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Introduction
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Trees are a golden thread running through British history and our cultural identity, from MacBeth and Robin Hood to Winnie the Pooh and Harry Potter. Whether its leaves and acorns, or the entire tree, the oak appears in symbols throughout our land, from the wreath adorning the mysterious Green Man to the Conservative Party’s own logo. Trees are firmly rooted in our national and natural heritage, and, in turn, they root us in our green and pleasant land.
Conservatives understand the philosophical importance of trees. We plant a sapling knowing that we will never sit under its shade. That is a joy reserved for our children and grandchildren. The planting of a tree is a fundamentally selfless act of intergenerational exchange, a core tenet of conservatism. We take pride in acting now to ensure future generations will have a natural world to enjoy.
Majestic to behold, trees are also an integral part of daily life. They provide shelter to wildlife, absorb carbon from the atmosphere, purify our air, boost our mental wellbeing, serve as natural flood defences, cool our urban centres with their shade, strengthen the soil that surrounds them, provide sustenance to humans and animals alike, and increase pride in the local communities that host them.
In 2023, there was a national outcry as we awoke to the news that the beloved Sycamore Gap tree in Northumberland had been felled in an act of wanton vandalism. Steeped in history and cultural significance, the loss of this tree stirred something in our collective psyche. But if we were to look more closely, we would realise that the loss of a solitary sycamore tree is nowhere near as troubling as the realisation that this upland landscape and many others like it were once covered in trees but are no longer.
Despite trees being a feature of every English community, their presence can too easily and too often be taken for granted until it is too late. The UK is one of the most nature-depleted countries in the world, with trees and woodlands some of the most high-profile victims of this decline in biodiversity. Trees are not just nice to have; they deliver many benefits to us and the environment.
The destruction of forests and woodlands has knock-on effects for our changing climate. Preserving and planting more trees in the ground is vital for sequestering carbon. Another way in which trees can prove extremely useful for tackling climate change is through the carbon-rich timber they produce. This material can be used in a multitude of carbon-intensive industries, like construction, that need to decarbonise but will require a steady supply of alternative materials in order to do so. Bolstering our own timber security therefore helps us in our collective national mission to reach net zero emissions by 2050 and supports industries and new jobs along the supply chain, like tree planting and timber processing. A thriving UK commercial forestry sector should be synonymous with greater rates of tree planting.
For timber that is harvested, the more things that can be done to it, the more jobs and industries will be created. A failure to produce and use timber domestically is a failure to create these economic opportunities. The same is true when industry jumps straight to burning wood, which inevitably releases stored up carbon into the atmosphere and removes the possibility of further economic and environmental uses of the product.
At a global level too, trees are integral actors in the fight against climate change and biodiversity loss, with forests acting as our planet’s lungs. Domestically, we are playing our part to tackle the dual climate and biodiversity crises, with our efforts encapsulated in targets to decarbonise and to halt biodiversity loss by 2030. Trees and tree planting will play an important and arguably outsized role in reaching both, which is why the government has also set an incredibly ambitious aim to increase England’s tree cover to 16.5% by 2050 and to plant 30,000 hectares of woodland in the UK annually by March 2025.
The case for tree planting is clear but, collectively, we are not doing enough of it. There is no denying that woodland cover across the UK has increased, from 9% in 1980 to 13.3% in 2022. However, England still falls far behind its European neighbours with woodland covering a mere 10% of land (7% in 1980). The fact it is currently at this level and not even lower is in no small part thanks to the efforts made by different Conservative governments throughout the 20th century to right some of the mass woodland clearing wrongs of the past. In the wake of the Sycamore Gap tree felling last year, the current government honoured its commitment to trees when it announced a raft of measures to support tree planting, including the creation of a new national forest.
Even with these new announcements, we are still falling well short of reaching our national tree planting targets and unlocking more of the many benefits that trees can provide. This may seem perplexing in light of the many valiant efforts we all will have seen in our local communities to plant more, led by volunteers, charities, and councils. But the scale of the tree planting challenge we have set ourselves will require the private sector to act too. For the private sector, the question of planting trees at the moment is not so much a question of “why not?”, but rather “why bother?”. As it stands, both the risk and reward of doing so mean the incentives often simply do not add up to an attractive proposition.
It is with the need to play our part to tackle climate change and biodiversity loss in mind, and in recognition of the economic, social, and environmental opportunities that trees can create, that we have produced this manifesto. At the last general election, there was a great temptation for political parties to engage in a bidding war on the number of trees they would plant in government. With the next general election now firmly on the horizon, it is time for a more realistic and practical approach based not only on the number of trees we plant, but what we want to achieve from planting them and how we will deliver them.
We do not profess to solve all of the problems facing trees and tree planting. Instead we offer a set of recommendations that help ensure that the incentives offered to plant trees are sufficiently appealing and fair, whilst mitigating the risks to trees that past generations have had a hand in creating. In order that future generations may have plentiful opportunities to behold a mighty oak tree’s majesty for themselves or to wander through the enchanting world of a seemingly unending woodland, it is our duty as conservatives to act now.
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