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 keep the global temperature at less than 1.5 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels.

The Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy is the lead Government department for policy on climate change mitigation. Defra is responsible for efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions in the natural resources sectors, including agriculture, land use, forestry, waste management, and fluorinated gases. We have halved our emissions from these sectors since 1990 and they now account for 15% of total UK emissions. We recognise the need to go further and are taking forward a number of commitments set out in the 25 Year Environment Plan to reduce emissions further.

These include: establishing a Lowland Agricultural Peat Taskforce to protect our peat carbon stores and prevent further emissions; making progress towards our target to plant 11 million new trees in this Parliament; implementing our new Resources and Waste Strategy; and continuing to phase down fluorinated gases. The UK is ahead of our international obligations under the Montreal Protocol, having already started to cut hydrofluorocarbons, most recently cutting their usage by 37% since 2018. In the 2018 Autumn Budget, the Chancellor announced £50 million in financing to plant new woodlands to tackle climate change through the Woodland Carbon Guarantee.