A climate activist says planting trees on farmland across Wales to sell carbon credits is “wiping farmers off the map” and “not looking at the whole picture”. The credits are used to offset carbon emissions with each one equating to a ton of carbon dioxide.
But Vicky Moller from Group Resilience say carbon credits allow people to avoid their environmental responsibilities “They’re extremely dangerous because they’re a form of greenwashing, they exonerate people from stopping using fossils fuels which is essential.” She went on to say “they’re being used currently as a commercial tool to allow us to continue to destroy the planet”
However, with just 21% of Welsh land considered favourable for farming according to The Welsh Government’s July 2022 farming sector briefing, the National Farmers Union say they don’t want the burden of tackling climate change to fall unfairly on rural communities.
NFU Cymru’s communication manager Daniel Johns says tree planting targets aren’t easy to manage for farmers.
“what we don’t want to see is us exporting our environmental responsibilities elsewhere, so actually we decrease our ability to produce food in this country but we import it in from other areas of the world which don’t farm to the same envrionmental standards as us.”
Daniel Johns, NFU Cymru Communications Manager.
The Welsh government say they need to plant 86 million trees by the end of the decade if they are to meet their Net Zero target by 2050.