Countryside champions, the Campaign to Protect Rural England, have welcomed the Forestry Panel’s progress report on their vision for the future of England’s forests but emphasise the need for stronger protection for trees in national planning policy. Countryside champions, the Campaign to Protect Rural England, have welcomed the Forestry Panel’s progress report on their vision for the future of England’s forests but emphasise the need for stronger protection for trees in national planning policy.

Emma Marrington, Rural Policy Campaigner for CPRE, says: “We are pleased the Forestry Panel agrees that the benefits of woods and forests are greatly undervalued. The Government were wrong to see Forestry Commission land as just another asset to sell off. This report makes it crystal clear that the benefits provided by the public forest estate offer value for money.”

The final recommendations by the Independent Panel on Forestry, due in April 2012, will come at a vital time for the future of England’s countryside. The final National Planning Policy Framework is expected around the same time and if this is not greatly improved, it is likely to leave much of our countryside as an easy target for development.

Emma Marrington concluded: “The Government must listen to the Forestry Panel’s recommendations and ensure that a secure future if planned for the public forest estate. Our trees, woods and forests need to be more effectively protected, for the benefit of all, for generations to come.”

Meanwhile the Committee on Climate Change (CCC), the UK Government advisers, has released a new review highlighting the importance of taking a sustainable and strategic approach to bioenergy to meet UK carbon budgets. The review draws on UKERC’s latest report – Energy from biomass: the size of the global resource, released last month.

The Committee's report reviewed more than 90 global studies to get to the heart of the controversy surrounding the role that biomass could play in the future energy systems. The results suggest that up to one fifth of global energy could be provided by biomass (plants) without damaging food production.

“If we make the best use of agricultural residues, energy crops and waste materials then getting one fifth of current global energy supply from biomass is a reasonable ambition”, says Dr Raphael Slade, the report’s lead author and a Research Fellow at Imperial College London. “But it is also evident that more bio-energy you want the harder it becomes to reconcile demand for food, energy and environmental protection.”

The CCC report concludes that the UK will need to use at least 10% bioenergy and recommends that it is used for hard to decarbonise sectors such as aviation.

Both reports suggest that technical advances provide the least contentious route to increased bio-energy production, but it is clear that policy will need to encourage innovation and investment. “A renewed focus on increasing food and energy crop yields could deliver a win-win opportunity as long as it is done without damaging soil fertility or depleting water resources”, says Dr Slade. “There’s plenty of scope for experimentation to make sure we get it right”.

UKERC ‘s report of the global biomass resource and the CCC’s review look at the role of biomass in future carbon budgets and will feed in to the UK Government’s Bioenergy strategy due to be published in Spring 2012.