Rt Hon Thérèse Coffey MP, Rt Hon Lord Goldsmith of Richmond Park and Andrea Ledward CBE.

Q74 The Chair: Good morning, colleagues, those present and those watching. Welcome to this concurrent meeting of the House of Lords Environment and Climate Change Select Committee and the House of Commons Environmental Audit Committee. It is part of our joint inquiries into COP 15. We are very grateful to our witnesses who I would not say quite have come hotfoot from Montreal, but given the parliamentary calendar and the break before Christmas they pretty much have. Thank you very much for finding time to come to talk to us about the outcomes of Montreal and what they mean for us in the UK. We are grateful to the Secretary of State, Thérèse Coffey, and the Minister in the FCDO, Lord Goldsmith, supported by the director for international biodiversity and climate at Defra, Andrea Ledward. All three of you are extremely welcome.

We have a packed agenda, so I will kick off quickly. It is a concurrent meeting, so I am chairing but it will be co-chaired by Philip Dunne, who I am sure will not need an introduction to anyone in this audience. The first question to the Secretary of State is: have you been satisfied with the agreement reached at Montreal? Supplementary to that, what did you see as the particular strengths and weaknesses of the final outcome?

Dr Thérèse Coffey: I thought it was a huge triumph for the world, for the planet, for nature, and we should be very proud of the United Kingdom and our contribution in making it happen. The level of ambition that this Government have demonstrated for several years was realised in a very significant way in Montreal. We did not do that alone, of course not, but we have been building the partnerships for several years, building on what happened in Sharm el-Sheikh in 2018. That really got the momentum.

I pay particular tribute to Lord Goldsmith and to all the other people who have been involved along the way in making this happen. It was not just because of COP 15, because the awards process does not work like that, but I was delighted that Andrea received a CBE in this year’s New Year Honours List. That is recognition of the ongoing work that our civil servants have played in making this happen.

Ultimately a lot of these things come down to the wire, like in any negotiation, but the sort of quality of which the committee and Parliament should be aware is that we had the courage to reopen the text at the last minute, because key elements in the consensus text—I prefer to talk about consensus rather than compromise, because consensus will endure and compromise is temporary—were slightly falling short of where we wanted to be. That is credit to another official, who is not giving evidence but is behind me, Will—he drove a lot of that—and to the extended team.

On what the agreement achieved among the 23 targets, probably the most notable are things like the 30by30, the DSI and recognition about the financing. I know it feels like Lord Goldsmith wrote that plan almost singlehandedly, with support, but we engaged very sensibly with countries from the start, so it was a shared endeavour, and that is growing. We will now implement that plan in how we move forward.

I think it was reasonable that we ended up in a situation on the financing, but there is something that I am really proud of, although I have learned that this analogy does not work in the rest of the world. I have talked about this before. I was in the department before for three years and too often nature was basically the Cinderella of the whole environmental challenge. Climate always grabbed the headlines and got the annual COP and all the big noises, but, to be fair, I think we have made a really good treaty that will last for a very long time.

One of the other key things, different from Aichi, is that we now have the mechanisms to report, review and hold each other to account. That will be critical so that we do not get the nebulous elements that we had before. That is why I think the consensus behind the agreement will make it endure.

Do you want to add anything to that, Lord Goldsmith?

Lord Goldsmith of Richmond Park: You have said it all. First, I echo the Secretary of State’s remarks about our team. I am always amazed when I see the UK negotiating team in these forums. I do not think it is unfair or an exaggeration to say that without the UK negotiating team we would not have ended up with the agreement that we have. We came very close to not securing the high ambition in Montreal. That we did is a reflection of a bunch of people from the UK, led by Will and Andrea, working round the clock 24/7, brokering agreement, bringing very disparate groups together around a consensus in a whole bunch of contentious areas. It was just extraordinary. I think any negotiating team around the world would be willing and probably happy to acknowledge the role played by our team. I want to put that on the record. They are not always seen; they are often invisible in these contexts. It is the politicians who do the talking but behind the scenes these guys did something quite extraordinary.

It is an ambitious agreement. We were all talking about the need for a Paris moment for nature and I think what was agreed is a Paris moment for nature. Of course, as with all such agreements, you could have more. You could have more detail around the implementation measures that the Secretary of State was talking about, but what we ended up with exceeds what we were expecting to end up with, not least given the politics in the run-up to the CBD.

One of the reasons why we were able to secure this agreement—“we” collectively, the world—was because of the groundwork done not just at the events and conferences that the Secretary of State mentioned but at Glasgow, where nature took centre stage for the first time in any climate conference and we secured a package for forests and land use, which was unprecedented. To secure that package we had to secure financial commitments. Those financial commitments translated into courage and confidence on the part of nature-rich countries to go further than they might otherwise have been willing to go.

All of these things are different steps on the same journey. What is happening is that the climate and environment discussions, which have always been run in parallel but, as the Secretary of State said, with nature taking a very distant second place, seem to be coming together. I do not think we will ever have a climate conference again where nature does not play a significant role and vice versa. We are in a good position now to build on the progress that was made and we can be optimistic.

Dr Thérèse Coffey: We should give credit to Boris Johnson and Sir Alok Sharma for making that happen, really pulling it.

Lord Goldsmith of Richmond Park: Absolutely right.

Dr Thérèse Coffey: There is one group of people I have not extended huge praise on but I think the committees should be aware of. For what is worth, I think the science expertise that brought into this was recognised around the world, whether that is the JNCC, Cefas, Natural England, external people like the Natural History Museum and Kew, or our chief scientific adviser networks—they all played a part. Indeed, chairing key working groups involving indicators was particularly where we were able to add some real strength to this. That is why I am genuinely very excited. I could set off a chemical reaction and be fizzing away, but setting sodium off in water probably is not allowed in the Palace.

The Chair: Thank you for that response and enthusiasm, and for setting on the record the work that is done behind the scenes by officials. There are people around this table who have been involved in this area for a very long time and know that it is not just about political will but about the people behind. I am sure I can freely extend our thanks to the civil servants who have worked so hard on this, in addition to the political leadership. From our side, we certainly recognise that in the case of Lord Goldsmith.

Q75 Philip Dunne: Thank you very much, Baroness Parminter, and thank you for allowing the Commons committee to join you for this session, following up the preparatory session that we held together back in June with part of the cast who are before us today, but with the new Secretary of State. Welcome, Secretary of State. You indicated that the UK was instrumental in increasing the ambition in securing a better deal. Can you elaborate a little bit more on the areas for which the UK secured improvements during the final stages of the negotiations?

Dr Thérèse Coffey: Like with quite a lot of negotiations you do not want to reveal everything, but the key bits were the restoration of nature. At one point key elements were not in the draft text. A lot of the NGOs picked up on that. To be fair to the Chinese presidency, they drove a lot of this, very strongly in partnership with the Canadian Minister, Mr Guilbeault, so I give credit to them too, but they had not included trying to find the consensus to get everybody engaged. I think it was our resilience, determination and not quite cajoling—but not far off—that ensured that went back in. As you know, that is one of our key aims in the Environment Act and we believe it is absolutely necessary for the world. That is why we would not relent, even though there could have been a risk of reopening the text, but there was enough good faith in the end to make it happen. In particular, that is probably one of the critical things that happened.

Lord Goldsmith of Richmond Park: Another area where the UK played a key role is finance. Everyone was clear that finance was a key obstacle and that it was an issue that needed to be resolved. We had wildly differing views on what was needed: we had the Brazil line, which was completely unrealistic, with hundreds of billions of direct public support every year, and some developed countries trying to suppress ambition from the financial point of view.

In the many months in the run-up to the CBD we created a coalition of Ministers, who were not necessarily all in agreement about the numbers but were in agreement that something needed to be resolved and that we needed to soften our red lines. The UK led that process, and sponsored and worked very closely with Gabon, the Maldives and Ecuador to create a 10-point plan for financing biodiversity in nature. This was partly because the three countries involved are all very credible in their own ways, but they are also geographically very different. This 10-point plan was not overly prescriptive but it reduced the landing ground for agreement on finance to such an extent that anyone looking at it could see within it potential for a solution. It made it a more realistic discussion. That was their brief and that is what they did.

We secured the support publicly of about 40 countries to the 10-point plan. They were very varying countries—big, small, rich, poor, north, south, east, west. We had a lot of support privately from other countries that did not want to put their names to it. That meant that, when we got to Montreal, the discussion began at the 10-point plan, as opposed to beginning at the completely unrealistic point before Montreal. I do not think anyone would disagree that the finance bit was the key that unlocked and made possible a lot of the other discussions.

