Bigger, Better Forests

Bigger, Better Forests Benedict McAleenan Foreword by John Humphrys Bigger, Better Forests Benedict McAleenan Foreword by John Humphrys Policy Exchange is the UK’s leading think tank. We are an independent, non-partisan educational charity whose mission is to develop and promote new policy ideas that will deliver better public services, a stronger society and a more dynamic economy. Policy Exchange is committed to an evidence-based approach to policy development and retains copyright and full editorial control over all its written research. We work in partnership with academics and other experts and commission major studies involving thorough empirical research of alternative policy outcomes. We believe that the policy experience of other countries offers important lessons for government in the UK. We also believe that government has much to learn from business and the voluntary sector. Registered charity no: 1096300. Trustees Diana Berry, Alexander Downer, Pamela Dow, Andrew Feldman, Candida Gertler, Patricia Hodgson, Greta Jones, Edward Lee, Charlotte Metcalf, Roger Orf, Andrew Roberts, George Robinson, Robert Rosenkranz, Peter Wall, Nigel Wright. Bigger, Better Forests About the Author Benedict McAleenan is a Senior Adviser to Policy Exchange’s Energy and Environment Unit. He is a public policy advisor with over 13 years’ experience advising on policy development, political risk and thought leadership in the Energy, FMCG, Manufacturing and Engineering sectors. His private sector clients have included National Grid, Centrica Energy, the Renewable Energy Association, Shell, Centrica, Sainsbury’s, Endurance Wind Power and Balfour Beatty. 2 | policyexchange.org.uk Acknowledgements Acknowledgements The author is very grateful to the following for lending their expert commentary and feedback to this report: Dr Richard Benwell, Rt Hon Richard Benyon, Dr James Cooper, John Everitt, Sam Hall, Dr Eleanor Harris, Andy Heald, Andy Howard, Martin Glynn, Christiane Lellig, Nick Phillips, Matthew Rivers, the National Farmers’ Union and several members of staff at the Forestry Commission, Forestry England, Forest Research, Natural Resources Wales, Forestry and Land Scotland and Scottish Forestry. © Policy Exchange 2019 Published by Policy Exchange, 8 – 10 Great George Street, Westminster, London SW1P 3AE www.policyexchange.org.uk ISBN: 978-1-913459-03-1 policyexchange.org.uk | 3 Bigger, Better Forests Contents About the Author 2 Acknowledgements 3 Foreword 5 Executive Summary 7 Tree-Related Principles for Policy Makers 22 Summary of recommendations 24 UK Woodlands Today 27 Where are we now? 27 Our current planting rates 29 Carbon sequestration in woodlands 32 Harvesting and wood supply chains 33 Demand for UK-grown timber and wood 36 A Short History of Woodland Policy in the UK 39 Policies and aspirations for tree cover 42 Incentives and Regulations in the Woodland Sector 46 EU subsidies 46 Regulation 48 Opportunity Areas for Tree Planting 49 Opportunity area 1: Conservation areas 49 Opportunity area 2: Farms and Agroforestry 52 Upland and hillside farms and moors 56 Unmanaged woodlands 59 Rewarding Value in Trees and Wood 64 Objective 1: Stimulating demand for Harvested Wood Products 67 Objective 2: Reward the Environmental Land Management services provided by living trees. 73 A New Approach in UK Woodland Policy 83 An Integrated Approach to Land Use 84 Stimulating Demand for Living Trees in the Landscape 86 Stimulating Demand for Harvested Tree Products 87 Appendix: Glossary 88 4 | policyexchange.org.uk Contents Foreword John Humphrys The nation is on the brink of a revolution. A revolution more glorious by far than that of 1688 and long overdue. The signs are everywhere. The Daily Mail is appealing to its readers to sign up to new campaign. Broadcasters are telling us to take up arms. Children in schools across the land are venturing forth equipped for battle with saplings and spades. Entire communities are uniting. Political parties are recognising its inevitability and are promising policies that, cometh the hour, will place them alongside the revolutionaries. This is an arboreal revolution. Like all revolutions its roots lie deep in the soil of our land – in this case both literally and metaphorically. Where my allegory falters a little is there are no opposing forces. We all want to see more trees in our not- sufficiently-green and pleasant land. The scientific case is unanswerable. On the macro scale climate change is a real threat to the planet. The more trees there are to absorb carbon dioxide the greater our prospects of limiting the greenhouse effect. On the micro scale doctors agree that trees have a beneficial effect on those who spend time near them – above all young children whose developing hearts and lungs suffer from the particulates that trees are so effective at absorbing. Quite simply, they clean the air. So three