Environment: 25-year Plan

Baroness Featherstone Excerpts

Monday 29th January 2018 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Featherstone (LD)]

My Lords, “thank you, but” is an excellent description of this debate.

Some in your Lordships’ House may remember a very old radio programme called “Beyond Our Ken”, which went on to become “Round the Horne”. One of the characters was named Fallowfield and his response to any question was, “Well, I think the answer lies in the soil”. He was right—who knew? The bulk of my speech today addresses that issue.

Last year, my team and I did a lot of work on agriculture and land use change and it is all published in a report we commissioned entitled A Vision for Britain: Clean, Green and Carbon Free. It is well documented that the Government will miss their carbon reduction targets for the 4th and 5th carbon budgets. The UK will need to find significant reductions in a range of different and complex sources of greenhouse gases arising from our land use and our agriculture, because agriculture accounts for around 10% of UK greenhouse gas emissions. We will have to take drastic action to ensure that negative emissions from the United Kingdom’s land use, land use change and forestry includes addressing our degrading peatlands and supporting the use of sustainably sourced timber in construction, together with additional carbon removal through soil management, afforestation or alternatives.

First, on peatlands, as far as I am aware, the Government have never counted the emissions from our degrading peatlands as part of our emissions totals. That underestimates our carbon emissions, so the actual situation is worse than it seems. It is clear that we need not only to preserve our existing carbon sinks but to significantly increase them. I am pleased that the Government clearly recognise in the plan the need to address the peatland issue. The report includes this example:

“Over the last 200 years, we have lost 84% of our fertile peat topsoil in East Anglia. The fens there could lose the remainder in just 30-60 years”.


That is shocking. We will therefore have to cut emissions from peatland by 16 metric tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent by restoring that peatland, especially in upland areas. Can the Minister say whether the actions proposed in the report will deliver the 14% reduction in emissions that the climate change committee says is necessary? I do not think they will. Of course, attention to restoring our peatlands holds huge potential not only for reducing emissions but for reducing flood risk and supporting biodiversity.

In terms of improving our approach to soil management, the Government state that,

“by 2030 we want all of England’s soils to be managed sustainably”.

If we read the highlighted actions in the plan, we find that:

“Defra will invest at least £200,000 to help develop soil health metrics and test them on farms across the country”,


and,

“investigate the potential for research and monitoring to give us a clearer picture of how soil health supports our wider environment”.

That is obviously to be welcomed but I suggest that it is small stuff and should be going hand in hand with action. We know enough already to take action. Why can we not follow France’s lead in promoting the “4 per 1,000” soil initiative to increase the amount of CO₂ captured by four grams per kilo? Of course, we also need to manage the reduction of fossil fuel use in the sector and improve land management practices for natural carbon sequestration with a better application of manure and fertiliser. I suggest that addressing soil compaction should be a priority for the Government.

As was said by the noble Baroness, Lady Young, we need an even more ambitious programme of afforestation in order to meet carbon removal associated with the Committee on Climate Change max scenario, which it estimates will require 30,000 hectares of additional woodland coverage in the UK each year by 2050. I go for the max scenario because we are not reducing our emissions adequately to get anywhere near the 1.5 degree limit that we have signed up for in the Paris Agreement. To put it in context, that commitment to 30,000 hectares a year is around half a New Forest. The government plan is to plant 180,000 hectares by the end of 2042, which is simply nowhere near enough.

We also need to work with industry and forestry sectors to support the increased use of sustainably sourced wood in construction, which delivers negative emissions, rather than the use of carbon-intensive materials such as concrete. The ability of wood used in buildings to capture carbon from the atmosphere and store it for long periods is a huge opportunity that we should not ignore. We also need a recognition that alternatives to woody biomass, such as organic waste, agricultural residues, algae and domestic energy crops, could play an important role and contribute to landfill reduction strategies.

In the given time, I have been able to address only one section of this very large plan but I was hoping for a really bold, radical plan that defined new commitments, enhanced old commitments and laid down clear objectives and metrics that would effect measurable and reportable results. We need new environmental legislation and the plan should be placed on a statutory footing. ClientEarth has said that the plan is “full of empty promises”, and Wildlife and Countryside Link says that words must be backed up with action. I do not want to be unkind to the Government—I think that they are trying—but I hope that they understand the message that warm words will not be enough. In responding to the debate, perhaps the Minister will lay out a clear road map for how this plan will be delivered and the measurables for the journey, and say what reporting will be made to Parliament. If we are to have confidence in the plan, what legal framework will the Government put in place to ensure delivery?

Therefore, although I welcome the 25-year environmental plan, I feel that the proposed actions in the report are not strong enough, urgent enough or extensive enough. I encourage the Government to go much further and much faster.