Rainforests: Amazonia

(asked on 14th October 2019) - View Source

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

To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, what steps her Department is taking to ensure that no products linked to Amazon deforestation are sold in the UK.


This question was answered on 23rd October 2019

The UK Government is committed to supporting deforestation-free supply chains as set out in the 25 Year Environment Plan.

To address the footprint of products linked to deforestation, such as soya and beef, we have established the Global Resource Initiative (GRI). Led by a taskforce comprising of senior representatives from the private sector and civil society, the GRI will produce a set of recommendations in early 2020 to address the impact of the UK’s commodity supply chains. These recommendations may relate to regulatory and policy measures, transparency, financial incentives, trade, sustainable procurement and/or the role of the consumer. To address issues in relation to soya specifically, we have established the UK Roundtable on Sustainable Soya which has recently led to 83% of the UK retail market publishing concrete sourcing policies to deliver sustainable soya to the UK market.

The Government works in partnership with countries in the Amazon to tackle deforestation and has invested nearly £120 million through the UK’s International Climate Finance on projects to support sustainable agriculture, prevent forest fires and implement the Forest Code in the Amazon, Atlantic Forest and Cerrado biomes. Following the Amazon fires the UK has pledged a further £10 million to protect and restore the Amazon rainforest in Brazil.

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