asked Her Majesty's Government:

How much the United Kingdom has spent in each of the past five years on monitoring the status of CITES-listed birds in their countries of origin. [HL1741]

It is difficult to gauge how much money is directly spent on the monitoring of CITES-listed species in their country of origin, as much of the Government’s financial assistance that might meet this description is part of a range of broader projects that focus on building capacity in developing countries to conduct this work. However, the Government with the Joint Nature Conservation Committee (JNCC), the statutory adviser on international nature conservation, provided £42,000 in 2005-06 and £7,957 in 2006-07 toward research conducted in Guinea to survey the occurrence and relative abundance of diurnal raptors subject to international trade. In addition, in 2006 the Government provided £20,000 of funding toward the African-Eurasian waterbird agreement to help to develop an international partnership that will support work associated with population assessments of waterbirds, including species listed on CITES, such as the Egyptian goose, red-breasted goose, Cape teal, Eurasian widgeon, giant heron, great egret, slender-billed curlew, greater flamingo and the demoiselle crane.

In addition, through the Darwin Initiative, the Government have provided funding for a range of projects that aim to assist monitoring generally through capacity building, monitoring and population assessment focused generally at wild birds, not just CITES-listed species. The Darwin Initiative seeks to assist countries that are rich in biodiversity but have scarce financial and other resources to fulfil their obligations under the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD).

As part of the Government’s support for biodiversity in the overseas territories, the Foreign and Commonwealth Office, jointly with the Department for International Development, provides funding to a broad range of programmes under the Overseas Territories Environment Programme, which assists in environmental management and the implementation of environmental charters in the overseas territories.

The Government recognise the need to assist developing countries in conserving biodiversity and therefore support the Global Environment Facility (GEF), established in 1991, to help developing countries to fund projects and programmes related to biodiversity, among other things.