8. Statement by the Minister for Environment, Energy and Rural Affairs: The Climate Emergency

Part of the debate – in the Senedd at 3:49 pm on 1 July 2020.

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Photo of Lesley Griffiths Lesley Griffiths Labour 3:49, 1 July 2020

Thank you, Andrew R.T. Davies, for your questions. Clearly, we are in a position we don't want to be in relation to having to repurpose and reset our budget in light of the COVID-19 pandemic, and I absolutely understand people's concerns around the budget of Natural Resources Wales. I think you will have heard me say in my oral Assembly questions session last week that we are continuing to work with NRW; I met with the chair and chief executive last week to look at what flexibility we are able to offer them to make sure that they can fulfil all their statutory duties and, as you say, the things that they are responsible for on our behalf. We are making sure they have that flexibility. There are ongoing discussions between officials and NRW, as well as myself and the chair and chief executive, and I do hope, as we go through the year, I will be able to provide that assurance to Members. 

In relation to forestry, you are quite right, we have not been, and are still not, in a position that I would want to be when it comes to the number of fresh trees that we are planting. You'll be aware of the strategy that we set out around increasing woodland by at least 2,000 hectares per year from 2020 to 2030, and we are building up to that. As you say, last year was disappointing. A lot of that was due to the timing of the rural development programme funding, and the funds that we made available last year will support tree planting in the upcoming planting season this winter that's coming up now. Last year, we did fund the replanting of 1,500 hectares of trees to restock existing woodland.

We have taken some significant steps to increase the amount of woodland by launching a new window of Glastir woodland creation. That's had a fourfold increase this year in the budget to £8 million, so I hope that shows the commitment, and I hope that gives you confidence that that funding is available. I think it's really important we work with our partners to make sure we fulfil our targets. You'll be aware that we've also begun to establish a national forest for Wales, which was a First Minister's manifesto commitment, and, just last week, we launched a new scheme to create new woodlands near local communities. 

So, Government can't do it on its own, and I would hope that we will all encourage people to have a look at those new woodland schemes that we've had. We've got a number of demonstration projects this year, and that includes a £2.1 million community woodland scheme, which, as I mentioned, was launched last week.