World International Day of Forests: tree-planting and targets

By Diana Serenli

Two years after the government scheme to boost tree planting was introduced, they are well behind their target

Wide shot of forest tree branches in the sky. Credit: Diana Serenli

In 2019 the government, paired with Forestry England, pledged £50 million to encourage farmers and landowners to plant trees to help tackle climate change. Their aim is 11 million by 2022. But the Woodland Carbon Guarantee which pledges to make Britain zero carbon by 2050 is behind schedule.

From 2019 to 2020, 13,700 hectares (ha) of new woodland was planted in the UK, though only 10% of it was in England. In the period from April to September 2020, the government replanted 1.32 million trees encompassing 763 ha of land and in 2019 the scheme had only sown 277 thousand trees, covering only 156 ha.

Since the scheme began, a total of 3.6m trees have been planted, but there are fears it will never reach its target in the next 12 months.

Last year, Chancellor Rishi Sunak created a new funding scheme to give £640 million in a Nature for Climate plan to plant more than 40 million trees restoring 35,000 hectares of land in England. As there is no time limit to this plan, the aim of hitting net-zero in 2050 is still possible, though the start date to this arrangement is yet to be confirmed.