Sorry, Andrea, I know you wanted to say something.

Andrea Ledward: Thank you all for the very kind words. I know the team will much appreciate them.

The final framework put out by the Chinese did not contain a specific commitment to ending human-induced extinctions of known threatened species by 2030. That was missing from the final Chinese text, so the target 4 that is now in the framework was explicitly added in. You may also have seen that there was quite a lot of social media focus on whether the 30by30 target applied equally to land and ocean. Again, the UK was quite instrumental in making sure that was clarified in the text. As you know, some of these things can be a bit ambiguous sometimes, depending on where you put the commas and exactly which verbs you have in there. It was clarified that it was 30% of land and 30% of ocean.

Q76 Philip Dunne: Secretary of State, you identified some other actors who were critical in bringing the whole of government approach to this, some of them within your department and some of them not under your specific remit. Can you identify how government and other parts beyond government were brought together? Following our presidency of COP 26, when that was passed over to the Egyptians, the structures of government that were put in place to deliver the UK commitments on COP 26 have started to be dismantled, understandably. Do you envisage maintaining the coherence that brought us to COP 15 to endure?

Dr Thérèse Coffey: Many of the organisations I referred to, particularly in science, are part of the Defra family more broadly, so that relationship will continue just by design. On what you said about COP 26, clearly the presidency did not need an established secretariat anymore, but right across government we are continuing to make sure we measure and implement all the different activities committed to.

Thinking within our area, of course we can start talking about the Environment Act and all the different things like that, but more generally we will continue the partnerships we have with other countries around the world. We will continue to lead or co-chair the ocean alliance partnerships, and all the international work we are doing will build on the G7 and the G20. I went to Brazil and had the very first ministerial meeting with the Agriculture Minister, because a key element of what we are trying to do is to move away from subsidies being bad for nature, as opposed to being good for nature. Indeed, I met the Environment Minister as well.

Within government, there are key roles for the Foreign Office, Defra and BEIS in thinking about climate, but we will continue to push this forward. Defra has responsibility for the CBD overall, but it is a cross-government effort. That is what we will continue to establish, not least in the work that we do internationally, not just with Commonwealth countries or overseas territories but in the collaborations that we have with a number of countries around the world.

Andrea, do you want to say a little bit more about how we are going to take it forward from an official level?

Andrea Ledward: A new Cabinet committee has been put in place, the Cabinet committee for energy, climate and net zero, chaired by the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster. That will take issues on nature and the environment. Underpinning that is a series of different formal government structures that bring together all our work across government on nature and forests and will pick up CBD implementation, but it is very important we keep that close to our climate work as well, because we do not want to do one thing over here for the CBD and one over there for UNFCCC. We want to do the right thing that plays into different conventions and not be driven just by servicing the conventions.

We think that we now have a much better-integrated structure across government and much more maturity on the biodiversity and nature side. The CBD push has given us that, recognising that we are still catching up a bit with the much more longer-term conversation that has been going on in the climate change side. We have a much deeper understanding of how biodiversity and nature is not a fluffy side issue; it is central to health security, food security, economic security. It is therefore being much more strongly integrated. The Government are currently reviewing the integrated review and there is a number of different vehicles in which there will be an opportunity to set that out.

Dr Thérèse Coffey: What is very good news is that the Treasury has appointed a Minister, Baroness Penn, to be, in effect, the Treasury Minister on this. It is a particular part of her brief. She came to Montreal. I have to say that the rest of the world were very impressed that we had not only the Secretary of State, Lord Goldsmith of the Foreign Office in his wider role on nature, as well as Lord Benyon, but the Treasury as well. We massively represented the UK. That was well and truly noticed and highly regarded.

Lord Goldsmith of Richmond Park: Decisions and commitments have been made, which at the moment are academic and obviously the challenge now is to make them real. Structures are now in place that propel us in the right direction. The Government will need to be scrutinised and kept to their word, and that is the job of the Select Committees. For example, we have committed, and persuaded all of the G7 countries to make the same commitment, to align all of our ODA with 1.5 degrees and our nature goals but then subsequently to go nature positive. For precisely the reason the Secretary of State made, you cannot hope to tackle base poverty around the world if, at the same time, you are undermining ecological systems that provide people with the livelihoods that they need.

That is now firmly recognised. We are not there yet. It is quite complicated; I do not think any country has done it, but we are leading on this. Although Defra has a relatively tiny proportion of the ODA budget, the knowledge and expertise about how to be nature positive sits mostly in the Secretary of State’s department. That work is being done and I hope it will be for the committees to monitor that process, because it will take a few years to do.

Philip Dunne: You mentioned the additional commitments that the UK has made, some within Defra, some outside. Would it be possible for you to put together a list of the commitments that you could send to this committee so that we are clear about what we will be measuring progress against in the future?

Dr Thérèse Coffey: To some extent we have set that out domestically. The environmental improvement plan will come later this month and you will see elements in there. Let us see what we can do about pulling together some kind of document. We will speak to your clerks about what you think would help you.

The broader point is that the next time the CBD will meet will be in Turkey. Obviously there are many things in between, but the beauty of all this is that we are basically having a global stocktake and we will aggregate, because this is a global challenge. That is why Lord Goldsmith is right about our ODA and that broader issue of having £3 billion out of the £11.6 billion focused on nature, but all the individual projects that we try to strengthen, whether that is through the blue planet fund, will be working towards these aims on how we achieve the targets we have set in this country and how they contribute to a CBD outcome—the global biodiversity framework.

Q77 Philip Dunne: Finally, I will pick up the point about the new Cabinet sub-committee that Andrea mentioned. We were somewhat disappointed or perplexed as to why the Climate Action Implementation Committee had gone following COP 26. Is it possible to set out the support mechanisms that exist to support the Cabinet sub-committee you just identified? That seems not just to have a relation to nature; Andrea mentioned the magic words “net zero”, which I know will be of great interest to my colleague, Mr Skidmore.

Dr Thérèse Coffey: I think it is really because it is a cross-government strategy and we no longer have the role of COP 26 president—we do not hold the presidency anymore. It is the nature of the Cabinet Office, which leads that cross-cutting Cabinet committee. I think that is why it has gone to the CDL.

Philip Dunne: The membership will be public, presumably.

Dr Thérèse Coffey: It is already on GOV.UK.

Q78 Baroness Northover: We have heard about what was agreed but obviously the key here is implementation, as Lord Goldsmith just mentioned. What are the greatest risks to the successful implementation of the commitments at COP 15 Part 2 and how might you and international partners mitigate those risks? What is being done to take that forward?

Dr Thérèse Coffey: I am conscious that there is a lot of ambition to achieve by 2030. One of the things that we made sure happened during the process, as I think I alluded to, is the reporting and monitoring mechanisms and the planning mechanisms. That is why this stocktake is to be used at a national level: as we aggregate, are we achieving the collective outcomes that we want? Part of the way forward is that every country will revise and update its individual biodiversity strategy at a national level and the action plans to go with it. I believe that the intention is to have a standardised format. Andrea might be able to inform us of the steps for getting to that.

Andrea Ledward: Each country will develop its national biodiversity strategy and action plan. There can be a number of documents in each jurisdiction and each national level. Our environmental improvement plan might be part of the UK’s answer but will not be all of it, because it will involve reporting on some of the targets for businesses for green finance that would not be part of the environmental improvement plan. Each country will compile an overview report into the CBD that points to the range of documents that demonstrate our progress and delivery by COP 16, as the Secretary of State said.

There will also be a monitoring framework. All countries will be required to report against a new framework of 21 indicators that has now been agreed. Every four years there will be a global stocktake to understand globally where we are against that, in the same way that the UNFCCC is able to take stock against some of the content in the NDCs to understand where we are against the 1.5 degrees target. Of course we recognise that not all those datasets exist, so an awful lot of work needs to be done on driving through data and capability to do that. There also needs to be an awful lot of work at a national level to build capability, to get the ability to deliver in place in different countries.

The limited timeframe will be the issue. Because of Covid, COP 15 did not happen until late 2022; it was supposed to be in 2020. So we now have a set of targets for 2030 and we have only eight years to deliver them rather than 10. Time is probably our greatest risk, I suggest, and we need to crack on with it.

Dr Thérèse Coffey: Building on that, there is a key role for the Global Environment Facility. In the last replenishment the UK put in £330 million, which will provide immediate support. Regular parts of the conversations we had with countries—Lord Goldsmith might want to expand on this—were on some of the challenges of being able to access that. I know that the relatively new CEO is committed; indeed, the donors will be trying to stream that as quickly as possible, bearing in mind that we need to be driven by outcomes rather than unnecessarily getting stuck in treacle on process. Lord Goldsmith has a lot of engagement with the GEF.

