5. Debate on the Climate Change, Environment and Rural Affairs Committee report: Branching out: a new ambition for woodland policies

Part of the debate – in the Senedd at 3:40 pm on 13 December 2017.

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Photo of Mike Hedges Mike Hedges Labour 3:40, 13 December 2017

Overall, the inquiry found that stakeholders generally felt the policy direction of the Welsh Government’s strategy 'Woodlands for Wales' was appropriate.  However, they all called for it to be refreshed, urgently, in order to significantly increase planting rates.

We made 13 recommendations. I am pleased that the Welsh Government has accepted 12 of those recommendations either in full or in principle. However, the committee was disappointed with a subsequent exchange of correspondence with the Minister for the environment. The committee wrote to the Cabinet Secretary in early October to ask for clarification of the responses to several recommendations in advance of this debate. The committee wrote for a second time to emphasise the importance of receiving clarification of the responses in advance of this debate. The Minister said that she would respond fully to the issues raised during the debate.

Turning back to our report, the committee’s recommendations come under three broad themes: increasing planting and growing the commercial forestry sector; increasing access to and community benefits from woodlands; and taking full advantage of the environmental benefits of more trees.

On more planting, the need to significantly increase planting rates was the key priority for all our stakeholders. In 2010 the Welsh Government’s climate change strategy called for an average planting rate of 5,000 hectares every year. By 2015 the total of new planting had only reached 3,200 hectares. This enormous deficit led the industry body to tell us that woodland creation in Wales has been a catastrophic failure.

What are the barriers to planting? According to the commercial forestry sector, the greatest barrier to woodland planting was what they described as the overly rigorous enforcement of environmental impact assessment regulations. We were pleased that the Welsh Government and Natural Resources Wales recognised that this is a problem and we recommended that progress should be made as a matter of urgency.

Farmers told us they are deterred from planting woodland because the Glastir woodland schemes are too complex and prescriptive and the payments are low relative to payments received for agricultural land. We believe that there is an opportunity in future to reconsider the approach to payments, including payment for ecosystem services—such innovations could incentivise planting.

There are many positives: the Glastir woodland opportunities map, which shows areas most suited to new woodland creation, is a good starting point. It has the potential to be developed into a decision-making tool. If it can be aligned with the regulatory process and local authority planning, it could become an enabler of woodland creation on the ground. One example of this would be if regulatory barriers could be relaxed for areas identified by the map as areas most suitable for woodland creation. Something else that could perhaps be beneficial is when we have local development plans, they could actually identify land within the local development plan that would be suitable for the planting of forestry. While it is not a necessity in order to plant forestry there, it will identify, for people who wish to plant forestry, areas that have been deemed to be suitable, without having to go searching through a whole range of other pieces of information—all available from the Welsh Government. Keep it simple: look at one thing and find it and that'll make, I think, a big difference. So, the Glastir woodland opportunities map has tremendous opportunities.

Turning to the commercial sector, we heard about constraints brought about by low planting and restocking rates. We were greatly concerned by the impact of this on the future of Welsh sawmills and on rural communities. I think we all recognise that one of the weaknesses of the rural Welsh economy is that we do not get sufficient high-value processing out of our raw materials. We develop, both in agriculture and forestry, the raw materials, but the big money is made by the people who do the processing. Further along, it is made well outside Welsh rural communities and, in most cases, well outside Wales. The Welsh Government must actively support the commercial forestry sector in Wales to realise its full potential. We recommended that the Welsh Government should consider changing building regulations to promote the use of timber in construction. 

Social benefits is the second theme explored in the committee’s report. Woodlands have a significant role to play in regenerating former industrial areas. The committee saw this first-hand when they visited the Spirit of Llynfi Woodland in Maesteg. This project is a real inspiration: it shows what can happen when dedicated volunteers receive the support and funding from local and national decision makers to bring about a complete transformation of what was contaminated wasteland. We have an awful lot of contaminated wasteland in Wales, so these opportunities exist across a large part of the older industrial areas of Wales. They have also benefited from private sector funding from Ford. We want to build on this and recommend that the Welsh Government assesses the potential of developing a national forestry company to regenerate the south Wales Valleys. 

Trees and urban areas have substantial environmental, social and economic benefits. More needs to be done to increase canopy cover. We recommended that the Welsh Government should set out a plan to achieve at least 20 per cent tree cover by 2030. Unfortunately, this recommendation has been rejected, so I will be interested to hear the Minister’s alternative plan for increasing canopy cover in these areas.

Finally, on environmental benefits, the final theme is creating more woodlands. The benefits are obvious and should be the main driver of our push to plant more, given our statutory responsibility for sustainability. Trees can mitigate the effects of climate change, trapping carbon into useable timber. They also reduce the risk of flooding from excessive rain. This is why we recommended that the Welsh Government should incentivise planting upstream from flood-prone areas.

I think very few Assembly Members will not know of areas that used to be covered in trees and somebody decided to chop the trees down, either to build or to make the area look better or to get a better garden, and then they can't quite understand why there's flooding when there hasn't been flooding in the previous 100 years. Trees are wonderful at sucking up water and stopping flooding occurring. 

Following Brexit, we will be able to direct funding towards more sustainable activity by landowners, including planting more trees. This is why we recommended that future funding should be based on sustainable outcomes. The committee would like an update on the Cabinet Secretary’s discussions with NRW to develop a system for funding positive changes for wildlife, water quality, flood-risk reduction, health and well-being.

In conclusion, there are substantial benefits from woodlands, which we are not realising fully. We are not realising the environmental gains from mitigating climate change, preventing flooding, and increasing the availability of sustainable timber. We are also missing out on the social benefits of woodlands for the health and well-being of those who live near them. We are not ensuring that those benefits will be available for people living in urban areas, where trees are most needed and valued. We know that woodlands can regenerate our Valleys and that accessing them can provide opportunities for learning and recreation. But none of this is possible if we carry on the way we are. Woodland policy needs to be much more ambitious. 

Since 2010, just one tenth of the target for woodland creation has been met. The next iteration of the 'Woodlands for Wales' strategy needs to set out this radical shift in thinking that stakeholders are demanding. It cannot simply be an update on current policy that just takes into account recent legislative changes but must have challenging achievable targets.

Trees make a big difference to our society. Tree-lined roads look a lot better than non-tree-lined roads. Trees on hills above housing help stop any flooding, and trees in areas of urban deprivation can actually make the area look an awful lot better. I think that if there's one thing we can do without a huge amount of difficulty, it's just have more trees in Wales, and I hope the Minister is going to say that's exactly what she's going to do.