Sixty-one schools across the country are set to receive state of the art rebuilds or refurbishments that will transform education for their pupils.

In his first announcement as Education Secretary, James Cleverly confirmed the investment to provide thousands of children access to new, modern classrooms as part of the Prime Minister’s flagship School Rebuilding Programme.

The projects will be backed by over £1bn of funding.

Work to deliver the projects will start immediately. It will include updating and modernising buildings, and creating state of the art facilities such as new sports halls, music rooms, science labs and dining areas.

The new school buildings will be net-zero carbon in operation, helping meet the Government’s net-zero target.

The schools in this round include primary, secondary and special schools, with 11in the North West, ten in the North East and six in Yorkshire and the Humber, helping level up education for children of all ages and right across the country.

Since 2010, around 500 schools have been refurbished or rebuilt under government programmes.

Education Secretary James Cleverly said:

Our School Rebuilding Programme is already making a difference to the lives of pupils and their teachers. It is creating greener school sites that are fit for the future and that local communities can be proud of.

We know how important it is to have high-quality school facilities. That is why we continue to invest billions in our rebuilding programme.

Headteacher of Framwellgate School Durham, Andy Byers said:

I’m absolutely delighted that Framwellgate School Durham has been chosen to be part of the School Rebuilding Programme.

Our school was designed and built in the 1960s and is old and tired and very poorly designed. With a new building we will be able to give our students facilities and a learning environment which will inspire them, and our staff, in the working environment they deserve.

Schools selected in round one of the programme, such as West Coventry Academy and St John Fisher Catholic High School in Wigan, are benefitting from a full replacement of all their buildings. The work will transform the environment children learn in, including brand new sports facilities enabling more children to take part in physical activity.

The commitment to rebuild and refurbish the schools most in need is part of Government’s wider Schools White Paper commitments, to ensure that by 2030 every child will be taught a broad and ambitious curriculum, with access to high-quality extra-curricular provision, in a school with high expectations and strong standards of behaviour.

To achieve this, staff and pupils need access to top facilities.

Alongside the new rebuilding programme, the Government has committed £1.8 billion in financial year 2022-23 for maintaining and improving the school estate, as part of £13.1 billion allocated since 2015.

The full list of schools can be found here.

ENDS

Good afternoon, everyone.

Thank you very much to the panel for the very interesting interventions.

Today we strive to build a more secure and sustainable future for some of the world’s most vulnerable people.

There is no doubting the challenges we face.

Russia’s illegal war in Ukraine is damaging the global economy and compounding food insecurity.

The impacts of COVID-19 remain with us.

And the climate crisis continues to threaten lives and livelihoods.

Small Island Developing States have, of course, been disproportionately affected.

Yet you also have very powerful voices.

You have played a vital role in pushing for climate action. Thanks to the promises made in Glasgow, the 1.5 degree warming limit remains within reach.

You are also vital partners in the achievement of SDG 14, as you steward nearly a third of our global ocean.

The United Kingdom is committed to supporting SIDS to become more resilient to climate and economic shocks.

We stand with you in your determination to achieve your development and economic goals.

Our new International Development Strategy sets out this vision.

We know that reforms are needed. It is crucial to place issues of vulnerability and resilience at the heart of planning and decisions about finance.

We launched a Call to Action on Access to Finance last year with Belize, Fiji and the Alliance of Small Island States, and we are now working to deliver its recommendations.

We are determined to address challenges around debt, eligibility criteria and bureaucracy.

This includes the potential use of Multi-dimensional Vulnerability Indices, and we are really looking forward to considering the conclusions of the High-Level Panel.

We urge financial institutions to consider how they can best factor vulnerability into their systems.

We know that too many SIDS face a cliff edge when they are no longer eligible for Official Development Assistance.

The Glasgow Climate Pact challenged us all to take this seriously.

The ODA criteria must reflect our discussions in Glasgow and take into account the unique challenges of vulnerable small states.

We must also improve the quality of finance and ensure that aid has the greatest possible impact.