Lord Goldsmith of Richmond Park: Yes. The GEF is run by Carlos Manuel Rodriguez, who is a former Environment Minister of Costa Rica who many credit with the miracle of Costa Rica. It is not entirely but largely down to his leadership; he was a superb Environment Minister. We in the UK were very supportive of him becoming the head of the GEF. My view, and I think our view generally, is that he has been very good, but there is a huge frustration, particularly among smaller states and small island states, about access to finance.

The multilateral system is impenetrable, incredibly bureaucratic and very complicated. It can take years before even quite simple applications result in cash on the ground. There is general frustration, which is entirely merited because it is a nightmarish system. Somehow the GEF has become the lightning rod for that. Objectively, that is unfair. The GEF is probably the most agile, the most flexible, the most responsive and by far the quickest of all such multilateral development banks or instruments, but the general anger with the multilateral system in the context of the CBD was targeted at the GEF.

The GEF is doing a fantastic job. It has more to do, but the broader question about access to finance is critical. We are committed to working on that. We set up a task force for access to finance with Fiji and we are working with other countries as well. We are fully committed to using our leverage as one of the biggest investors in that multilateral system in a much more muscular manner than we have in the past, much less polite if necessary—

Dr Thérèse Coffey: More assertive.

Lord Goldsmith of Richmond Park: More assertive, thank you—to try to force the system to become a little bit more responsive. The GCF, for example, is nothing like as responsive as the GEF, but we are a major contributor to the GCF and we will use the opportunity of a change coming up in the next few months to try to create structural changes that would allow the GCF to respond much more along the lines of how the GEF responds to applications. There is a problem there, undoubtedly. It is not about the numbers; numbers matter, but it is about the manner in which these organisations operate. I think we can learn from the GEF rather than point our fingers at it. On paper and in reality it is a pretty effective organisation. Most countries would agree if they go into the details. It is good at getting the money out the door.

Q79 Lord Browne of Ladyton: As Baroness Northover said in the preamble to her question, the agreement is only as good as its implementation. I know I am not the first person to say that. This agreement has an implementation section and it has a separate document about the mechanism. My concern is not that we will not find the resource but that we will not have the capability to implement this agreement. Some countries in the world will not and I suspect we will accept the responsibility to help some of those countries to get there. I would like to hear from you how we intend to do that. I have a particular interest in how we mitigate the damage that has been done to nature by conflict over the last three decades. Where will the international community get the deployable capability to put into some of the most dangerous parts of the world to meet these targets?

Lord Goldsmith of Richmond Park: We do not need to be particularly clever about it; we do not need to invent new things. Almost everything that needs to happen is already happening. There are shining examples and I do not think they get nearly as much attention as they deserve. We think of the Congo as being a disaster zone and in many respects it is in the DRC, but the neighbouring Republic of the Congo has more or less stopped deforestation. If you go to some of its oldest logging concessions you would not know that the land had ever been logged, even though it might have been logged twice. There are the highest populations of gorillas and forest elephants anywhere in Africa in areas that have been logged three times in some cases. It has managed to break the link between logging and deforestation and nature destruction, and it has created mechanisms that all but guarantee very high local employment and multiple benefits for the communities involved.

Those models exist and it really is win-win-win: you have high productivity, economic development and growth, and prosperity being shared among the communities involved. The challenge for us, as a donor country, is to find ways in which we can support those initiatives that work rather than getting too clever about it. We know what works. Even within the context of a country like the DRC, which is incredibly dysfunctional on many levels, there are pockets—they are isolated, unfortunately—of truly inspiring projects that are really delivering for people and for planet.

Then you go to the other side of the world and look at countries like Costa Rica, which I mentioned earlier. It has broken the link between agricultural commodities, which is responsible for about 80% of the world’s deforestation, and deforestation. It is a country whose forests are growing even while its productivity is soaring, and which has gone from being one of the poorest in the region to one of the wealthiest. It is also very politically stable.

The last point I would make is that there is a link between political stability and environmental sustainability. You find that countries that are politically unstable, where governance is a real issue and corruption is rife, tend to be those countries where nefarious interests take advantage of that sort of rotten system to extract in a completely unsustainable manner, at the expense of the environment and people.

Those two things go hand in hand. The more effort we put in to try to foster genuine sustainability, the more likely it is that we will help those countries overcome some of the other problems that you allude to in your question.

Andrea Ledward: The first thing is that it is an all-of-sector and all-of-society challenge, although the importance of the private sector and corporates is really significant. When you look at the power of, say, the private market led Taskforce on Nature-related Financial Disclosures, which will report in September this year, it is incredibly significant to shift practices, to get them thinking about the risks that they have in their supply chains and the impact there they are having on nature. The more we can get corporates and the private sector owning this agenda is critical.

The second thing is, exactly as Lord Goldsmith said, getting nature seen as a core development issue and thinking about how nature gets embedded into core political and economic decision-making, as Professor Dasgupta was advising. Again, that is very much being rolled out now. Many of the MDBs are taking that into the way that they work and partner with countries and think about their structured support.

The third aspect of that is this reform of the UN and multilateral systems, which again Lord Goldsmith just mentioned. A key decision was made in Montreal about needing to review the architecture and make it work better.

Finally, there was a very important announcement around the NBSAP accelerator, which is an accelerator to help countries deliver their biodiversity action plans. Germany in particular put forward €20 million for that back in Montreal, so significant money is available for countries to draw down to get on with the planning. As you said, capabilities are a really critical part, but it comes at different levels. I do not think it is just for donor countries to provide that. We need a lot of actors to help with that capability from lots of different perspectives, and therefore to raise awareness of what was agreed in Montreal.

Dr Thérèse Coffey: Just finally on the point you made, Lord Browne, Lord Goldsmith pointed out very well that there are significant buy-ins where investment and collaboration are already in place. The Congo Basin is one of them. There are others buy-ins around the world as well that we are trying to substantiate which, you are right, cut through nature while there is undoubtedly still conflict internally, never mind externally. Nevertheless, building that prosperity is a critical element of where we can use nature. Investment in that is good for people as well.

Q80 Lord Browne of Ladyton: To what extent was the mineral extraction industry represented in Montreal? How much did it buy into this?

Dr Thérèse Coffey: Rio Tinto was absolutely there. Around the world it owns land the size of Germany and it extracts from about 1% to 2% of the size of Germany. Rio Tinto stands out for me in particular as a company that has been on a big journey, making changes and improvements to its approach. That is one of the organisations that I met briefly while I was there, but it is important to praise the people doing the best and drag along. Our own policies on a variety of things, such as supply chains, the sustainable resource initiative and elements, will all help towards delivering this global resource initiative. What is that thing you took over, Lord Goldsmith? Ian Cheshire chaired it.

Lord Goldsmith of Richmond Park: The Global Resource Initiative.

Dr Thérèse Coffey: Yes, the Global Resource Initiative. Those sorts of things that we are now putting into place in a number of different regulations will all pull along the companies to do it. We should praise the people who are doing it the best already.

Lord Goldsmith of Richmond Park: I strongly agree with that. The reality is that there is a huge demand for minerals, not least as part of this clean tech revolution that we are experiencing and which we need. There is no nature-neutral way of doing that; there just is not. Mining will always be messy and untidy and it will always have an environmental cost, but there is a huge gap between best practice and worst practice. It is like a gulf.

I met a Canadian mining company called Teck Resources. I cannot corroborate this because I have not visited its sites, but its view is it is now nature neutral and about to be nature positive. I do not know whether that is correct but I do know from looking at the audit of its company that the gap between where it is and some of the grubbier businesses working, for example, in the DRC is like a different cosmos.

If we are to see through this technological clean low-carbon transition that we absolutely are committed to, as the Secretary of State says, we need to do everything we can to big up and promote the best in class while lifting the regulatory bar in every possible way we can to eliminate the worst in class, because there is no escaping the need for these minerals.

Q81 Barry Gardiner: Lord Goldsmith, you spoke about the agility of the GEF, which I think is right, but you will know that much of that agility was down to the work of Gustavo Fonseca, who sadly died recently. What confidence do you have that whoever replaces him as the sort of number two to Carlos Manuel will be able to drive it in the same way?

Lord Goldsmith of Richmond Park: You are right to mention Gustavo. It was a huge shock to the system and a huge loss, but I have confidence in Carlos’s leadership. He is not just some random bureaucrat who has been pulled out of the system for political reasons. He was backed because he has a record. He knows what he is doing. He has been in the private sector, he has been a fantastically effective Environment Minister and he is globally respected. He is on the side of nature and of those countries that will be recipients of the funding. I have total confidence that he is on the right track and he will make it work.

