Speeches by Gardiner.

“In practice, what is the difference between a highly protected marine area and a protected marine area?”

“Well, indeed.”

“Can I push back on that? The burden of proof is not on the companies to show that they did not use DSI material; under the Cali declaration and in the Cali Fund, it is on anybody who wants to say, “Oi, you used DSI to get this new drug or new process.” It is very difficult for somebody to point the finger at a company …”

“May I say that I hugely recognise the amazing work that went in to get us as far as we have got? I am not trying to undermine that in any way; I am just pointing out that we have a heck of a lot of problems still in here, and this is far from yet being a success.”

“Which Government, then, is going to say, “We now have something from Cali that says that we should contribute 1% of our profits, or 0.1% of our revenues, to the Cali Fund. We are going to push our pharmaceutical and food production companies to do that, which means they will be at a competitive disadvantage to another …”

“Thank you; that would be really helpful. Let me come back to DSI and Dr Lockhart. What has been preventing pharmaceutical and food production companies from helping indigenous peoples in the Amazon or in the Congo?”

“It is a nightmare.”

“It is also about effective enforcement.”

“Is there a timescale?”

“Of course, Ministers decide.”

“May I ask, before you do, whether Ms Edmundson has anything to add to that? I understand you are in charge of the whole green finance part of the Department.”

“Sure.”

“I am joking, of course. Our Environment Act has very clear targets in it. Many of those targets are different from the targets in the global biodiversity framework. I am interested in how you are going to get real alignment between the targets that we have set in statute and the international framework. It is great tha…”

“Right, that is the trap I wanted to see if you would fall into.”

“It is very clear that there is a vacuum that everyone has rushed to fill, and it has not created the standards that we want. So this international congregation of it, and facilitating that certainty about certification, enforcement and how that happens is really important.”

“Sounds like a bid for a department for sustainable development, Minister; how wonderful that would be! I wanted to pick up on what you said to the Chair at the beginning when you were talking about the task force on climate-related financial disclosures—the TCFD. You said you wanted to see the taskforce on nature-relat…”

“For the TNFD being docked into it.”

“The support that it had at the time was very widespread across education institutes, universities, trade unions, local authorities—and, crucially, among young people. They want this. This is something that they really do want to see as a career path, and if we can get that in place, it would be brilliant.”

“It was ready to go, and it got caught in the ring-around in Government then, but surely that is one of the things that an incoming Government can seize—take it up and run with it. It feeds directly into what you were just saying about the need to enhance skills and get people job-ready. Can you have a word with Bridget…”

“In 2022, there was an announcement about a GCSE in natural history.”