Question to the Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Affairs, what steps his Department is taking to help ensure the protection of endangered species globally.

The UK Government is playing a leading role in developing an ambitious post-2020 global biodiversity framework, to be adopted at COP15 of the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) later this year. This includes supporting global targets to ensure more ocean and land is protected, ecosystems are restored, species extinction rates are slowed and population sizes are recovering. At the G7 Summit, Leaders agreed the Nature Compact, setting out commitments to reverse biodiversity loss by 2030. Over the next five years, at least £3 billion of the UK's International Climate Finance will be invested in climate change solutions that protect, restore and sustainably manage nature. In September 2020, the Prime Minister announced a £220 million International Biodiversity Fund, including a £100 million Biodiverse Landscapes Fund, to address biodiversity loss. The UK Government is also introducing world-leading due diligence legislation through the Environment Bill to tackle illegal deforestation in UK supply chains.

We are driving international efforts to protect endangered animals from poaching and the illegal wildlife trade (IWT), and are investing £36 million between 2014 and 2021 on work to directly counter IWT in animals and plants. We are also contributing £250 million to the Global Environment Facility between 2018-2022, which includes the world's biggest fund for tackling IWT, the Global Wildlife Programme (GWP), supporting IWT projects across 32 countries in Africa, Asia, and Latin America.