Q82 Barry Gardiner: I want to ask you about funding and finance. The UK has committed £3 billion to climate change solutions for restoration of nature and biodiversity. Will we provide additional funding to support the GBF target to get those financial flows up to the level that we have committed to: £20 billion by 2025, £30 billion by 2030? How are we going to lead the pack in that way? You will know that, when it comes to the global climate fund and the $100 billion a year, we are still not there even though that promise was made a decade ago.

Lord Goldsmith of Richmond Park: The first thing I would say is that there was a lot of worry before COP 27 in Sharm el-Sheikh that we were going to drop our commitment to £11.6 billion. If you remember it was quite widely reported in the context of the well-documented pressures on our ODA budget generally. We had a very firm re-commitment from the Prime Minister, and on numerous occasions since then, that that commitment is sacrosanct. We made that commitment to countries for whom climate change is existential, including Commonwealth countries and small island states. We are not going to break that promise.

Part of that promise was at least £3 billion of ICF, our climate finance, to be spent on nature-based solutions to climate change. That is also a promise that the Prime Minister has recommitted to. I cannot tell you that we are going to have more pure ICF finance available for nature, or indeed for climate. However, I can say that the commitment I mentioned earlier to go nature positive through our entire portfolio means that we will move from a place where inadvertently some of our well-meaning development initiatives might be causing environmental damage and, therefore, storing up problems for future generations, to a situation where every investment we make has a net-positive impact on the natural world.

That is worth something. It is hard to know how much it is worth, but the G7 spends $164 billion a year in aid. Much of that is spent in a way that does harm to the environment. If we can shift that so that it becomes a positive there is a number there. I do not know what it is but it is worth something.

From a domestic point of view you have the work that the Secretary of State is doing around subsidy reform. That is also worth something—£4 billion being spent in a way that is often destructive towards the land towards something that is fundamentally positive. There will be lots of new money but it is quite hard to put a figure to it.

Barry Gardiner: I agree with your analysis of the value of getting rid of perverse subsidies and so on, but what I think you are saying is that there is no guarantee of extending the UK’s funding commitment to the GBF beyond 2026 to support that 2030 target. Is that right?

Lord Goldsmith of Richmond Park: I have no further cheques to reveal, I am afraid, but I am happy with our commitment to the £3 billion, which led other big donor countries to make similar commitments, not least Germany, which have been very generous, France and others. That £3 billion has been quite well leveraged.

To make one point, for the sake of the committee, there has been moments of trickiness on the part of elements of the Treasury. Our commitment if £3 billion of our ICF, not £3 billion of our ODA. That is an important distinction. That is an important distinction, because we spent £3 billion of the £11.6 billion, plus a lot of other money that was spent on nature-related issues but is not ICF. Every now and again there has been a temptation by elements within the Treasury to remove that last bit, so it becomes £3 billion of ODA. Moving from £3 billion of our ICF plus the other ODA to just £3 billion of the ODA would represent a very significant cut to our nature funding. I would ask everyone to keep their eyes on the wording because it matters.

Q83 Barry Gardiner: That is very helpful and much appreciated by the committee. Let us turn to the private sector. How do the Government plan to mobilise the private sector to meet the commitments outlined in the 10-point plan for financing?

Dr Thérèse Coffey: There is a combination here, as you say, with the 10-point plan. I expect Lord Goldsmith will want to chip in on that. We are actively engaging. We do not normally refer to the Royal Family, but people will know that the King has a particular interest in this and has already been very active with his sustainable market initiatives and similar, so there is momentum there. I hosted a dinner with Dame Amelia Fawcett in Montreal on a more financial institution element. It is easy to get a product for climate now and we need to develop the same, but that is where the 10-point plan comes into its own, as well as some of the other elements we just referred to, like the TNFD and similar. I see a particular role for food companies in helping with this but not exclusively.

Lord Goldsmith of Richmond Park: Very quickly, Andrea, is point 15 on disclosure within the GBF?

Andrea Ledward: Yes.

Lord Goldsmith of Richmond Park: That is very important. This is a commitment that companies must be more transparent and disclose their environmental footprint, much as we expect now in relation to carbon. We have to make that happen, obviously, but that is really important. It puts nature on a par with climate in terms of the private sector, the corporate sector.

It is very early days but one area that will undoubtedly be huge is carbon and biodiversity markets. Look at something the DRC and the amount of money that is going to be required to turn things around there. It is currently half a million hectares a year. Bear in mind that the Congo Basin provides around two-thirds of Africa’s rainfall, so if the Congo Basin goes we are looking at a humanitarian issue on a scale that we have never had to imagine before. That will require a lot of money. That will come not from Governments but from the private sector. Therefore, it is incumbent on all of us to ensure that, as those markets develop, they are genuine high-integrity markets and that we do not create opportunities for the kind of greenwash that we have seen examples of in recent years.

That is an area where the UK will have a particular role. The Secretary of State mentioned the work that the King is doing. This very much dovetails in with that, but the UK working with countries like Singapore and others to ensure that those markets are of the highest possible integrity will be an incredibly valuable role. There is a huge amount of money waiting to be deployed but we have to make sure that it is deployed responsibly and helpfully.

Dr Thérèse Coffey: To that end, we are also hosting a session with the private sector next month. That is being pulled together, both domestically and internationally. We need to grab the momentum that was there—to catch the wave, which is one of my phrases. This got recognised properly by the private sector. We need to extend that knowledge, pull it in and get it going with us. That includes the leaders of the pack.

Barry Gardiner: Thank you very much. My apologies, I have to leave early. No discourtesy intended to the Ministers.

Q84 Anna McMorrin: Following on from that, I know that many businesses have expressed disappointment that target 15 of the agreement did not include mandatory wording of the disclosure requirements. Lord Goldsmith previously told our committees in June last year that he hoped the UK would be the first country to mandate nature-related financial disclosures. How can you be confident that businesses can be mobilised to disclose risks and impacts on nature without that mandatory wording?

Lord Goldsmith of Richmond Park: Target 15 is a major accomplishment, just from the context of the negotiations as they happen. I was relieved that we ended up where we did, because at certain points I did not think we would. Would it be better if it went further and we had harder language around mandatory disclosure? My view is yes, we would but we would never have got that over the line in the context of these discussions.

Based on what was said by previous Treasury Ministers, and Simon Clarke was very strong on this to a committee—I do not know if it was this committee—he certainly hoped that the conclusion of the work being done by the TNFD, which the Secretary of State mentioned, would be that we would move towards mandatory reporting here in the UK. It is not a government policy or a government commitment, but certainly my hope is that that is where we will move towards. I do not think we can rely for this turnaround that we are going to need on just the frontrunners and best practice. They enable us to know what is possible—that is the beauty of best practice—but a lot of companies will, at the very least, drag their feet. For me, it seems clear that the regulatory bar needs to move in this direction.

Anna McMorrin: Some of the criticism coming from COP 15—although momentum was achieved there—was that the targets were too vague, meaning that there is a lack of measurable biodiversity indicators coming from that. We know that indigenous rights will be impacted. Saying what you said, when do you expect the UK to commit to making that wording mandatory?

Dr Thérèse Coffey: The taskforce is due to report in Q3 or Q4 this year.

Lord Goldsmith of Richmond Park: Yes, in September. I do not have the answer to that and I do not think it exists, but I hope that the work of the TFND will lead us logically in that direction as quickly as possible.

You mentioned a couple of other points. Andrea or the Secretary of State are probably in a better place to talk about the indicators and what we are doing to refine that process, but just very quickly on indigenous people, I think it is true to say that the main spokespeople for the indigenous organisations said that COP 26 was the first COP where they felt truly included and listened to. We made big commitments and secured them from other donors, countries and philanthropists: a $1.7 billion commitment, for example, which is unprecedented in the context of indigenous people and their rights and their cause.

We are still steering the donor co-ordination to ensure that, as that money is deployed, it is deployed in a way that the indigenous people expect and as they need. It is a very long-term programme but we are really central to that. We are no longer presidents of COP and we were not the host of the CBD, but I think we are seen as the leading country on this issue of indigenous people and land tenure.

Our view is that the cheapest way to protect large amounts of land is by protecting the people who are already doing it. Around 80% of the world’s forest biodiversity is in land that is controlled and lived in by indigenous people. That is not a coincidence. We are committed, through our own funding but also through that donor co-ordination work that we are doing, to ensure that as many resources are invested as necessary to protect indigenous people’s rights to the land that they live in.

