Minister of State for Climate, Thank you for your correspondence of 5th December about the Independent Commission for Aid Impact (ICAI) rapid review of the £500 million Blue Planet Fund (BPF). The Blue Planet Fund is jointly managed by the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) and the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office (FCDO), with We welcome ICAI’s rapid review of the BPF portfolio and the finding that it represents a highly relevant contribution towards the globally underfunded UN Sustainable Development Goal 14. The new UK International Development White Paper makes clear that the sustainable use and management of the ocean is important for the UK’s international development objectives and delivery of the Sustainable Development Goals. We welcome the recommendations and are committed to improving the coherence, effectiveness and relevance of the BPF programme portfolio to ensure effective support for developing countries and their communities in tackling the interconnected crises of poverty, climate change and nature loss. We will publish a formal management response to the ICAI review in January 2024, but to respond to your specific questions at this • Do you consider that Defra’s spending through the Blue Planet Fund represented value for public money? What checks did Ministers put in place to ensure they had oversight of how this money was spent? Value for Money has been integrated at all stages of the Defra Blue Planet Fund’s design, delivery, monitoring and learning, as well as decision making and overall management. Value for Money assessments are incorporated into the design and approval of all Blue Planet Fund programmes, and we are seeing strong examples of continuing value for money through our active programmes, • Our £37.5m investment in the World Bank’s Multi-donor Trust Fund PROBLUE which is expected to deliver outcomes of at least 800 tonnes of sustainable aquaculture production, 2,500 people in coastal areas with increased economic opportunities (of which at least 50% women), reduced pollution and 24,000 of tCO2eq net GHG emissions reduced. It will also leverage wider pro-poor to date, each dollar of PROBLUE-funded activities has informed $22 (£18) in International Development Association (IDA) resources. Total IDA resource leveraged is $2.56 billion (£2.06 billion). PROBLUE resources are highly targeted

towards poor Between 1 July 2022 and 30 June 2023, 80 percent of PROBLUE funding at the national level supported Lower Income Countries and Lower Middle Income Countries. • Our £10.3m of UK investment in the Blue Forests Initiative, supports coastal communities in Madagascar and Indonesia at the forefront of climate change. The UK’s support is on track to protect approximately 80,000 hectares of mangrove forest, deliver approximately 1.7 million tCO2eq savings, and protect or improve the livelihoods of over 70,000 people dependent on mangroves for fishing and coastal • We have invested £33m into the Global Fund for Coral Reefs (GFCR), which is expected to raise a total of $625m (£504m). By 2030, the Fund is expected to increase the resilience of nearly 450,000 hectares of coral reefs by addressing local drivers of coral reef degradation (e.g. pollution), provide enhanced ecosystem services to over 380,000 coral communities, create 3,800 new jobs and incubate more than 50 reef-positive interventions, (e.g. technical assistance for blue enterprises). By the end of 2022, the GFCR grants fund had mobilised $47m (£38m) of wider funding alongside a further $130m (£105m) through the private Ministers have oversight of spending in line with the Defra Group Integrated Assurance and Approval processes, which includes Ministerial approval of all business cases above £10m (and in some cases lower) and through regular meetings with the programme team. This is complemented with oversight by Defra officials during programme performance is assessed, and changes are recommended, through annual reviews. Independent evaluations are planned at a portfolio level and will also be conducted for several of our larger and multilateral programmes. We are fully committed to continuously learning and improving value for money further across the Blue Planet Fund and Defra’s ODA programmes. • Are there any plans for further ODA spending through the Fund in addition to the money allocated or spent to date? At present, £18.5 million remains unallocated within the Defra portion of the Blue Planet Fund. Plans to spend this will be developed through evidence-based assessments, prioritising poverty reduction potential, strategic need and partner country priorities, embedding learning from ICAI’s Rapid Review where applicable. Options will be developed in line with ODA rules and subject to Defra Group’s assurance and approvals • Will there be any review of the department’s programme delivery partners, in light of the unusually high management fees they have charged? Will you place that review into the public domain? The Defra portion of the Blue Planet Fund is delivered through a range of delivery partners, and management fees are scrutinised and assessed through the design and delivery of programmes. We will publish a full management response to the recommendations in January 2024 with further details. • What wider lessons will Defra be drawing from this ICAI review regarding its Defra is committed to using the learning from this review to support effective delivery of ODA. We will look to embed the report’s recommendations into our wider ODA guidance, capability building and overall governance, to further improve areas including value for money, poverty focus, results reporting and deepening country engagement. Work is already underway in several of these areas, for example, Defra recently strengthened our specialist expertise on poverty reduction, gender equality and social inclusion, to ensure that our programmes continuously learn and improve how we deliver throughout the programme cycle. These areas will be covered through the Management Response to • What steps will you take to ensure coordination between your department, FCDO and others in the delivery of aid programmes is improved going forward? Delivery of aid programmes is coordinated between Defra, FCDO and others in multiple ways. This includes cross-government Boards - for example the 6 weekly ICF Management Board, and departmental Boards - such as the Defra ODA Board, which include other relevant departments (e.g. FCDO). The Management Response to the ICAI Rapid Review will further address.
We are committed to continuously learning in this new and complex global area and strengthening our delivery of the Blue Planet Fund portfolio as more of our programmes move into the delivery phase. We will publish a full Management Response to the ICAI Rapid Review in January 2024, and would be happy to provide further detail to the