§ The Minister for the Environment (Mr. Elliot Morley)I am pleased to announce to the House awards under a new funding scheme forming part of DEFRA's Darwin Initiative.
The Darwin Initiative is an annual small grants programme which uses UK expertise working with local partners to help countries rich in biodiversity but poor in resources to conserve and use their biodiversity sustainably. Launched at the Rio summit in 1992, the initiative has committed more than £30 million to over 300 projects in around 100 countries. More than 100 projects are currently running. The Prime Minister announced an increase in the Darwin Initiative budget in his speech on WSSD in September. The budget increased from £3 million to £4 million in 2003–04 and will rise to £5 million in 2004–05, and £7 million a year from 2005–06. Three new Darwin Initiative schemes have been launched as part of Phase II of the Initiative: Darwin Initiative scholarships, pre-project awards and post-project funding. Together these will help to help embed the core aims of capacity building, partnership and legacy. I announced the Scholarship awards at the annual Darwin lecture on 21 May.
12WSThe awards of pre-project funding are as follows: (Annex B)
Organisation Project Title Country Award £ The Society for Environmental Exploration Capacity building for sustainable management in the Nicaraguan Pacific Region Nicaragua 1,790 Macauley Land Use Research Institute Community conservation action plan for the threatened long-tailed chinchilla in Chile Chile 1,792 Foundation for International Environmental Law and Development Conservation and sustainable use of Agriculture Biodiversity in Costa Rica Costa Rica 1,425 The Global Diversity Foundation Conservation status of botanical resources in protected areas of Sabah, Malaysia Sabah, Malaysia 1,600 University of Southampton Control of Alien Species: the Red-Bellied Beautiful Squirrel in Argentina Argentina 1,205 University of Wales, Bangor In Situ conservation of Indigenous tree species in Southern Cameroon Cameroon 1,520 British Trust for Ornithology Meeting biodiversity and socio-ecnomic targets in Ugandan agricultural development Uganda 2,650 Plymouth Marine Laboratory Namibia Marine Biodiversity Baseline Namibia 2,400 Centre for Ecology and Hydrology Selection, propagation, multiplication and distribution of indigenous tree species Sierra Leone 1,705 University of Oxford Sustainable Management of Forest Medicinal Plants by Peruvian Indigenous Communities Peru 3,000 Royal Holloway Institute for Environmental Research The macroinvertebrates of riverine wetlands in Ghana Ghana 2,861 Tree Council Tomsk Forestry and Biodiversity Action Planning Russia 2,188 The Natural History Museum Training the next generation of Papua New Guinea's conservation biologists Papua New Guinea 3,000 Game Conservancy Trust Sustainable management of burrowing mammals on the Tibetan Plateau China 3,000 Cranfield University Functional roles of soil microbial diversity in logged ecosystems in Malaysia Malaysia 2,900 33,037