The world has changed with the election in Brazil. Suddenly things that were very difficult have become very possible. An indigenous person has been appointed as the Minister for Indigenous People for the first time in Brazil. the commitments that have been made by President Lula—obviously, they are just commitments at this point—are very strong in this regard. It feels like the world has changed quite dramatically on this issue. We stand ready to work with and support the Lula Government on this issue, and numerous other Governments as well. This is a big issue for us and I think we are doing a good job.

Dr Thérèse Coffey: I met the new Minister for Indigenous People, Sônia Guajajara—I do not know how to pronounce her surname because I do not speak Portuguese. Perhaps Andrea can give a bit more detail on some of the indicator elements.

Andrea Ledward: There will be an advisory group that will finalise the indicators, which will take place basically from now all the way through to 2050. There is no specific timeframe, but the 21 indicators agreeing that as a framework is a massive step forward. We will do everything we can to inject urgency into the advisory group working on those indicators.

Specifically on target 15, the first thing to say is that TNFD will report in September. A lot of work is going on to align that with the International Sustainability Standards Board so that there is a globally agreed way forward and we do not have competing frameworks in standards. Secondly, the UK Treasury co-ordinator, the UK advisory group on TNFD, is advising the Government on how to implement standards on disclosure and risk assessment. That is ongoing and will feed into the green finance strategy that is also under development, led by the Treasury. Those are the main vehicles for taking that forward.

Dr Thérèse Coffey: This is where our expertise really helped in chairing those meetings on the indicators.

Andrea Ledward: Yes.

Dr Thérèse Coffey: It was one of the standout elements of where we were massively contributing behind the scenes and making that more substantive than in the Aichi target elements.

Q85 Anna McMorrin: On that, target 15 absolutely emphasises the need for states to ensure that businesses, including the financial sector, reduce negative impacts on biodiversity. Therefore, would you reconsider the proposed scope of secondary legislation and Schedule 17 to the Environment Act, so that it includes the mandatory due diligence requirements needed for—

Dr Thérèse Coffey: There is a process under way within Government about—

Anna McMorrin: Sorry, if you would just let me finish.

Dr Thérèse Coffey: I thought you had.

Anna McMorrin: —the financial sector and specifically in relation to forest risk commodities, because we know that that has the most severe impact on indigenous rights and people?

Dr Thérèse Coffey: On the environment, we have already said there is a process under way. A taskforce is due to report in September and we will consider that as part of our next steps. More broadly, there are a number of ways in which we are already acting: we have biodiversity net gain when it comes to infrastructure. These things are already starting to be embedded, or certainly the plans are being laid out. We will start to see that sort of activity come into effect within the country.

Anna McMorrin: You are due to bring forward those secondary regulations to enact Schedule 17, but when and how would the biodiversity impact of commodities coming into the UK be reduced as a result of that?

Dr Thérèse Coffey: There is definitely work under way. I have just signed off on a submission about aspects of the due diligence legislation, if that is what you are referring to, so things are under way.

Anna McMorrin: So forest risk commodities will be included in the scope of this?

Dr Thérèse Coffey: I will not give you a specific because we are still in the process of policy consideration.

Anna McMorrin: When would you be able to commit to that?

Dr Thérèse Coffey: In due course. Andrea is involved in aspects of that, but we are getting through a number of things to try to bring this together. As I said, probably the landmark staff will be the biodiversity net gain and the supply chain elements are an important part of that, but that is all work that is under way. It is not yet finalised ready to be shared, I am afraid.

Q86 Baroness Boycott: Thank you very much for all the useful and interesting evidence. I know Andrea mentioned the monitoring framework. Could you say a bit more on how that will work in practice and how global monitoring will happen between now and COP 16? How will people have any chance to review what is going on?

Andrea Ledward: By COP 16, so by quarter 4 in 2024 in Turkey, each country that has agreed in Montreal will provide their NBSAP. They will essentially provide their baseline data reporting. That will allow us to take the first essential global stocktake to understand why the data is potentially lacking in some places, and to understand particularly where there is need for additional action urgency.

There is still a lot of detail and work that needs to be done on the work programmes that need to underpin that. The intercessional programme between now and COP 16 has not yet been set out, so agreement on when the different working groups and the different advisory groups will meet. That whole programme of work for these intervening two years just has not been set out by the CBD secretariat. As the Secretary of State said, the UK chaired all that indicator work within the scientific bodies within the CBD, so certainly we are at the table advising on what we think that programme should be, but that is an internal discussion at this point to be agreed across the parties.

Baroness Boycott: Whose responsibility is it?

Dr Thérèse Coffey: Ultimately it is the CBD secretariat.

Baroness Boycott: Who is who right now?

Andrea Ledward: The CBD COP president is still the Chinese until basically COP16 opens when it transfers over to Turkey. The presidency is still the president of a bureau, which consists of representatives from all the different regions of the world. The UK sits in the JUSCANZ region—Japan, US, Canada, New Zealand. That bureau consists of those different representatives who make decisions on things like the formal intercessional programme. It will be the bureau, chaired by the Chinese COP president, that will formally make the decision on when things will happen.

Baroness Boycott: When do you expect to get the work plan of that between now and COP 16? It is not that far away.

Andrea Ledward: No, it is not at all. We expecting the next bureau meeting imminently to agree what needs to be done next, in what order and how urgently.

Dr Thérèse Coffey: To be fair, we were still in Canada a month ago.

Baroness Boycott: Is this frustrating for you—a feeling that you cannot move forward because it is somewhat outside your control?

Andrea Ledward: I do not think I would characterise it like that. As I said, we were chair of the subsidiary group in charge of the indicator framework. Now that there is an indicator framework, an awful lot of socialisation needs to happen to understand what that means, why those datasets exist, how you pull down a global dataset into a national dataset, and then how you might report, understand and fill that in at a national level. That is the focus of our efforts now: working with different parties to understand how they take and adopt that global framework.

Of course, that is not blocked at all by what goes on within the bureau at the CBD level. That work should be happening immediately already at different levels. We are working through our posts in many capitals across the world to have those bilateral conversations with those Governments about what they are doing about awareness raising. That is going on very actively through our FCDO colleagues.

Q87 Lord Whitty: In that context, you talked earlier about the expertise that various organisations have here. Many of the countries that need to make serious progress on this are poor, small or have very limited Administrations. How far is our expertise being deployed to help those organisations, either bilaterally or multilaterally, so that we will have some compatibility of statistics when people report? Unless those are monitored properly the targets are fairly meaningless. We need to ensure that that expertise is shared right across the globe.

Dr Thérèse Coffey: The targets are not meaningless; they are very real and necessary to help us restore nature. We have announced a new nature positive economy programme, which is £7.2 million. That will help developing countries in this very specific way. That will be processed. I assume that is part of our ODA but on the ground there are different elements right round the world. We are already helping various countries. Andrea, do you want to say a bit more?

Andrea Ledward: The indicators were specifically chosen because they can be globally pulled down to a national dataset at a national level. There is quite a rich set of organisations out there that are ready to do the capacity building at a national level from some NGOs through to some of the big multilaterals, such as the Inter-American Development Bank. There is that, as well as individual donor Governments, who all have different strengths of relationships in different parts of the world.

What is happening now, building off the work that we have done in the last two years in the G7 and the G20, is a more co-ordinated set of action about you bring our assistance together at a country level so that it is not competing but it is different advice that is more targeted and much more joined-up and coherent. There is also looking at where the obvious gaps are in the globe and playing to different organisations’ strengths. Clearly, the UK cannot be everywhere doing everything, so there is something about playing to different countries and originations’ strengths and helping, and providing what countries want themselves.

Dr Thérèse Coffey: To give an example, the US is not part of the CBD. It is not formally a member but I can assure you it does extensive work around the world. Of course, the leading countries are Germany, Norway—but not exclusively that gang because, frankly, we have a lot to learn as well from some of the so-called developing countries. That collaboration approach, rather than basically telling people what to do, is critical to making this a success.

Lord Goldsmith of Richmond Park: Some of the announcements we made in Montreal lead directly into the question you just asked. For example, we committed £29 million for a 30by30 facility. That is about helping countries do the ground work to deliver their part of 30by30. If there is a project that is on the shelf and ready to go we will support it, but there are a lot of countries lacking in technical capacity where the ground needs to be rolled, and a lot of the work we do is about rolling the ground.

Going back to the question we were asked about indigenous people, one of the main problems is that we have this $1.7 billion commitment but it is very hard to know how you would spend that money, except through huge multilateral institutions where a lot of it gets wasted or lost in the system. One of the things we are doing is working with representative groups of indigenous people to try to help them create the structures that would allow us to fund them directly in a way that Governments—not just ours but others—would be comfortable doing so. A lot of this kind of stuff happening and it is a big theme of the ODA that we are investing.

