The Queen’s jubilee tree planting plan has been sponsored by companies linked to deforestation, activists say.
Across the country, people have been asked to “plant a tree for the jubilee” in honor of the queen’s 70th birthday on the throne.
The Queen’s Green Canopy program will dedicate a network of 70 ancient forests across the UK and identify 70 ancient trees to “celebrate Her Majesty’s 70 years of service”.
The measure aims to reforest the UK. However, a campaign group has expressed concern about some of the scheme’s “platinum” sponsors, which appear on the official website. These include McDonald’s, which has been linked to deforestation in Brazil.
Another platinum sponsor is Coutts, the Queen’s Bank. As part of the NatWest group, Coutts is investing in several companies that Wild Card NGO activists accuse of benefiting from deforestation.
These include the Drax power company, which uses biomass as fuel. During 2021, the Drax Power Station in Yorkshire burned 7.7 million tonnes of pellets made from freshly cut (“green”) wood, but there is growing concern about the sustainability of this practice.
NatWest is also investing in the UPM pulp mill, which has been accused of deforestation in Uruguay by harvesting paper trees. The energy company Vattenfall, which sells wood pellets and chips to energy companies, is also funded by the group.
Activists have accused the royal family of helping large corporations clean up their environmental records.
Louisa Casson, head of forests at Greenpeace UK, said: “Unfortunately, the number of trees that this program could help plant is a small fraction of the number that corporate sponsors of the program have helped destroy. It is an insult to volunteers. involved in using their efforts to wash away the reputation of companies that drive deforestation around the world. “
Joel Scott-Halkes, co-founder of Wild Card, added: “The royal family is helping big corporations clean up their own demolition activities on the planet. As representatives of our nation, they are implicating us all in a cover-up. ashamed of the terrible environmental reputation of these global companies.
“As Britain’s largest landowning family, the royal family should use their time to reclaim and reforest their own huge estates, not lending their name to companies like McDonald’s.”
Wild Card also criticized the scheme to grant platinum sponsorship to Rentokil, when the company announced its services for the killing of winged insects, the number of which has decreased by 60% since 2004.
Emma Smart, the campaign coordinator for the NGO, said: “A company that benefits from the extermination of bees, ants, moths, wasps and flies essential for the survival of tree tops, vital not only for nature but also for humans, it is not just a green wash, it is eco-friendly ”.
Rentokil said: “The kind of work we do is helping customers control flies in food production or food preparation facilities, bed bugs in hotels, cockroaches in kitchens. We also work in parts of the world where mosquitoes cause malaria and zika [virus]with the associated serious impact on human health. “
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During her reign, the Queen has planted more than 1,500 trees worldwide and her subjects have been asked to plant millions across the UK as a “special gift” for the jubilee celebrations.
However, their own land is relatively devoid of trees. The royal family owns more than 850,000 acres (350,000 hectares) of land and coastline, but many of their estates have less tree cover than other parts of the United Kingdom. For example, the Duchy of Cornwall, owned by Prince Charles, has only 6% tree cover compared to 16% across the UK.
Balmoral, the Queen’s estate in Scotland, would naturally be a temperate rainforest, but environmentalists have noted that it contains large expanses of wetlands and only small fragments of forest remain.
Crown ownership manages a £ 14.1 billion property portfolio, which includes Windsor Great Park and urban areas such as Regent Street in central London, as well as 264,000 acres of farmland, forest and upland land. An independent commercial business, delivers all its profits to the Treasury, which passes 25% of the profits – with a delay of two years – to the Queen through the Sovereign Grant.
Activists have previously called on the Crown Estate to commit to making room for nature, and potentially the forest, even if that would affect profits.
A spokesman said: “The Queen’s Green Canopy is very grateful to our platinum supporters who have helped to allow the planting of over a million trees in the UK since October 2021. Every company that has donated Generous support for the HQC is committed to rigorous and challenging goals on both deforestation and biodiversity.
“As a charity that has not received funding from taxpayers, we depend on donors to achieve our goals, which is to fund the planting of trees in areas of greatest need in the UK.
“With this support we will continue to plant a significant number of trees in the fall until the end of the platinum jubilee year. The legacy of this campaign will make a difference for future generations and encourage the planting of trees for much time in the future “.
A McDonalds spokesman told the Guardian: “McDonald ‘s is committed to eliminating deforestation from its global supply chains by 2030.
“2020 saw us reach an important milestone by achieving our goal of supporting deforestation-free supply chains for several of our primary ingredients and materials: beef, chicken (soybean feed), palm oil, coffee and the fiber used in customers ’packaging.
“It simply came to our notice then. That is why we are accelerating progress in this area and, as signatories to the UK Soybean Manifesto, we are committed to obtaining soybeans, used both as an ingredient and in animal feed from our supply chains, to from deforestation-free supply chains to the end. of 2025 ”.
Natwest said he had identified biodiversity and the loss of nature as an emerging risk to the bank and was a member of the Taskforce on Nature-Related Financial Disclosures forum.
“Our private bank Coutts is proud to support tree planting in disadvantaged schools and urban areas through Queen’s Green Canopy as part of its broader commitment to inspiring tree planting across the UK. and supporting young people to develop green skills and find work. “
A Drax spokesman argued that they have links to deforestation, saying that some of the forests they use have doubled since the 1950s and that much of the wood used is what they call a waste product.