International climate finance: UK aid for halting deforestation and preventing irreversible biodiversity loss

International Development Committee

A hearing is held by Parliament’s International Development Committee (IDC) or their ICAI sub-committee for most ICAI reviews.

You can watch the IDC hearing online.

ICAI follow-up

Approximately one year after we publish our reports, we follow up on the steps the government has taken in response to our recommendations. This process is a key link in the accountability chain, providing Parliament and the public with an account of how well government departments have responded to ICAI reviews.

In our follow-up for this review, we found the UK government has made valuable progress in addressing some key challenges, especially through launching an International Climate Finance strategy, setting up a cross-departmental International Forests Unit (IFU), making use of more evaluation, and strengthening the approach taken to addressing gender across this portfolio. As a result, we judge the government’s response to this review to be adequate.

Nevertheless, some notable issues still remain, including a lack of clarity over geographic and thematic priorities in relation to forests and biodiversity, challenges in making the IFU operate as a cross-departmental unit, delays in introducing new comprehensive monitoring indicators (especially for biodiversity programmes), and inconsistency in focusing on inclusion and poverty across all programmes.

Read the follow-up review online or download the follow-up summary report.