Lord Whitty: It would be useful, not now but subsequently, if you could give us some examples of where British expertise is being deployed in this respect.

Lord Goldsmith of Richmond Park: The other one is the blue bond in Fiji. It is early days, but it could become a model for all small island developing states to use, which would generate significant sums of money from the private sector. The UK is the main partner with Fiji. We supported it from day one, and I think most people are looking at this and thinking it is already showing signs that it is going to be a great success. There are many such examples so, yes, we will see what we can do about providing them.

Q88 Caroline Lucas: The 30by30 area-based environmental protection targets agreed at COP 15 can obviously work for nature only if protected areas are themselves in good condition. You will know that, according to Natural England’s latest assessment in 2022, only 38% of SSSIs were in a favourable condition. That is down from the figure in 2018, so there has been limited progress against the 25-year environment plan to restore 75% of SSSI areas to a favourable condition.

In the past, the Environmental Audit Committee has recommended that habitat condition be included in the statutory Environment Act targets, but the targets produced by Defra do not currently include a requirement for protected sites to be in a good condition. Can you explain why that is? Will this requirement be considered when you come to review the Environment Act targets? Essentially, how will you meet 30by30 targets without a target specifically for protected areas?

Dr Thérèse Coffey: Building on what you said, I am newly back in the department and trying to make sure we are delivering at pace, not at haste. That is why we are putting in a lot of effort. I hope both Houses will support the targets to become legally binding before the end of the month. Alongside that, we will be able to publish the environmental improvement plan.

It is a little early to be considering targets when we are just getting through the targets we consulted on. What it is fair to say, Caroline, is that we need to get these into a better place. That is why part of what is there is about making sure everywhere has had at least an assessment and that we are seeing 50% making progress to getting towards a favourable condition. This is something I am very keen on; It is something I want to make sure becomes a key element for Natural England to be held to account by us in how we take that forward. A number of powers can be used to get that. At the moment I am in a mixture of detail and top-level stuff coming together in the plan. My hope is that we will then be able to get a lot of those things under way with implementation.

Caroline Lucas: I appreciate that you have not been back in the department for long, but I am still not quite clear what you are saying in terms of reviewing of the Environment Act targets. When we get to that point, which is not yet, would it be your intention that there would then be a target for protected areas in that?

Dr Thérèse Coffey: I do not know at the moment because we have not even got the first targets in place, apart from the target that was in the primary law. I need to see, when we start to implement the environmental improvement plan, whether an extra target is specifically needed to drive that. I hope not. We need to get the momentum anyway, so my focus is on delivering the outcomes, not just more and more legislation.

Caroline Lucas: You will know that lots of environmental groups, the RSPB in particular, are working very hard—

Dr Thérèse Coffey: It is very keen to have multiple targets. It does not seem that keen on a target in the retained EU law Bill, which will help us at least scrutinise some of the things.

Caroline Lucas: That is a debate for this afternoon.

Dr Thérèse Coffey: Yes, for later today.

Caroline Lucas: I just want to point out as well, as I am sure you know, that the percentage of SSSIs that have been visited in the last six years is actually only 27%, so there is a big piece of work to do here.

Dr Thérèse Coffey: Indeed.

Caroline Lucas: Do you agree that only protected sites that are in good ecological condition should count towards the 30by30 target? Just because something has a label saying “protected site” does not necessarily actually mean that it has good biodiversity.

Dr Thérèse Coffey: We have designated more than 30%. Only about 4% of overall land across the country is given that status. You will be aware that part of the environment targets is about creating wildlife-rich habitats. I think the Government have been very clear from the start that you do not have to be a designated area to count towards being wildlife rich. The outcomes that we see from the wildlife-rich habitats will be most critical of all in achieving the apex indicator. I will need to reflect a little further on aspects of what you have said, but it is important to start to really turn around that restoration.

I was thinking about this in my own constituency, my own county. I was looking it up the other day: I think we have about 47% of our SSSIs in favourable status. That is a lot better than many other places. As I said, I am keen to see a real intensity of work in this area—indeed, right across all the things we are doing about improving the environment. I have set aside time to think it through. The River Deben and the Deben Estuary—Lord Deben took the name of the river when he came into this House—are in red status. They are declining.

There is something here, particularly in things like estuaries and marines, about how we pull together plans to turn that around. I guess that things sometimes feel a little bit difficult and they might get pushed away. I am afraid that is not my approach: I want to open things up and get a spotlight. That is giving me a lot of grief on many fronts on a daily basis. I would rather be open about it. Let us try to get together and fix those problems. I am not convinced that having loads of legally binding targets is necessarily the way to do that, but I accept that is the view of other people.

Caroline Lucas: That is a very interesting answer, partly because I did not know where Lord Deben got his name from. That is very interesting, but also because—

Dr Thérèse Coffey: That is why it is not Debin; it is Deben.

Caroline Lucas: Indeed it is. Also, I think I understood you to—

Dr Thérèse Coffey: John was my predecessor as MP for Suffolk Coastal; that is why I know the story.

Caroline Lucas: I think I heard you acknowledge that only around 4% of the land in England is currently well protected and managed, whereas in the past I think the Government have rolled together protected areas on the assumption that we can assume that they are of good value. Therefore, they have come up with a figure in the past—

Dr Thérèse Coffey: They are still protected areas; we just need to get them in a better state.

Caroline Lucas: I know, but the problem has been in the past that the Government have claimed that 26% of English land is already on its way to meeting 30by30 because they have rolled in the sense of the number of protected areas. If we are acknowledging that just because a site is called “protected” does not actually mean it has got good biodiversity, that at least gives us a shared common baseline from which to work. I welcome that.

Dr Thérèse Coffey: Caroline, I think I said that I am aware of the concerns about the 4%, so I am not overly committing in one way or another. I am very conscious about that, but at the moment my focus has been on the environmental improvement plan. I am giving an assurance, through this committee, to Parliament, to people—it does not matter who is watching—that I want to turn that around and get our environment in a better state than we inherited it. Quite clearly, improving the ecological status of SSSIs is a critical element to get right.

Q89 John McNally: Returning to questions on the implementation of the agreement, in particular my questions are on UK overseas territories. As you know, Secretary of State—or perhaps Lord Goldsmith; I am not quite sure who—a substantial proportion of the global biodiversity the UK is responsible for is found on land and in the seas surrounding the UK’s overseas territories. With that in mind, could you remind us of some of the UK overseas territories that we are responsible for—I would quite like to get a reminder of that—and what is your plan surrounding them?

Lord Goldsmith of Richmond Park: Thank you so much for asking this. You are right: some 90% of UK biodiversity is in the overseas territories. I think they are home to one of the most, if not the most, inspiring conservation stories of my lifetime, which is the Blue Belt. We now protect around the overseas territories an area of ocean that is nearly 4.5 million square kilometres—bigger than the size of India. We are talking about full protection of areas that are just bursting with life and pristine environments.

All this is generated by local people, certainly in the inhabited islands, supported by us through the Foreign Office, through the Blue Belt programme. It is a programme that continues to grow. We will very soon be able to announce another overseas territory joining the Blue Belt, increasing that 4.5 million square kilometre number considerably. There is another one that we hope will join.

Alongside the Blue Belt programme we have the Blue Shield programme, which is for those islands and overseas territories that do not want to the full Blue Belt full protection but want to greatly improve the protections of the waters that they are responsible for. This is a really important part of what we are doing. It is an important part of the UK’s commitment to 30by30 and we will make a huge contribution to it.

We support the overseas territories through a number of different mechanisms. We have the Darwin Plus programme; I forget what it was originally but we have increased it to £10 million. We have the Conflict, Stability and Security Fund. I never quite understood why it happens through that fund, but nevertheless, it does a lot of environmental work in our overseas territories. I am looking for further opportunities for us to improve our offer to the overseas territories because I think they are doing extraordinary work.

In the context of the CBD, not all the overseas territories are currently signed up to the CBD and, therefore, committed to the framework. There are 14 overseas territories in all; I believe six are now signed up to the CBD, and those are the BVI, the Cayman Islands, Saint Helena, Ascension and Tristan da Cunha, the Falkland Islands, Gibraltar, and South Georgia and the South Sandwich Islands. You noticed me looking at my list there; I did not want to get it wrong. Those are the ones that have formally signed up and we stand ready to support any of the other overseas territories to also sign up and commit.

