Kerry McCarthy

The hon. Member makes a very important point. At Foreign Office questions last week, I had the first question on the Order Paper, which was very ably answered by my hon. Friend the Minister. My question was about the Tibetan plateau, the environmental degradation there and what China is doing to divert water sources. Obviously, Nepal is part of that situation, as it is in the Himalayas. I think that a fifth of the world’s population depends on the Tibetan plateau for water sources. If the hon. Gentleman seeks out the answer that the Minister gave me on that occasion, he will see that we have quite a few international initiatives that try to ensure that people get access to the water that they need. If Indonesia is under threat environmentally, that affects us all, as I think some interventions today have already illustrated. Over recent decades, Indonesia has lost hundreds of thousands of hectares of forest each year. The main drivers of that loss are unsustainable agriculture, especially palm oil production, legal and illegal logging, mining, and rapid urbanisation.