I’ve always been quite a fan of targets – having measurable aims by which one can assess progress, and the pace of it, is generally a help. Yes, I know it depends what the targets are, and how they are set etc etc etc Of course it does. But the RSPB did set targets for species recovery, for species where we thought our actions could be meaningful, and we sometimes failed, sometimes succeeded, and always learned something from them.
So my ears tend to prick up when I hear someone committing to a target. Recently both the Church of England and the government have entered this area.
The Church of England announced a while back that it was going for carbon neutrality of its buildings by 2045 and complete carbon neutrality by 2050. Some have welcomed these targets some have criticised them as a bit weak. I’m not sure, as I don’t know enough about the CofE (except it has a lot of beautiful drafty buildings).
There are two things, though, that would help me make a better judgement, and that is to see the steps on the journey in terms of how much carbon neutrality will have been achieved by various times and to talk to someone about why those interim targets are as they are.
Will the CofE have attained 50% of its overall goal by 2032 (or 2035) or will it already be, say, 75% of the way by then, or perhaps only 25%. The destination is important but so is the speed of different parts of the journey. If the CofE means to be 75% carbon neutral after a mere 25 years then that sounds pretty good but if it is only 25% then that seems pretty bad. And that’s because in doing anything difficult it tends to be the case that there are easier bits and very difficult bits and the low-hanging fruit should get you off to an impressive start but the difficult stuff takes a lot longer.
And that’s why I’d like a chat with someone in charge of this stuff to get a handle on whether they have much idea of what they are actually going to do – on the ground (literally as the CofE is a massive landowner), in the buildings and in many other ways. If this conversation had a lot of ‘Don’t knows’ in it then I’d feel that even this worthy expression of the desire to be good was made more for expediency than through sincere desire to become a better church. But, obviously I’m not saying that is the case, just wondering what the CofE will actually do, how quickly and by when.
And then there is government and their tree-planting target. I think it was 30 million trees per year. Presumably that started on 13 December, so that means a notional 3.5m should have been planted already. I wonder where they are? In some ways, October-April is the best planting time for trees so we ought to have done quite a few more than a mere 3.5m so that we can take it easier in summer.
Who is the tree czar overseeing this process, I wonder? And do they have their finger on the arboreal pulse? What do you think?
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Fingers crossed more like! Did see lots of trees going into a field last week, everyone in a plastic tube! Nice straight lines of course. Two days ago saw about the same area planted, what, 20 years ago. Every tube still lying by its tree or still clinging on by a thread. No doubt grants for putting them in but no money for going back fives years later to cut the tubes off.
Trees in straight lines do not constitute a woodland even when 20 years on it is a plantation and has little affinity with the natural world.
Ensuring the ancient Yews on their properties are fully protected, would be a good start.
They clearly haven’t familiarised themselves with FC Bulletin 112 (Rodwell & Paterson). Its been around over 25 years!
Yes, I like targets – but as with RSPB they are best when you really think you can do it and it drives the effort forwards ! As you’ve shown with NE’s KPIs they can be worse than rubbish – carefully constructed as a fig leaf to cover failure.
The really big issue at the moment – and which I feel the conservation lobby has fallen for – is long term targets with no ‘step points’. The 25 year plan is the obvious case in point – there is no doubt the last Government used it solely as a way of fending off doing anything whatsoever – in fact things were going rapidly backwards as some of your commentary eg SSSI condition clearly demonstrates.
A proper plan for more trees will be hockey stick shaped (probably parralleling the temperature rise graph !) because it will take time to plan and develop methodology. The signs of this are not terribly apparent at the moment – it looks more like another vacuous if not empty pledge.
I’d like to see a move away from counting the number of trees planted and instead measuring the area. A million trees sounds like a huge amount, but may be just 100ha at normal forestry spacings (other spacings are available). So, 30m trees is (give or take) “only” 3000ha, which is what our Area Office was planting in a good year in one small part of the Highlands in the 1980s.
Release of land, as it always was, will be a serious constraint unless there’s a major shift (reduction) in agricultural support. There remains a danger that without a coherent land use policy and strategy a fair proportion of new woodland/forests will be directed onto the same upland margins which created the conflict with nature and landscape in the past.
I don’t know if the CofE is the same as the Church Commissioners, but the latter certainly had a large forestry portfolio in the past. Scope perhaps for making some changes to their woodland management.