But first, let us go back a few years to see where the land lay....
The last pledge:
The government's last pledge on tree planting was 11 million trees a year in England. In 2016, Stuart Goodall, Chief Executive of the UK forestry industry body Confor, told the Environmental, Forestry & Rural Affairs committee in Westminster, that this target was most certainly achievable, but not with the current grant system in place at the time.
The target represented a shift in England to get from 10% tree cover, up to around 12% by 2060 - that is about 50,000 hectares a year. Goodall pointed out that the grant system was "overly complex and bureaucratic." It was felt that there had been a steady disconnect between policy and the realities of the timber industry over the previous 20 years.
Confor pointed to a number of new options that would be needed to get things going again. This would include ideas like productive mixed forestry being introduced in some areas of northern England where farmers were under pressure, and so something like this may be of interest. They also pointed to the out of date view of conifer planting being 'demonised' - without it, the timber industry would be facing major issues with sourcing supplies by the mid 2030's.
Then there was also a need for more experience in dealing with large scale schemes from the Forestry Commission and other such bodies, as many of them had not had to deal with such applications in many years. Sir William Worsley, Chairman of the National Forest for the East Midlands, said, "To look at hardwoods as being attractive and softwoods as unattractive and commercial is the wrong way to look at it. Well managed commercial forestry can be very beautiful."
The big pledges!
So since the last government targets were set, things have moved on at pace. Climate change is now front and centre on the agenda, in fact for some groups it will be the second or third most thing on their minds when voting this month.
The legislation in June of this year, making net-zero carbon emissions a legal commitment for the UK by 2050, meant that people (including those in power) suddenly had to give some thought on how to achieve this rather daunting target!
Step forward the humble tree! A thing of great beauty and of great importance for many ecosystems - now realised as a potential lifeline for achieving carbon emission reductions, through their ability to sequester CO2.
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| Oak Tree (photo: Wikimedia) |
- Conservatives: pledging 30 million trees a year
- Lib Dems and SNP: both pledging to plant 60m a year
- Greens: they have gone for a pledge of 70m a year
- Labour: reckon they can plant 100m a year for the next 20 years. That's 2 billion more trees!
Now, there are some other issues around planting this number of trees, like can we provide enough nursery stock of suitable native trees to meet any of these demands? And where are such numbers going to be planted? Many sparsely populated areas, like say northern Scotland, actually don't necessarily need huge numbers of trees - northern Scotland would actually largely benefit from protecting and enhancing its peat bogs (another great CO2 sequesterer).
But lets just concentrate on the sheer numbers and not some of these other technicalities, that will have to be covered in great depth in the next few years, as one of these parties is actually going to have to try and enact what it has promised........ (or not)
The Labour party pledge represents planting a quarter of a million trees every day!
To put that in perspective, in the year to March 2019, 13,400ha was planted in the UK (11,200 of that was in Scotland). But there is some historic precedent of sorts, as in the 1980s we did manage to plant at a rate of around 30,000ha a year.
Depending on tree species, habitat, terrain etc., you can plant between 1,000 and 2,500 trees per hectare, so taking a reasonable average, that means 30,000ha would be covered by around 50 million trees.
The Woodland Trust say that things need to change fundamentally for large-scale planting to happen;
- More people need to get involved in planting - at national and local level, and in statutory bodies
- There needs to be a big boost in tree stocks
- There needs to be more money / grants for farmers and landowners to encourage them to plant trees
- Natural reforestation must be encouraged alongside planting
The Committee on Climate Change (CCC) has stated in its guidance that the UK needs a net gain of 32,000ha of trees per year for 30 years to help hit the net-zero emissions target by 2050. That is 1.5 billion trees. That would see the overall tree coverage for the UK going from 13% to 17% in that time - but that compares with an EU average of 35% tree cover.
Confor has analysed the tree planting pledges of the main parties - here is a little of what it has said on the four main national parties;
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| Conifer forest (photo: Wikimedia) |
- Conservatives: they need to do much more to meet the targets. It points out that they failed to reach the last, much more modest target, of 11m trees a year over 5 years.
- Labour: they need big leadership commitments to make any progress on such a target. Confor likes the recognition Labour have given to what the forestry / timber industries can do to help meet their green jobs pledge.
- Lib Dems: their targets are in line with what Confor have been suggesting is needed, but Confor say that their processes will need to be much improved. They also like the commitment to use more timber in house construction. Their position could be interesting if they end up holding a balance of power after the election.
- Greens: their targets, like the Lib Dems, line up with Confor ambitions, and will need similar overhaul of current processes. They also like their emphasis on integration between farming and forestry.
Research:
https://www.confor.org.uk/news/latest-news/ge2019-tree-planting-pledges-analysed/
http://www.confor.org.uk/news/latest-news/planting-targets-achievable-but-grant-system-not-fit-for-purpose/
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/50591261
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