The arboreal revolution needs a growth spurt

We should be planting more trees, but to do so we must incentivise British landowners and farmers

The nation is on the brink of a revolution: more glorious by far than that of 1688 and long overdue. The signs are everywhere. Children across the land are venturing forth equipped for battle with saplings and spades. Entire communities are uniting. Political parties are promising policies that, cometh the hour, will place them with the revolutionaries. This is an arboreal revolution.

Like all revolutions, its roots lie deep in the soil – in this case both literally and metaphorically. Where my allegory falters a little is that 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, 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. For this revolution to succeed, it has to mobilise those who can have the greatest effect: landowners and farmers. And what Policy Exchange’s report, Bigger, Better Forests, published today, demonstrates powerfully is that they must do so much more than at present.

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 per cent of the country. Our forests are still only a third of the European average. We would have to plant three times as many as we do now if we are serious about meeting the target set by the

Committee on Climate Change of net zero emissions by 2050.

This is not going to be achieved by campaigning or exhortation or 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 Burrell and Isabella Tree. Twenty years ago, they handed 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 needed. As the report makes clear, most land managers think forestry is simply not worth the effort.

Policy Exchange’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. Its value to diversity would be incalculable, but it would be costly. Some of the money might come from Environmental Land Management contracts, when/if we are finally freed from the shackles of the Common Agricultural Policy.

Another concerns farmland. Or perhaps I should say agricultural desertification. As Charlie and Isabella found, just because your land can grow corn does not mean it should. They lost money with every trailer-load. What this report suggests is the development of agroforestry and farm woodland as a central plan of agricultural policy. Trees can protect soil and livestock from wind and rain. Orchards can be integrated with arable crops, so one patch of land produces more food and profit. And much more public good.

Then there are our neglected woodlands, not managed as they should be because the return on the investment does not justify the effort. That’s not to say that some should not be left to fend for itself. A healthy wood full of ancient oaks needs no help from puny humans. But climate change is lowering the resilience of many and insufficient vigilance to guard against imported pests leads to horrific 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 incentives to see their woodland for what it is: a natural asset.

On reflection, perhaps it is not a revolution that we need. Perhaps it is just a mighty dose of common sense.