This is why the UK, Canada, and the Alliance of Small Island States will launch a set of joint principles this year.

We will ask donors to tailor their approaches, and ensure they are backed by time, expertise and resources.

Meanwhile, the UK will continue to support SIDS through our £40 million programme, launched at COP26, to support your development goals.

And through our £36 million Sustainable Blue Economies programme launched by our Prime Minister at the Commonwealth Heads of Government meeting.

In these times of challenge, let us take the opportunity to turn ambition into action, supporting economies, protecting nature and boosting climate resilience.

Together we can forge a more prosperous and sustainable future.

Thank you.

July 11, 2022 – BCarbon, a Houston-based carbon credit registry, has issued its first international soil carbon credits in the United Kingdom.  These credits are the first in a major initiative to reverse climate change by using farmland to pull harmful carbon from the atmosphere.

Future Food Solutions has created the Futures Carbon Bank to sell credits on the voluntary carbon market. Working with the British Consulate in Houston, Future Foods also partnered with BCarbon, an independent verification body,  which was formed by a stakeholder group out of the Baker Institute at Rice University.

Under the carbon bank program, farmers are encouraged to grow cover crops that pull carbon from the atmosphere and store it in the soil while employing no-till practices. Increasingly popular in the UK, cover crops are planted between the regular food crop rotation so they don’t impact the amount of food UK farmers produce.

Unlike many carbon-credit programs, the credits awarded by BCarbon are for soil carbon management practices that actually remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and store it in the soil as organic carbon.  In this way, farmers can combat climate change while continuing to feed the world.

Carbon credit trading is expected to hit $50 billion by 2030, and the Future Food Solutions approach could unlock millions of tons of sequestered carbon credits by utilizing farmland around the world. Multinational information and analytics giant RELX bought the first tons of verified carbon credits, which were generated by a single farm on the Yorkshire Wolds in northeast England.

“This partnership with Future Food Solutions has been particularly exciting for BCarbon,” said Jim Blackburn, CEO of BCarbon. “We are today announcing our first international carbon credits in what we intend to be the first steps toward removing significant amounts of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, which is, after all, the goal here.”

How This Partnership Occurred

The Science and Innovation Team at the British Consulate facilitated the relationship between Future Foods and BCarbon following a carbon credit stakeholder group at the Baker Institute at Rice University. The stakeholder group spawned the creation of BCarbon in 2021.

With the assistance of Richard Hyde, Her Majesty’s Consul General in Houston, Future Foods and BCarbon began a collaboration that led to the issuance of these carbon storage credits.

“Addressing the challenges of climate change requires an international approach,” said Consul General Hyde. “The Consulate in Houston has been proud to catalyse this collaboration between BCarbon and Future Food Solutions which models the innovative approach necessary to tackle our shared challenges.”

Steve Cann, a partner with Future Foods agreed, stating “Working with the team at BCarbon is a real trans-Atlantic technical partnership, resulting in farmers receiving credit for their positive actions in removing CO2 from the atmosphere and ultimately being part of the solution to climate change.”

How does it work?

Under the BCarbon program, Future Food Solutions conducts soil analysis before the cover crop is sown and then uses a series of rigorous tests to determine exactly how many tons of carbon have been removed from the atmosphere. Much of this field data has been acquired in conjunction with Yorkshire Water and Proagrica, who have partnered with Future Food Solutions on catchment scale farmer engagement programs in the UK.

Although sequestration will vary because of weather, cover crop and soil type, on average in the Yorkshire region, a hectare of cover crop and no-till farming will deliver 2-3 tons of carbon to trade. Upon measurement under the BCarbon system, project developers such as Future Foods and their farmers then receive money through the sale of their carbon credits.

Who buys the carbon?

The stored carbon is sold to major organizations looking to offset their carbon footprint. More than a third of the world’s largest publicly traded companies have already made net zero pledges and demand for quality carbon removal credits is increasing.

