My Lords, I declare my interests as in the register. While I warmly welcome all the provisions that the Government have put into this Bill on this matter of due diligence, I also support the amendments in the name of my noble friend Lord Randall of Uxbridge, who moved them so powerfully, eloquently
and rapidly. I pay tribute, too, to the passionate and excellent speech by the noble Baroness, Lady Meacher, which was a pleasure to listen to.
I will comment first on Amendment 265A, in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Parminter, my noble friend Lord Randall of Uxbridge, the noble Earl, Lord Sandwich, and the noble Baroness, Lady Jones of Whitchurch. It is a rather ingenious and clever approach, and I was appalled to hear that British institutions—if I heard the noble Baroness correctly—have raised about £5 billion of funding for the illegal destruction of rainforest. If British banks and financial institutions are involved, we have to find ways of putting a stop to them doing that sort of thing.
The current provisions in the Bill quite rightly impose obligations on regulated persons who are trading products from endangered rainforests. As in every other business, however, the normal rule is “Follow the money”: if you want to catch illegal or improper behaviour, look at the money flows. Putting an obligation on all financial institutions to exercise the same due diligence as the companies that import and export timber would plug a potentially big gap. How do we crack down on money laundering and terrorist financing? We do it by putting an obligation on all financial institutions to report transactions above £10,000. It works for illegal money transactions, and it can work for destructive timber transactions or the financing of palm oil, soya bean or ranching projects.
I rather like my noble friend’s Amendments 265B and 265D. Why should we try to save the rainforest? The rationale for saving the rainforest is infinitely greater than just reducing carbon emissions—important though that is—or saving indigenous people or preventing mahogany and other tree species from being extinguished. The rationale is that the rainforest is the “medicine cabinet” of the world, to steal another phrase from the Prince’s Rainforests Project.
As rainforest species disappear, so too do many possible cures for life-threatening diseases. Currently, 121 prescription drugs that are sold worldwide are derived from plant sources, and 25% of western pharmaceuticals are derived from rainforest ingredients. However, fewer than 1% of tropical trees and plants have been tested by scientists. So we have tested 1% and are burning the other 99%, yet we are getting 25% of our drugs from that small 1%. That is a very dangerous pyramid.
A single pond in Brazil can sustain a greater variety of fish than is found in all the rivers of Europe put together. A 25-acre area of rainforest in Borneo may contain more than 700 species of trees—a figure equal to the total tree diversity of North America. A single rainforest in Peru is home to more species of birds than are found in the entire United States, and the number of species of fish in the Amazon exceeds the number found in the entire Atlantic Ocean.
So I repeat my question: how can we in the West be so stupid as to permanently destroy, or fund the destruction of, a habitat when we have not looked at 99% of the species in it? Some scientists estimate that we are losing more than 130 species of plants and animals every single day through rainforest destruction. We just do not know, yet we are carrying on regardless.
Estimates of the total number of species in the world vary from 2 million to 100 million, the best estimate being that there are about 10 million species of living things, ranging from nematode worms, slugs, molluscs, plant life and fungi to trees, birds and the cuddly animals that we worry about.
Biodiversity, however, is not just about saving the red squirrels, polar bears, orangutans, lemurs and tigers—as vital and close to my heart as some of those are. Of far greater importance to the planet are the plants and bugs that we never see and are not cuddly.
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As John Sawhill of the Nature Conservancy said:
“In the end, our society will be defined not by what we create, but what we refuse to destroy.”
Like the noble Baroness, Lady Meacher, I have pointed out that that is why the rainforests are so important. They are being destroyed at an alarming, escalating rate and the types of alternative uses to which the land is being put are changing constantly: soybeans, palm oil, bananas, pineapples, tea, coffee, rubber and cattle ranching. As the destroyers of the lungs of the earth keep changing their modus operandi, so we must be nimble and flexible and change our response. That is why I like my noble friend Lord Randall’s amendments, because they suggest to the Government that we build in a review procedure and if things change, we change our approach.
I say in conclusion to the Minister that I do not think the amendments impose an unreasonable burden on the Government, and I commend them to him.