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

To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, what steps he is taking with Cabinet colleagues to help (a) limit the average global temperature rise to 1.5 celsius, (b) address biodiversity decline by 2030, (c) protect nature and (d) decarbonise.

At COP26, 197 Parties agreed to the Glasgow Climate Pact to urgently keep 1.5°C alive. We brought nature to the heart of the climate COP for the very first time, with more than 140 world leaders, representing 91 per cent of the world's forests, committing to halt and reverse forest loss and land degradation by 2030. At COP27, the UK Government continued to demonstrate leadership on nature and climate through new investments: the Secretary of State committed to £30 million of seed finance into the Big Nature Impact Fund, a new public-private fund for nature in the UK which will unlock significant private investment into nature projects. She (not he) also announced an additional £12 million investment in the Ocean Risk and Resilience Action Alliance to make marine biodiversity and vulnerable coastal communities more resilient, and a further £6 million in the UN’s Climate Promise programme to help developing countries achieve their climate commitments.

These steps build on a strong foundation of action and leadership by the UK, reducing our emissions by over 40% since 1990 while growing the economy by three quarters. Defra has a vital role to play in delivering the Government's Net Zero Strategy and ensuring nature-based solutions are a vital part of the climate agenda.

The UK will continue to lead globally on the road to the Convention on Biological Diversity COP15.2, hosted in Montreal, where we must secure agreement to halt and reverse biodiversity loss globally by 2030.The UK is committed to securing an ambitious outcome. We will continue to champion the protection of at least 30% of land and ocean globally, as the chair of the Global Ocean Alliance.

Responsibility for the domestic environment is devolved. However, in England, we are taking unprecedented steps to address biodiversity decline and protect nature, not least through our world leading Environment Act, which requires a new, legally binding target to be set in England to halt the decline in species abundance by 2030, and introduces Biodiversity Net Gain, Local Nature Recovery Strategies and a strengthened biodiversity duty on public authorities to work together to protect our native species.