Steve Cann from Future Food Solutions says: “This is a step change in carbon removal providing a real opportunity for major organizations to reduce their carbon footprint. This approach also offers global reach as soil stock in all farming environments around the world could provide significant capacity to become a huge carbon sink.

“Farming has traditionally received bad press on carbon emissions, but this could change that. It means farmers in the UK and beyond can provide a solution to one of the biggest climate change issues, highlighted at COP26 in Glasgow.

“Plus, if we do it right, food gets better. Water and flood management improve because the cover crops transform below-ground soil structure, which in turn helps to reduce leaching and water run-off. Because CO2 is actually being sequestered back into the soil from the atmosphere, the planet starts to heal as well”.

“Everyone can contribute by eating smarter and actively choosing to buy food products sourced from land where this remedial process is being undertaken by farmers.”

First credits from Yorkshire

The first verified carbon credits have come from Tom Mellor’s farm high above Bridlington, in the North Yorkshire Wolds. Mellor says: “Farming is about achieving a balance, similar to the challenge the planet is facing, with regard to climate change. If we take out more than we put back in, future generations will pay the price.”

Tom also commented “Knowing now that farming can be the solution, not the problem, is encouraging us to rethink both our practices and mindset.”

The Sustainable Futures Carbon Bank aims initially to bring 10,000 carbon credits to the voluntary market in the coming months from other farms involved in the plan across the UK and EU but has big ambitions to tap into agricultural land across the world, freeing up millions of carbon credits to be traded with global brands.

BCarbon is a 501(c)(3) non-profit carbon credit registry formed from a stakeholder group at the Baker Institute at Rice University that is engaged in issuing carbon credits associated with soil sequestration, forest sequestration and coastal blue carbon protection and storage. https://bcarbon.org/.

Thank you, President. And, can I start by thanking the Special Envoy and the Assistant-Secretary-General from OCHA, for their briefings – and, to the UN, in general, for their continued efforts on securing long term and lasting peace in Yemen.

We welcome the positive impact on the lives of Yemeni people of the continued reduction of violence, resulting from the truce, and the progress on the confidence building measures.

Special Envoy, we welcome the multitrack process that you have outlined, and Ms Msuya’s proposals for economic recovery. The truce and confidence building measures are important first steps, but, as we’ve discussed before, securing sustainable peace will require ambition and progress on a wide range of issues, including on the economic and military tracks, as well as the unblocking of roads across Yemen.

We also welcome the news that the Military Coordination Committee intends to establish monthly meetings to address the key events of concern.

I’d like to highlight three concerns, in particular:

The first is that the UK remains concerned about the humanitarian, and wider social and economic impact, of the continued road closures around Taiz. Special Envoy, we echo your calls for all sides to coordinate to reach agreement as soon as possible to open the main roads, and reap the benefits of that.

Second, on de-mining, we welcome the reduction in reported civilian casualties since the truce began. But, as you said, Special Envoy, landmines and unexploded ordnance are claiming increasing numbers of civilian lives, including those of children.

Increasing humanitarian access would enable UNMHA to protect some of the most vulnerable Yemenis, so we continue to call on all parties to support de-mining efforts across Yemen.

Third, food insecurity. The global growth in commodity prices, which you both referred to, means increased food insecurity, hunger, famine in Yemen. And food prices have hit record highs. So, we echo Ms Msuya’s call to all donors to ensure that funding is made immediately available for disbursement, at pace, to reduce the suffering.

Finally, the UK also remains concerned about the threat posed by the SAFER oil tanker and the shortfall in funding for the UN’s emergency operation. Inaction will come at a high price.

The UK has pledged $5 million towards the UN plan, and we urge others to commit funding to bridge the remaining $20 million gap so the emergency operation can begin to address the risk of profound humanitarian and environmental damage.

In conclusion, President, we urge parties to continue to show the courageous leadership to build on positive momentum to ensure progress, and to prioritise the peace and stability of Yemen. As the Special Envoy said, this is the best opportunity for peace in years.

I thank you.