The reality is that they are committed. Whether they are legally committed to the framework or not, all my conversations with all of the overseas territories, I think without exception, have made it very clear to me that their nature is a really big part of their identity and a really big source of pride. We are absolutely committed to helping them improve what needs to be improved and protect what can be protected.

Q90 John McNally: My second question follows on, obviously. What sort of funding is likely to be made available to support the overseas territories? I cannot remember the name of the Lady you mentioned getting appointed to the Treasury, but would she oversee that type of work and funding?

Lord Goldsmith of Richmond Park: Baroness Penn. There are different types. There are numerous overseas territories that depend upon UK support—Anguilla, for example—which is not nature or climate related, just development support. We are doing a lot of work with the BVI at the moment for various reasons.

Our relationship differs from overseas territory to overseas territory but, in terms of nature, we have Darwin Plus, which I mentioned, which is about terrestrial protection and restoration. Then we have the Blue Belt programme, which I mentioned, which funds the Blue Belt work that I was describing. We have the new Blue Shield programme, which is an appendage to the Blue Belt programme. Then we have the funding that flows through the CSSF.

That is where the money comes from and what the money looks like in terms of nature protection. I cannot write cheques without the approval of the Treasury, but we are having discussions. Notwithstanding the pressures that we face to our ODA budget, I am keen for us to find more opportunities to support them in the work that they do. If you look at the Falkland Islands and its peat reserves, the majority of UK carbon stored in peat is in the Falkland Islands. That was a clumsy way of putting it, sorry, but you get the gist. The number of endemic species that exist in our overseas territories is staggering. I am keen for us to have that more clearly reflected in the support we provide.

Q91 Lord Colgrain: My question relates particularly to the business sector. How will the Government engage businesses on implementing the GBF? What forums and structures will be used? What will be the aims of this engagement? What concrete outputs are expected?

Dr Thérèse Coffey: We already touched on elements of this or covered aspects to it. In the run-up to COP 15, we co-ordinated a business advisory group to enable that conversation on the development of the GBF and the implications for businesses. You have already heard that a review is under way in the TNFD. That will inform us. We engage business in a number of ways. As I referred to, we are hosting this event next month, again bringing in aspects of financial institutions and business, as well as keeping that momentum going.

Lord Colgrain: Are you confident that all the checks and balances will be forthcoming from that meeting next month?

Dr Thérèse Coffey: It is another step along the way. Quite early on, I referred to how in April we have the G7 coming together. The business group of the G7 will be part of that arrangement. Then we get into the G20 in India later in the year, as well as many other things along the way. We are still on that big journey. In particular, you know how long it has taken us to get the climate elements into place and getting nature in. We have some good business leaders in that regard. I gave the example that I want to get food companies involved in particular because, frankly, without nature and all those different things, we will struggle there. I want to include that wider sense, not just the mineral types and the others but, frankly, the very supply of food itself in the future.

Lord Colgrain: Lord Goldsmith, do you have anything to add?

Lord Goldsmith of Richmond Park: I do not want to repeat what has already been said by the Secretary of State, but we have also talked about the Taskforce for Nature-related Financial Disclosure. We have talked about carbon and biodiversity markets briefly. We have talked about mandatory disclosure in target 15.

We do a lot of work alongside all this, working directly with the private sector through, for example, GFANZ. I cannot remember what GFANZ stands for, but this is led by Mark Carney. It is made up of a membership whose assets combined are more than $100 trillion. We have been pushing GFANZ since before COP 26 to expand its commitment beyond just carbon to the natural world and their environmental footprint, with some success. We had financial institutions worth around $9 trillion make commitments at COP 26 to align their portfolios with our broader goals around the environment, deforestation and so on. Although $9 trillion sounds like a huge number, when you look at the overall global market, it is not huge. We put pressure on the GFANZ and work closely with people like Mark Carney to see if we can expand and create momentum within it.

We have been helped very much by Mark Carney, who issued a statement, which was not picked up at all, at UNGA at the end of last year. It was very powerful. It was published in the end; I do not think I am breaking any confidences.

Andrea Ledward: I think so.

Lord Goldsmith of Richmond Park: There was no reporting at all but he made a powerful commitment on behalf of GFANZ, representing trillions of dollars of investment, about aligning the private sector portfolios with the natural world and our commitment to going nature positive.

The reality is that if we do not get that bit right then everything else we talk about becomes meaningless. Governments cannot buy their way out of this problem with public money; we need to align the private sector. We will be able to through those kinds of initiatives. That is where a lot of our emphasis and a lot of our effort goes.

Dr Thérèse Coffey: Andrea wants to add a bit more about our due diligence and supply chain.

Andrea Ledward: To build on what the Ministers have said, TNFD is an important vehicle. We push on risk management and then we try to piggyback on a lot of the climate change work, as Lord Goldsmith said, where there is a lot more maturity in the work and the conversations with business around integrity in particular.

This piece of work we are doing on the secondary legislation on the forest risk commodities becomes important because that is about how you get reporting and transparency through supply chains. The EU has passed similar legislation and the US is also looking at similar legislation. Again, we are working with those different jurisdictions to understand what that will mean for global companies that are importing into those different markets. When you start getting the legislation that drives that due diligence through those supply chains you start to get some real bite on the implementation.

Lord Colgrain: It is fair to say that the evidence that has come before our committee has been somewhat disappointing when it involves corporates. In particular, the lack of willingness of the supermarkets to come and talk to us leads us to feel that this whole area of business needs to be concentrated on slightly more.

Lord Goldsmith of Richmond Park: I totally agree. A major part of implementation will require a focus on the private sector. That will end up being a particular focus for all of us this year, for me in my capacity, and for BEIS, Defra and the Foreign Office working together on this agenda. It will be a significant part of what we attempt to do.

Q92 Baroness Boycott: I have a quick supplementary question for the Secretary of State. You have mentioned twice that you work with the food companies. Can you tell us any more about that, what the progress is and how you are getting—

Dr Thérèse Coffey: Not yet, but I have said I want to work with food companies. I have asked Andrea—we have a quick meeting after this—about adding some more people to the people I want to come to this event next month, as an example.

Baroness Boycott: We would love to be kept informed.

Q93 Baroness Young of Old Scone: Perhaps I can help the Minister with GFANZ: it is the Glasgow Financial Alliance for Net Zero. It needs to be bigger, by the way.

Can I ask about the leadership role and implementation back here in the UK of what has emerged from the COP? We are very visible because, having taken a strong leadership role internationally, we have to be pretty meticulous about our own implementation here in the UK. I would like to explore how we mainstream both biodiversity and the linked climate change initiatives into our domestic policy sphere.

There are two pieces of kit in the Environment Act. One is targets. We know that the targets that we are currently focused on the implementation of are not as comprehensive as the targets agreed in Montreal. How will we come up to the mark on that and how will we use these targets to integrate across policy areas?

The second is the whole question of the environmental principles policy statement, which theoretically ought to be the way of getting not just other government departments but a whole load of other actors to take account of what we are trying to deliver in biodiversity and climate change but are still not quite with us. Can the Minister comment on both of those points?

To give a little bit of background, in the last week in the House of Lords, we have had two incidents that am personally involved in—I am sure there are others—of talking to other government departments about biodiversity and climate change integration when we have been rebuffed stoutly. One was the levelling up Bill, where there are several opportunities where this ought to be involved in a Bill as important as that, in terms of local economic activity and planning. The other was when we discussed the Australia and New Zealand free trade agreements. We were told firmly that trade was free and therefore should not be encumbered with climate change and biodiversity objectives. Perhaps we could have some comment on principles, targets and integration.

Dr Thérèse Coffey: Sure. We have set that out. Parliament passed the Environment Act and, I hope that the targets will be in place through normal processes in both Houses by the end of the month. From my perspective, 31 January is an important day. My intention is to get the plan, the principles and the policy statement out as well, so that it comes together in that. I hope that we will then be able to be proud of where we are and recognise, not just domestically but internationally, that these things are challenging, tough, stretching and ambitious. It is a cross-government effort.

That is why we have, predominantly at an official level, a cross-government 25-year environment plan board that works there. Then I will use my charm, cajoling, whatever it is, and indeed the role of the Cabinet committee as appropriate, to propel where necessary. I am absolutely convinced, as the Prime Minister said and Sharm el-Sheikh referred to, that you cannot tackle climate change without sorting out nature. He did not use those words—he used far more elegant words—but he basically said that you have to make this improvement to biodiversity as well.

On LURB and stuff like that, the Bill is already expansive. There is enough in other legislation and other targets from other powers that we can make progress without further legislation being necessary. Ultimately, we have to have joined-up government and a joined-up society. This is a national endeavour. Whether at home, in your family, in your business or in civic society, we all have a role to play. The Government needs to lead from the front on that, but it will take that wide range of action.

