Part of 1. Questions to the Minister for Climate Change – in the Senedd at 1:31 pm on 21 September 2022.
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.