Pay farmers to let Britain go wild again to save us from climate change, say campaigners A new report claims changing the way rural land is managed can be as effective as high-tech solutions in the fight against climate change

Allowing a large-scale restoration of the UK’s land to nature through rewilding by transforming farm subsidies could vastly reduce Britain’s carbon emissions and aid its fight against, a new report has claimed.



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Charity Rewilding Britain , which promotes the restoration of Britain’s natural ecosystems, has published a plan calling for billions of pounds in farm subsidies to be redistributed towards actions such as creating meadows and protecting peat bogs to help the UK Committee on Climate Change reach its new zero-carbon target.

The report claims that changing the way rural land is managed can be as effective as high-tech solutions and suggests that, unlike other natural climate change solutions, this could reduce a third of the greenhouse gas mitigation needed between now and and 2030.

Brexit and rewilding

The UK is set to leave the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) after Brexit, though the Government has pledged it will ensure “public money is spent on public goods”.



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Rewilding Britain argues in the report that if £1.9 billion of the £3 billion currently spent on CAP was instead spent on rewilding six million hectares of land it could cut 47 million tonnes of CO2 a year.

This is in contrast to the £50 million announced by the Government for accelerating planting rates through the Woodland Carbon Guarantee, and the launch of the Urban Challenge Tree Fund on Tuesday, which promises a new £10 million plan to plant more than 130,000 trees across England’s towns and cities.

Peat bogs, heaths and saltmarshes

Rewilding Britain is instead proposing that farmers and landholders would be paid to enhance and restore peat bogs and heath areas, establish new native woodlands, and protect saltmarshes, ponds, lakes, and offshore ecosystems, as part of the plans.

The group said wildlife would also benefit, while farmers would not lose money and food production would not necessarily suffer.

The organisation launched a petition this month calling for the Government to make “a bold financial and political commitment to nature’s recovery” by considering rewilding and other natural climate solutions to combat climate change. It drew more than 88,000 signatures, with the greatest numbers coming from rural areas, it claimed.

Rewilding Britain’s proposals: Living systems: The organisation claims rewilding the UK’s landscape can restore living systems and allow them to work independently of human intervention. An example of this is allowing deer to live in woodlands in numbers the land can sustain – without relying on humans to feed them. Expand woodland: Many species in Britain disappeared when their homes, such as woodlands and forests, were lost. Stimulating biodiversity could re-establish homes for pine martens, red squirrels, and different species of owls and bats. Nature-based economies: Introducing a zoning approach could support nature-based economies by keeping a core area of land dedicated to nature recovery where there is only light human activity, while a separate buffer zone would allow activities such as recreational fishing or forestry. Natural engineering: Rewilding can allow nature to shape the landscape. Beavers are a prime example of this in action: the animals create dams and ponds with their precision nibbling, which supports a range of wildlife and prevents flooding. Other important land-shapers include the lynx and wolf. Celtic rainforest: Britain has remnants of British rainforest, and rewilding could see the expansion of this kind of habitat and remaining areas of Atlantic Oak Woodland, such as Coed Felinrhyd in Wales, which is home to rich habitats of trees, lichen, moss and fern.

Rewilding Britain also wants to see the Government to implement a series of reforms, such as integrating carbon emission cuts into new policies covering public money going towards public goods, in order to incentivise greater action.

It is also proposing an enforced economy-wide carbon pricing system linked to emissions in order to raise funds for solving climate concerns, and for plans to be implemented that would support locally-led partnerships to coordinate action across landholdings to help tackle climate change.



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Rebecca Wrigley, Chief Executive of Rewilding Britain, said the UK needs “new thinking and practical action” if the Government is to meet its long-term and legally-binding commitments to combat the effects of climate change.

“We are calling for more public debate around how our countryside is managed in the future – how we balance farming sustainably with ensuring local people can make a viable living.

“Our report demonstrates how land use change with nature at its heart can play a major role in our efforts to meet our targets and address climate breakdown. We want the government to use the increasing sense of urgency as an opportunity to radically review how land is managed in the UK,” she said.

Issues for farmers

But the National Farmers Union (NFU) argues that rewilding would instead reduce food production, which could worsen the UK’s carbon footprint through the need to import food from around the globe.

NFU deputy president Guy Smith told i: “The simple fact is that if we rewild vast tracts of British farmland then we will reduce UK food production. But if we do that, then given current patterns of consumption, we will have to import the shortfall from other parts of the world where the carbon footprint of that food may well be worse thus exacerbating the net effect of this global challenge.

“The UK is an eminently sensible place to grow crops and raise livestock. We have some of the highest animal welfare standards in the world. Our grazing management means our grasslands act as a carbon sink therefore giving the meat it produces a lower carbon impact than other places.

“Any broadscale changes in the way we farm in the UK needs to be properly thought through in case actions taken here make the international situation worse.”

Urgent and pressing challenge

In September 2018, the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Afairs introduced the Agriculture Bill to Parliament in order to deliver a smooth transition out of the EU’s agricultural legislation. As part of this, it developed a new Environmental Land Management (ELM) system in which wildlife-rich areas would be expanded and improved.



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A Defra spokesperson responded to the findings, saying: “Climate change is one of the most urgent and pressing challenges we face today.

“As set out in our Agriculture Bill, mitigating and adapting to climate change will be one of the ‘public goods’ that farmers will be rewarded for delivering in the future.

“Paying land managers to restore natural ecosystems such as peatland and woodland will make an important contribution to climate change mitigation. It is also a key part of our long-term vision for a more productive, low-carbon farming sector.”