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

To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, what estimate he has made of the level of funding required to meet the Aichi targets in the UK Overseas Territories.

The Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD), under which the Aichi biodiversity targets were adopted, has been extended to six UK Overseas Territories (OTs). As part of that, OTs are required to demonstrate that they have the capacity to work towards implementing the CBD, including having sufficient funds for the purposes of conservation and sustainable use in line with the Aichi targets. As such, no separate estimate has been made by Defra to determine the specific level of funding required to meet the targets across the UK OTs.

However, in order to support OTs to implement a range of environmental multilateral environmental agreements, including the CBD, Defra has established funds such as Darwin Plus, which is the main source of funds for biodiversity in the OTs. Darwin Plus is also known as ‘The Overseas Territories Environment Climate Fund’. Defra contributed £1.85 million in 2015/16; £2 million in 2016/17; and £2 million in 2017/18.