Part of 1. Questions to the First Minister – in the Senedd at 1:56 pm on 1 February 2022.
Carbon asset stripping is a global phenomenon. Just before Christmas, the Australian Government proposed a ministerial veto on woodland carbon-credit developments over 15 hectares or where they make up more than a third of a farm. Are you prepared to consider amending the planning system or introducing a social and linguistic dimension to the impact assessment process to prevent conifer and spruce doing to our agricultural communities what second homes have done to our coastal ones?
The lesson of the second homes experience is that you cannot afford to wait. Once the agricultural land is lost, it will never come back. Once the carbon credits, so vital in our own journey to net zero, are extracted from Wales, they will never return. Will you examine urgently the proposal, again in a Welsh Government-commissioned report from 2014, of a Welsh carbon credit market, which would mean that credits generated by Welsh forestry could only ever be utilised by entities based in Wales?