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

To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, what steps his Department plans to take to ensure the adequacy of the UK's international advocacy role in helping to reduce global deforestation.

The UK strongly supports global efforts to protect, restore and sustainably manage forests, including working with partners to deliver the shared goal of halting and reversing deforestation and forest degradation by 2030, while supporting livelihoods and economic development.

Through partnerships, diplomacy and international climate programming, the UK is working to support forest country partners with enhancing forest governance and tackling illegality, accelerating the transition to sustainable production, trade and markets, and to mobilise finance from all sources to support forest protection and restoration.

Since 2011, it is estimated that UK ICF programmes have prevented 750,000 hectares of ecosystem loss (over a million football pitches); supported the sustainable management of 4.2 million hectares of land; and reduced or avoided 105 million tonnes of greenhouse gas emissions.

We recognise the need to take action to ensure that UK consumption of forest risk commodities is not driving deforestation and we will set out our approach to addressing this in due course.