Defra is committed to take action to mitigate climate change and to adapt to its impact. As the cornerstone of our future agriculture policy, the new Environmental Land Management (ELM) system will pay public money for the provision of environmental public goods, including mitigation and adaption to climate change. Our Clean Growth Strategy (CGS) and 25 Year Environment Plan also set out a range of specific commitments to reduce emissions from agriculture.<\/p>
This year we have started to develop a new emissions reduction plan for agriculture, which will set out our long-term vision for a more productive, low-carbon farming sector. This policy development will be informed by research, modelling, stakeholder engagement and feasibility studies. We are establishing a Lowland Agricultural Peat Taskforce to identify how to protect our peat carbon stores and prevent further emissions. In addition we are making progress towards our target to plant 11 million new trees in this parliament and continuing to phase down fluorinated gases.<\/p>
For waste, the majority of our emissions are in the form of methane generated by biodegradable waste breaking down anaerobically in landfill. We have made significant improvements in this area, with emissions from the waste sector falling by 70% since 1990. This is mostly due to the implementation of methane recovery systems at UK landfill sites, as well as policies such as the landfill tax reducing the amount of waste disposed of here.<\/p>
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Further improvements will come from policies announced in the recent Resources and Waste Strategy, which are currently being consulted on. For example, we want to introduce a consistent set of materials to be collected across local authorities and municipal businesses, which would include food waste being collected separately. This is expected to divert a significant amount of biodegradable waste away from landfill and therefore lead to a reduction in the associated emissions.<\/p>
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