§ Mr. Soleyasked the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs whether he will list all development projects carried out in tropical moist forests since 1980 which have been wholly or partly funded through bilateral aid programmes of the Overseas Development Administration or the Commonwealth Development Corporation; and whether he will list the cost and type of aid contributed by the United Kingdom and the area of forest affected by each project.
§ Mr. RaisonComprehensive information is not kept centrally in the form requested, and to collect it would incur disproportionate cost. ODA has procedures to ensure that in the consideration of all bilateral aid projects full account is taken of their environmental consequences, particularly for such important and fragile environments as the tropical rain forest. I am happy to approve aid projects designed to help developing countries in the sustainable management of this important natural resource. We have, for example, financed, or are financing, forest inventories in Ghana, Grenada and the Bangladesh Sundarabans.