Thank you so much, Presiding Officer. Minister, there is a growing—. Sorry.

1. What action is the Welsh Government taking to reduce carbon emissions in Wales? OQ58380

Diolch. Last year, we raised our ambition to achieve net-zero emissions by 2050, and, ahead of COP26 last year, we published Net Zero Wales, our emissions reduction plan, which we are now working on implementing, and our current climate change adaptation plan, 'A Climate Conscious Wales'.

Thank you so much, Deputy Minister. Apologies, I think I just got excited being back for the first day officially, or the second day. 

There's a growing awareness that our diet and food choices have a significant impact on our carbon footprint. Food transport, packaging and processing make up 6 per cent of carbon emissions from rich countries, so buying locally produced food means lower emissions. You recently announced two new schemes—a small grants woodland creation scheme, the woodland creation grant, with £32 million funding of funding for farmers and landowners to plant 86 million trees by the end of this decade. Now, concerns have been raised that encouraging tree planting could hinder our farmers' ability to produce food, so I'd like to ask, Deputy Minister, how these schemes will ensure that increasing tree cover, by increasing trees in Wales, will take place on land identified as less productive rather than on prime land, thereby sustaining local food production.

Thank you. As you know, the target of 86 million trees is the breakdown of what we need to plant to meet our carbon emission targets as set out by the UK Climate Change Committee, an independent body. We all sign up on a cross-party basis to achieving net zero. We endorse the work of the UK climate change commission. This is simply pointing out in practice what that will mean. We set up a deep-dive a year ago now to understand why we haven't been meeting our tree planting targets, and set out a series of practical actions, co-produced with the different sectors, to work through how we do that, and that includes a new sustainable farming scheme that my colleague Lesley Griffiths has published, and that sets out how we'll work with the farming community to achieve those targets. 

It's a false dichotomy to say it's one or another; it's tree planting at the expense of growing food. That's simply not the case. And we want to work on the principle of the right tree in the right place, for sure, but also planting on the hedges and edges of farms, where farmers are happy to plant trees and it doesn't displace their primary activity. Overall, to meet those climate change committee targets, we do need a change in land use of some 10 per cent. So, there will be changes, because, without those changes, the farming sector simply will not be resilient. They'll not be able to produce the food we all rely upon because climate change will disrupt them. So, it's in all our interests to get beyond the headlines, to get beyond the division and work together to achieve something that can achieve our collective goals. 

One method that has been used effectively by the Welsh Government to decrease emissions, of course, is the introduction of speed limits on some roads in Wales. Not only does that bring environmental benefits, but it brings benefits in terms of safety for residents in those areas. And I want to point out that a campaign has been launched in Glasfryn near Cerrigydrudion to introduce speed limits there. If you travel on the A5 from Bangor all the way to Shrewsbury, Glasfryn is the only village on that journey where there are no speed limits in place, even though there are busy junctions in the village and homes only a metre or two from the side of the road. Indeed, what you see when you reach the village are national speed limit signs, which, to all intents and purposes, remind drivers to drive at 60 miles an hour, which is entirely unacceptable. 

May I invite you, Deputy Minister, to meet with the local campaigners, under the leadership of Councillor Gwennol Ellis, either here in Cardiff or, better still, when you come to the north, so that you have an opportunity to visit Glasfryn and see for yourself the situation there and to understand why it's so important that the Welsh Government takes action on this straight away?

Well, of course, we are taking action to reduce speed limits. All speeds on local roads will have a default speed limit of 20 mph from next September, with the ability for local authorities to provide for exceptions to keep it at 30 mph. And that, no doubt, will have a knock-on effect about people's sense of speed on other roads. So, we'll also be looking at our setting local speed limits policy. Also, we've announced in a written statement a short while ago that we've now received the full report of the roads review panel, which we'll be going through over the next couple of months, with officials looking in detail at each of the many recommendations they've made, and speed limits is very much central to their analysis of what we need to do, both to achieve our carbon emissions but also to save lives. 

Clearly, local roads are the responsibility of local authorities. Trunk roads are the responsibility of the Welsh Government. And I recognise there are examples where a community feels the road speeds are too fast, and that is something we're going to look at as part of our overall package of modal shift. 

The second question to be answered this afternoon by the Minister for Rural Affairs and North Wales, and to be asked by Rhys ab Owen.