Carbon And Competing Land Use

With the carbon market beginning to take shape throughout the United Kingdom, we are starting to see tensions emerge around competing priorities for land.

For example, when land is ear-marked for a carbon offsetting or sequestration project as opposed to using it for other economic purposes.

This is not a new issue. There is a finite amount of land and many widely differing views on what it should be used for; an often-cited case is forestry vs agriculture.

We need more timber and as such more trees - but should we also ringfence more land for agriculture, improving food security in times of international uncertainty?

We have in recent years seen an increasing number of transactions where land has been purchased with a view to implementing a forestry or woodland planting scheme.