RAC member, Paul Appleby discusses a recent report by Rewilding Britain.
It is generally accepted that global warming compared with pre-industrial levels needs to be kept below 1.5ºC if possible and certainly below 2ºC if catastrophic climate change is to be avoided. However, as Rewilding Britain point out in their recent report Rewilding and Climate Breakdown: How Restoring Nature Can Help Decarbonise the UK (https://www.rewildingbritain.org.uk/our-work/rewilding-vs-climate-breakdown):
“Reducing carbon emissions alone will not be enough to keep the heating of the planet below 1.5ºC. Large amounts of carbon also need to be removed from the atmosphere.”
There are some high-tech (and extravagant) methods of removing carbon from the atmosphere, but as the environmental activist George Monbiot points out, the restoration of living systems offers a cheaper solution (https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2019/apr/03/natural-world-climate-catastrophe-rewilding). Rewilding Britain suggest that one quarter of UK land could be restored to nature through a scheme that would:
"...create 2m hectares (4.94m acres) of new woodland and 2m hectares of species-rich meadows, and ensure full protection of the UK’s 2m hectares of peat bogs and heaths”
Together, “these ecosystems would absorb and store carbon dioxide equivalent to 10% of the UK’s annual emissions” whilst providing other benefits such as flood mitigation and the enhancement of biodiversity and lanscape amenity value.
The scheme would be expected to cost £1.9 billion, around two-thirds of the £3 billion the UK currently spends on European Union farm subsidies, which constitute more than one-third of the EU budget and disproportionally benefit large landowners (https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2018/mar/23/eu-in-state-of-denial-over-destructive-impact-of-farming-on-wildlife). The scheme would also require massive changes in land use, although, as the Rewilding Britain report points out, there are 1.8m hectares of deer stalking estates and 1.3m hectares of grouse moor estates in the UK that could be put to better use. A new subsidy system could be used to “support farmers and other landowners to increase carbon sequestation on their land and restore damaged and degraded ecosystems”, helping the UK to achieve its commitments under the Climate Change Act. A parliamentary petition in support of the proposals (https://petition.parliament.uk/petitions/254607) has already gained more than 100,000 signatures, meaning that it will be considered for debate in Parliament.
Paul Appleby, RAC member.
Full report available here
This article was originally published here. Reproduced with permission.
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The views expressed by our Research News contributors are not necessarily the views of The Vegan Society.