rousing cheers for all those involved in local tree planting campaigns. But they are not enough. It is wonderfully heart-warming to see gangs of children tramping off to their local parks to inspect the infant trees they are nurturing but for this revolution to succeed it has to mobilise those who can have the greatest effect: the landowners and farmers. And what this report demonstrates so powerfully is that they must do so much more. When humans decided 10,000 years ago to stop roaming and start farming the first thing they did was chop down trees to clear the land. They kept doing it. By the beginning of the last century we were left with only enough trees to cover a pathetic 5% of the country. There has been a substantial improvement since then but our forests are still only a third of the European average. We would have to plant three times as many as we are managing at present if we are serious about meeting the target set by the Committee on Climate Change of net zero emissions by 2050. This, sadly, is not going to be achieved by campaigning or exhortation or even by issuing dire warnings that we risk bequeathing our grandchildren a scorched earth. Nor can we leave it to natural forces. I spent a glorious weekend at the Knepp Estate in East Sussex owned by Charlie and Isabella Tree. They took the brave decision almost twenty years ago of handing policyexchange.org.uk | 5 Bigger, Better Forests their 3,500 acres of farmland back to nature. It is now teeming with biodiversity unimaginable in most of rural England. But it is not a forest. The brutal reality is that those who own the most land in this country need incentives to grow trees in the numbers that are needed, which is where this report may prove so valuable. As it makes clear, most land managers think forestry is simply not worth the effort. The report’s most eye-catching proposal is a “Forest of Britain”: a two-mile wide corridor from Land’s End to John O’Groats that would connect conservation sites such as SSI’s and nature reserves and, yes, the Knepp project. Its value to diversity would be incalculable but it would be costly. Some of the money needed might come from Environmental Land Management contracts which the government favours when/if we are finally freed from the shackles of the Common Agricultural Policy. Another important proposal concerns farmland. Or perhaps I should say agricultural desertification. As Charlie and Isabella discovered to their great cost, just because your land can grow corn does not mean it should grow corn. They lost money with every trailer-load forced from the reluctant soil. What this report suggests is not rewilding, but the development of farm woodlands and agroforestry as a central plan of our agricultural policy. Trees can be used to protect soil and grazing livestock from wind and rain. Orchards can be integrated with arable crops so one patch of land produces more food and more profit. And much more public good. And then there are our neglected woodlands. They are not managed as they should be because the return on the investment does not justify the effort. That’s not to say that some woodland should not be left to fend for itself. A healthy wood full of ancient oaks needs no help from puny humans. But not all are healthy. Climate change is lowering the resilience of many woodlands and insufficient vigilance to guard against imported pests leads to the horror of diseases such as ash dieback. It is not so very long ago that we regarded our home-grown woodland as a great natural resource. We must do so again. We must reduce our dependence on imported timber and give farmers the incentive they need to see their woodland for what it is: a potentially great natural asset. On reflection, perhaps it is not a revolution that we need. Perhaps it is just the application of a mighty dose of common sense. 6 | policyexchange.org.uk Executive Summary Executive Summary Increasing tree cover in the UK is a matter of land use policy. This simple fact is often forgotten amid a rush to re-forest Britain through multiple schemes and interventions. This seemingly overlooks the fact that silviculture – the art and science of growing trees – is just one subset of land management. In the last 25 years, several government-backed new forests have been established or proposed, from the mid-1990s National Forest to the most recent ‘Northern Forest’, which is to stretch across the North East and North West of England. Though laudable and important (we propose a project of our own in this report), these schemes alone are not sufficient to address more fundamental barriers to tree planting, many of which are the direct results of public subsidies for a particular model of farming. Trees, both as a source of wood and as providers of valuable services in the landscape, have been sidelined and inadvertently disincentivised.

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