Lord Ashcombe
Main Page: Lord Ashcombe (Conservative - Life peer)(1 day, 7 hours ago)
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Lord Katz (Lab)
Where do I start, my Lords? In relation to the reference made by the noble Baroness to Jackdaw and so on, I would point out that Rosebank is in a live quasi-judicial regulatory process that is still to be decided on. We are very clear that Jackdaw was not a new licence; we are not breaking any promises there. More widely, I could go through quite a long list, but will spare noble Lords. The measures that we are taking to adapt to climate change include investing £300 million in natural flood management up to 2035, using the farming road map to put long-term climate resilience at the heart of farming, and £30 million for coastal adaptation pilots to help coastal communities adapt. I will stop there, but I hope that the noble Baroness gets the drift.
Lord Ashcombe (Con)
My Lords, it is clear to our Benches that land management offers significant scope for both reducing and mitigating the impact of climate change. Re-wetting drained land, decanalising rivers, riparian planting and peatland restoration all improve drought resilience, reduce peak flow events in floods and improve water quality. With the right financial incentives, these also improve our food security by underpinning farm businesses. What are the Government doing to incentivise these actions across all our river catchments?
Lord Katz (Lab)
I very much share the noble Lord’s ambition in relation to using nature and our farmers to help us make progress on climate adaptation and resilience. I think it is fair to point to the 25-year farming road map that we have produced. That is a long-term vision for the farming sector, to make it not only a profitable sector but one that can lead on climate change resilience, making sure that we have a sustainable and resilient agriculture sector. We are using environmental land management schemes to support ambitious and evidence-based delivery towards resilient landscapes in the land-use framework; for example, committing to assess climate change impacts on the land and building adaptation into ELM schemes.