Diolch yn fawr. Let me begin by saying that trees are a good thing. We must protect the trees that we have, and plant 86 million more of them in Wales by the end of this decade, if we are to tackle the climate emergency. We need a step change in woodland creation, and a transformation in the way Welsh wood is used across our economy.

Over the past month, I have led an intensive deep-dive exercise to urgently identify the barriers preventing progress and actions to overcome them. I have been supported by a small taskforce made up of experts in these areas, and I want to thank each of them for the time they have committed, and their desire to drive change. I've also spoken with representatives of many groups with an interest, including farmers, foresters, non-governmental organisations, processors and house builders.

We're accepting the tree planting targets set by the UK Climate Change Committee. To reach net zero, we need to plant 43,000 hectares of new trees by 2030, rising to 180,000 hectares by 2050. To be clear, Dirprwy Llywydd, this will require a 15-fold increase in the number of trees we have planted in Wales this year. It'll only be possible through an alliance for change, involving many partners working together. So, today, I want to issue a call to arms for people to join us in delivering this essential change, and it starts with individuals and communities across Wales. For every newborn baby in Wales, we plant a new tree both in Wales and in Uganda. We've learnt some valuable lessons from our partnership with the people of Mbale that we now need to apply more broadly here.

Let's start with the message we deliver with the Size of Wales charity in Africa: trees are amazing. They save lives by keeping our air clean. Trees improve people's health; there is clear evidence of multiple benefits to our well-being from lower stress and blood pressure when around trees. I wish I was around them more often. Higher levels of physical activity, better mental health, greater levels of neighbourliness, lower crime levels too; trees are essential for tackling our nature emergency, helping improve biodiversity, and, of course, in tackling climate change, both by absorbing carbon, alleviating flooding and displacing carbon-intensive products like concrete in house building. And they can help us create more jobs too. Work has begun on implementing our manifesto commitment to develop a timber industrial strategy and create a stronger wood economy for Wales.

We want every family with a garden to plant more trees, and every school and community group to sign up to the Woodland Trust free tree scheme. We need to make it easier for communities to plant trees, and easier for them to interact with authorities. As a result of the deep-dive exercise, we have agreed that public bodies need to map the land they own and proactively identify where more trees can be planted.

It's vital that we work with, and learn from, the farmers and other landowners in Wales who will need to plant many of these trees. It was clear from our exercise that it's not just more advice we need, it's more engagement we need—genuine engagement; thousands of conversations with every farmer to see what suits their farm, to get them as part of the solution that we need to see. And demonstrate to them that planting trees can exist alongside other farming activities, both from a financial and a social perspective. The current grant regime acts against that, and that needs to change. As well as planting new woodlands, we also need to plant what is described as 'hedges and edges', such as trees along field boundaries, scattered trees, hedges and shelter belts—I've learned some new words, Dirprwy Lywydd, as part of this exercise. It's been a fascinating experience.

There are some excellent examples to learn from, including the Stump Up For Trees project near Abergavenny, which I visited yesterday, a project led by farmers in consensus with communities to plant trees on unproductive land and create new sources of income whilst protecting their communities for the longer term. We need more examples like these, so I am establishing a new working group to urgently consider models to attract investment in woodland creation, crucially, without disrupting existing communities and patterns of landownership. I am worried, Dirprwy Lywydd, by the trend of large areas of farmland being bought up by outside interests in an exercise in greenwash. This does not need to happen, as we've seen from Stump Up For Trees, and I want to take action to make sure that doesn't get out of hand.

Many of the trees currently planted in Wales are funded through our Glastir woodland creation scheme. In the past, funding through this scheme has been too inconsistent and the process for getting funding too complex and slow. I have wondered, at times, how we've managed to plant as many trees as we have, frankly. The taskforce has identified a number of actions to change this. We'll open a new window of the current scheme to ensure all of the £17 million we’ve allocated to tree planting is spent this year, and I have asked NRW to introduce immediate changes to speed up delivery, to lead an overhaul of the guidance we provide around tree planting, and focus instead on outreach to help people get things done and get things right at the start of a project.

From next year, we will introduce an improved scheme to support woodland creation, with stand-alone funding to allow people to plan new woodland so we create a pipeline of projects that are ready to plant when the money becomes available. I want many of the areas supported by these schemes to form part of the national forest, to create a network of high-quality areas of woodland across Wales. We also need to do more to support people to create new woodlands or make improvements to existing woodlands to meet the standards of the national forest. Later this week, we'll open the woodland investment grant to allow people to apply for this support. 

Eighty per cent of the timber used in the UK is imported, and only 4 per cent of the 1.5 million tonnes of harvested timber is processed to be used as construction-grade timber in Wales. So there's a real opportunity for timber processors and manufacturers in Wales to contribute to this wood economy, creating new jobs in rural Wales as well as building an innovative supply chain for high value added, longer life uses. We should be spending less of our attention on producing pallets, and more of our attention on using that wood to build Welsh homes that capture and keep carbon. That will require co-ordination across the supply chain. So, I've another new working group to urgently consider the content of a new timber industrial strategy for Wales. We need to create added value right throughout the chain, and there's much we can learn from the Republic of Ireland in this.

We have published this afternoon, Dirprwy Lywydd, a list of the 39 actions the taskforce has agreed, alongside the written statement. We now need to keep up the momentum. I will close, if I may, with a comment made during one of our meetings by Mark McKenna from the Down to Earth project. He said, in reflecting on one of our conversations, 'The solutions are there. We need to invest and we need to plan'. And we intend to. Diolch.