports REDD+ (Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation, and Conservation, Sustainable Management of Forests, and Enhancement of Forest Carbon Stocks), through investments in pilot REDD+ projects through the ICF, and through decisions supportive of the development of REDD+ through the international climate change negotiations.
The UK played a key role in developing the New York Declaration on Forests, endorsed by over 150 governments, private sector stakeholders, civil society, non-governmental and indigenous community organisations at the United Nations Secretary-General’s Climate Summit on 23rd September 2014. The Declaration highlights the importance of reducing deforestation and increasing forest restoration to limit global warming to 2 degrees Celsius and calls for action. It sets out an ambitious restoration goal of restoring 150 million hectares of degraded landscapes and forestlands by 2020 and significantly increasing the rate of global restoration thereafter, which would restore at least an additional 200 million hectares by 2030.
There are a number of important international processes in 2015 that can also encourage more ambitious outcomes for global re-afforestation and restoration. The UK will press the case for ambitious, quantitative forest conservation targets for 2030 in the post-2015 new sustainable development goals, and supports the inclusion of ambitious outcomes for forests as part of the post-2020 new international climate agreement. The Bonn Challenge 2.0 will also be an opportunity for countries to bring forward ambitious forest restoration targets.
Asked by: Jim Murphy (Labour - East Renfrewshire)
Question to the Department for International Development:
To ask the Secretary of State for International Development, if she will support the inclusion in the Sustainable Development Goals of a standalone goal on climate change, in addition to targets on environmental sustainability integrated across the framework, accompanied by a measure to keep the rise in global temperatures at 2ºC on pre-industrialisation levels.
Answered by Justine Greening
The UK supports a target to hold the increase in global average temperature below a 2°C rise in accordance with international agreements.
The final targets in the post-2015 development framework will however be subject to international negotiations in the United Nations, in which the UK will play an active role.
Asked by: Jim Murphy (Labour - East Renfrewshire)
Question to the Department for International Development:
To ask the Secretary of State for International Development, if she will make it her policy to support the adoption of a target to co-operate globally to reduce substantially international tax evasion and avoidance in the Open Working Group negotiations on the Sustainable Development Goals.
Answered by Justine Greening
As we have already made clear, the UK supports a target to cooperate globally to reduce substantially international tax evasion and avoidance. This language is included in the most recent draft goals and targets list released by the co-chairs of the Open Working Group (OWG) on 2 June.
At last year's Lough Erne G8 summit, leaders agreed to introduce a new international standard of automatic exchange of information to help countries combat tax evasion. We are working in the G20 to develop a roadmap that identifies obstacles to developing country participation in this new global standard. We are also working in the G20 to identify Base Erosion and Profit Shifting (BEPS) issues most relevant to developing countries and to recommend actions to address them.
The final targets in the post-2015 development framework will however be subject to international negotiations in the United Nations, in which the UK will play an active role.