People need to recognise that Australia, New Zealand and many other countries are already signed up to these commitments to tackle climate change and improve nature. We should be mindful that they are already accountable through a mechanism, but we will be holding each to account on the GBF, whether Australia, it is New Zealand or other countries.

Lord Goldsmith of Richmond Park: On the trade point, there is no doubt that the Government are not completely aligned on the issues we are talking about. It would be pointless to pretend they are; no Governments who are signed up to the GBF are. There is, therefore, work to be done to bring departments together so that we are as closely aligned as possible.

One area where that needs to happen more relates to trade policy. You are absolutely right to highlight that. Discussions are happening between departments now to try to understand, as the sixth-biggest economy in the worth, how we can use our market, our consumers and the demand that exists in this country to incentivise sustainability in other countries.

If you were to ask the Maldives what they want from the UK, they will not ask for aid. That is not of any particular interest to them. What they do want is us to remove tariffs and barriers for their tuna. That is the only country in the world where the tuna policy is entirely sustainable, where they allow only single lines and single hooks and no other mechanism for catching. It is inherently sustainable, yet there are barriers to trade. They want those barriers removed. One of the discussions that is happening across government is how we might find those examples where not just businesses but jurisdictionally we see sustainability of the sort that we know the world needs.

I mentioned the Republic of the Congo earlier, but Gabon has broken the link between logging and deforestation. If you buy furniture or timber from Gabon, you are doing something good. You do not contribute to deforestation; you contribute to livelihoods and sustainability. Where jurisdictions have it right and have broken that link between productivity and environmental damage, our trade policy should reflect that. At the moment it is just a discussion, but there is a real appetite.

I have been making this point a lot in government and it is the first time that I have sensed a proper appetite to figure out how we might use this tool and align it with all the things that we talk about when we appear at COP, the CBD and so on. We have a big opportunity and I hope that this committee will be able to grill us on this as things become a bit more public and a bit more shaped.

Baroness Young of Old Scone: Thank you for that. Can we return briefly to the environmental principles issue? Secretary of State, how do you intend to monitor whether all government departments are fully engaged with those and delivering properly on them?

Dr Thérèse Coffey: That will all come out when we publish the principles, which I hope will be at the end of the month. I will leave it for then, if that is okay.

Baroness Young of Old Scone: Will there be an implementation and monitoring mechanism linked with that in the announcement?

Dr Thérèse Coffey: It is best to see the statement first, then you can always follow up with a question.

Q94 Chris Skidmore: Happy new year, Secretary of State, Lord Goldsmith. I hope you enjoy the Net Zero Review and look closely at the recommendations about nature and agriculture, in particular the net-zero nature mission and the call for a land use strategy for the UK.

I want to ask about the environmental improvement plan. It has been intimated that we expect that by 31 January. It is a busy month. Will that include sufficient detail to act as the implementing framework for England’s contributions to the UK’s commitments made at COP 15, or do you expect that that will require a dedicated additional framework?

Dr Thérèse Coffey: Andrea would be best placed to answer on some of the structure that comes with that.

Andrea Ledward: It will partially answer, but there will need to be documents in addition to the EIP. Some of those areas, whether it is financing or business, would not be within the remit of the EIP. Therefore, there would need to be additional documents.

The second point is that the format in which the UK has to then respond and submit into the CBD is a UK document—the UK being England added together with Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland—so it will need to be in a template as provided by the CBD. There will have to be a separate document. On the question about how and from what it is aggregated up, of course it will draw from the EIP but that will not in itself be sufficient to be England’s answer.

Chris Skidmore: I will come on to the devolved aspect in a moment. When it comes to the detail of how the UK overall meets targets agreed at COP 15, will we see any implementation framework or replacement biodiversity strategy in the environmental improvement plan or will that have to be separate also from the environmental improvement plan?

Dr Thérèse Coffey: Because stuff is devolved, the environmental improvement plan in effect tackles only England. As Andrea has referred to, quite a lot of it needs collaboration and the bringing together of the different parts of the United Kingdom. We have been doing quite a lot of work already on a variety of things, whether the joint fisheries statement or other contributions that we make, such as the work that we did in preparation for the global biodiversity framework negotiations themselves. I anticipate that you will not get the CBD reporting framework in the EIP because that, in effect, is still being developed. It is easiest to just say “no”.

Chris Skidmore: That is absolutely fine. Your clarity is welcome. Touching on the issue around devolved policy, it is amazing how these questions sometimes trace your answers effortlessly. When I took forward the net-zero review, I was keen to make sure I met with my devolved counterparts in Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales and went to see them personally to make sure they could feed into a UK-wide review. Given the environmental improvement plan will, as you have mentioned, cover England only and you have touched on some of these actions, what is the plan to co-ordinate and monitor action by the devolved Administrations, to provide sufficient oversight of progress and to ensure that the UK as a whole is then on track to meet the commitments set out in COP 15 by 2030? Can you go a bit further into what has been agreed?

Dr Thérèse Coffey: Sure. Ministers from the four Administrations or, as it stands at the moment, from the Northern Ireland Civil Service regularly meet to discuss particular issues. My expectation is that we will see a role for the JNCC helping on aspects of the framework. Do you want to say a bit more, Andrea? Quite a lot of this is done at official level.

Andrea Ledward: All the devolved Administrations were active with different levels of representation in Montreal. The Scottish Minister, Lorna Slater, for example, was in Montreal very much leading an Edinburgh process that had been about subnational and regional implementation and platforms for the GBF and the CBD implementation. There was strong engagement, just to build confidence, with the DAs.

The question then about how we formally co-ordinate is still being worked through—which mechanism, how you do it and the timing for that. We have choices, obviously.

Dr Thérèse Coffey: We are used to doing this because we are signatory to heavens knows how many treaties of co-ordinating. We need to develop a specific one now, which is still in its infancy, recognising we do not have the framework in that level agreed around the world yet. I am confident, building on our past experience, that it is nothing novel to try to pull it together.

Chris Skidmore: With that expectation that novelty will not be required, to catch the wave, as you described it so aptly earlier, when would you expect to publish this co-ordinated work to meet the CBD requirements for COP 15?

Dr Thérèse Coffey: Good question. I do not know the answer.

Andrea Ledward: We have to do it by Q4 2024.

Dr Thérèse Coffey: That is when we are back in Turkey.

Andrea Ledward: That is when the UK is required to submit. We do not have a choice about when we want to do that.

Chris Skidmore: We want to lead internationally; sooner rather than later would be better.

Dr Thérèse Coffey: That may be the case. We have not set out an internal timeline yet. I can assure you that a lot of my focus has been on the matters for 31 January, and that it will not be done by then.

The Chair: Given we have a few minutes left, if any of the members who have not asked a question have a supplementary follow-up that they want to raise, this is your moment to do so. Go on, then, Baroness Young.

Q95 Baroness Young of Old Scone: This is a bit of a curveball. I am rather intrigued as to why the environment improvement plan has been the least consulted upon piece of utterance from Defra that I have ever experienced. It is clearly an important implementation tool across government but it has not been subject to any of the normal consultation arrangements, or indeed the target for engagement of communities and civil society that is fundamental to the global biodiversity agreement.

Dr Thérèse Coffey: I do not recall there being formal consultation on the 25-year environment plan, which was published in January 2018. There has been substantial back and forth about the Environment Act. There was consultation on the environmental targets. I am sure there will be elements where you think it could be strengthened even more, but I hope you will see a mixture of activities there. We already have over 50 different environmental improvement plans area by area, whether that is the squirrel action plan, the deer management plan, the UK marine strategy and different things like that. There is already a substantial amount there.

Baroness Young of Old Scone: Perhaps the next stage would be to ask the Minister what action there will be thinking about targets 21 and 22, which are about engagement for the future.

Dr Thérèse Coffey: You will have to look forward to the environmental improvement plan. I am sure there will be plenty of commentary. I would be astonished if Parliament did not want to speak to us again about it.

The Chair: Indeed. Once we have seen it published, we will address this issue at both ends of the Palace in future.

Philip Dunne: If I may, we very much look forward to your appearance before the Environmental Audit Committee, Secretary of State, on 8 February. We may or may not have an opportunity to question you about the plan if it has come out by then.

Dr Thérèse Coffey: I have the feeling you will be, yes.

The Chair: Thank you. On behalf of both Select Committees, I thank our three witnesses for their answers and their commitment to carrying forward the welcome outcomes of the CBD. We appreciate that and the commitment and the passion that you show. All power to your elbow and we look forward to scrutinising your actions in future.