Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs:

To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, what steps his Department is taking to tackle climate change.

The UK is committed to taking ambitious, far-reaching action to tackle climate change and meet net zero; this legally binding target requires the UK to bring all greenhouse gas emissions to net zero by 2050. Defra is playing its part in contributing to this.

The Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy leads across Government on climate change mitigation and net zero and Defra is the Government lead for climate change adaptation. Defra is responsible for efforts to reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions in the following sectors: agriculture, waste, land-use and fluorinated gases (F-gases). It also has responsibility for promoting forestry in order to capture carbon.

The ambitious 25 Year Environment Plan (25 YEP) committed to leave the environment in a better state than we found it. Mitigating and adapting to climate change is one of the ten goals in the 25 YEP. Actions include:

• The Clean Growth Strategy and 25 YEP set out a range of specific commitments to reduce emissions from agriculture. Defra is also looking at going further; considering ways to reduce agricultural emissions controlled directly within the farm boundary and looking at a broad range of measures including improvements in on-farm efficiency.
• Our manifesto set a high ambition for trees, to increase planting across the UK to 30,000 hectares per year by 2025, aligning with the Committee on Climate Change’s recommendation to increase planting to reach net zero. In last year’s budget we announced £640 million of funding for tree planting and peatland restoration to support these ambitions.
• Peatland restoration is a key component of the Government's Nature for Climate Fund that will lead to the restoration of 35,000 ha of peatland over the next five years.
• We are delivering on our 2018 Resources and Waste Strategy, including plans to reduce the amount of waste sent to landfill and the GHG emissions associated with the breakdown of biodegradable waste.
• We have committed to an 85% cut in the use of the main type of F-gas by 2036. We have continued to cut F-gas consumption in the UK at a faster pace than required under our international commitments, reducing levels by over 37% since 2015.

However, adapting to the inevitable changes in our climate is also vital. Whilst we continue to reduce our contribution to climate change, we are also taking robust action to improve the resilience of our people, economy and environment, this includes:

• The second National Adaptation Programme (NAP). This was published in 2018 and sets out how we will address priority climate risks, as identified in the 2017 Climate Change Risk Assessment.
• Adaptation is rightly integrated throughout the policies and programmes of government. The NAP includes actions in a broad range of areas, including the natural environment, infrastructure, people and the built environment, business and industry, and local government.
• We engage with key national stakeholders on climate resilience, supporting organisations reporting under the Climate Change Act's Adaptation Reporting Power. Over 90 organisations have committed to report by the end of 2021 on actions they are taking to strengthen preparedness for climate risks.
• In November 2018 we published, with the Met Office, a new set of UK Climate Projections 2018 (UKCP18), which include global and regional scenarios. In September 2019 local projections were launched, which provide locally relevant climate change information on a similar resolution to that of weather forecast models (2.2km). The Government will make use of UKCP18 to inform its planning and decision-making, and the Projections will also help businesses and individuals to take action to improve resilience.