(2) how much he has allocated for (a) forest protection and (b) reducing levels of deforestation in each of the next three years; and under which budget headings such expenditure is to be allocated.
I have been asked to reply.
The Department for International Development (DFID) does not record expenditure on forest protection or on reducing deforestation. It uses the two categories of expenditure required by the Development Aid Committee of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD): Forestry Policy and Administrative Management; and Forestry Development. Total bilateral expenditure incurred on forests in the last three financial years was: £15.5 million in 2005-06: £15.6 million in 2006-07: and £74 million in 2007-08.
Some of the money which DFID provides to international organisations is also spent on forests but these contributions are not recorded separately. The international organisations which DFID supports and which work on forests include the World Bank, Asian Development Bank, Asian Development Bank and the Food and Agriculture Organisation of the UN.
The following bilateral expenditure on forests was committed in the last three financial years:
2005-06
£1.5 million, Orissa Forest Sector Support Project, India.
2006-07
£24 million, over a five-year period, to the Forest Governance and Trade Programme to support efforts to stop illegal logging.
£140 million replenishment of the Global Environment Facility, over a four-year period, a proportion of which will be spent on forests.
£1 million, Natural Resource Management and Livelihoods Programme, Cambodia
2007-08
£10 million to the Congo Basin Forest Fund for start-up activities.
£50 million to the Congo Basin Forest Fund and £15 million to the Forest Carbon Partnership Facility, from the International Window of the Environmental Transformation Fund. In December 2008 it was announced that up to another £100 million would be made available for forests from the Environmental Transformation Fund.
£5 million for work by the Rights and Resources Initiative over a five-year period to help accelerate forest tenure, policy and market reforms.
£1.5 million to the National Forest Programme Facility over a three-year period.
£1.5 million to PROFOR (Programme on Forests of the World Bank), over a three-year period.
£1 million for work on an Economics of Climate Change Study and work low carbon development in Brazil, some of which relates to forests.