Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs:

To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, what steps she is taking to support reforestation.

Domestically, the Government is on course to plant 11 million trees this Parliament (2017-2022), with at least 3.6 million trees (2,318 hectares) of woodland planted since April 2017, and over 15 million trees planted since 2010. In the Autumn Budget 2018, the Government announced an additional £60 million for tree planting initiatives, comprising £10 million to fund urban tree planting through the Urban Tree Challenge Fund, and £50 million for a Woodland Carbon Guarantee scheme. This will add to other new planting in the pipeline, including the High Speed 2 Woodland Fund, the Woodland Carbon Fund, a kick start investment in the Northern Forest and support for a new Northumberland Forestry Partnership, to delivera new forest region starting with 1 million trees planted by 2024.

The Prime Minister recently announced a doubling of UK International Climate Finance (ICF) to at least £11.6 billion over the next five years. This spend will include a focus on nature based solutions to climate change. Through ICF, the UK currently funds several programmes in developing countries that use native tree-planting as a strategy for reducing greenhouse gas emissions, and generating economic benefits for rural communities. For example, Defra’s investments aim to restore 550,000 hectares of forest, generating 90 million tonnes of carbon dioxide emissions savings. This includes a £10 million project to restore up to 20,000 hectares of mangrove forest in Madagascar and Indonesia.