April 26th, 2022 by Finlay WilsonSince the 1970s our global consumption of natural resources has tripled – taking a devastating toll on our planet.
Our lifestyles and ever-increasing appetite for raw materials have now destroyed [i]two-thirds of the world’s rainforests, [ii]half the coral reefs, and [iii]87% of all wetlands. A staggering [iv]90 percent of the world’s biodiversity loss has been caused by the extraction and processing of raw materials and in Scotland alone, today, one in nine species – plant, fish and animal – is at risk of extinction.
This is truly tragic and more than ever we need to heed the wake-up call. Failure to act now will only make halting the loss of species and habitats more difficult and could lead to unprecedented consequences for us and our natural world. We must address the quantity of raw materials used in our economy and fix the rapid decline of nature before it’s too late.
Scotland’s Material Flow Accounts show the scale and nature of our consumption by calculating all the raw materials such as oil and metal ores that go into making all the products we use in our day-to-day lives, whether made in Scotland or imported. They show that our material footprint is more than double sustainable levels. What’s more, over 80% of Scotland’s carbon footprint is derived from emissions used to produce the goods we consume.
Rather than our current economic model of fast consumption to drive economies, we need to move to a more circular economy and significantly reduce our reliance on raw materials. This means having products that are repairable and designed to last; made of materials that can be safely reused or recycled. It also means restoring soil and nature, the foundational building blocks of life on Earth.
Next month, the Scottish government will release its much-awaited proposals for the Circular Economy Bill, in a consultation. Scottish Environment LINK together with over 35 organisations have today published a paper calling on the Scottish government to bring forward an ambitious Circular Economy Bill that is fit for purpose.
This is our chance to develop a long-term strategy that makes economic and environmental sense. The bill must include a vision for an economy in which waste and pollution are designed out, products and materials are kept in use and natural systems are regenerated, and which embeds the ‘polluter pays principle’.
Our climate and nature emergencies demand systemic change across our economy. Such systemic change must be driven by targets to focus minds – in all areas of the economy – on reducing our use of raw materials. In the same way that our climate change targets are driving policy to decarbonise energy and heat production, a material footprint target is key to driving policy to create a resilient and sustainable economy.
The bill should also include an obligation to publish a plan, updated every five years, which maps out how to meet our targets; how to address environmentally damaging materials and chemicals, and the requirements that will be placed on different sectors, to help achieve our transition to a more circular economy.
The circular economy bill proposals will include banning the destruction of unsold goods, a welcome step, but only one part of the jigsaw. There should be mandatory public reporting on surplus stock and waste, including supply chain waste for retailers and food services, so we can see how much waste is behind what we buy.
We need to ensure products stay in use for as long as possible and their use is optimised. Legislation should introduce a repairability index, telling consumers how easy a product is to repair. This both informs consumer choice and pushes manufactures to make products which are durable and can be readily mended.
Retailers should be required to take back products at the end of their life. This will encourage them to think about the products they sell, incentivising design that retains value in components and materials.
In general, we must move away from single use. Products that are particularly environmentally harmful such as plastic wet wipes, should be banned, and reusable alternatives promoted. Single-use cups and other crockery should be banned where possible and again reusable alternatives sought. In our villages, towns and cities, there should be re-useable cup deposit schemes – similar to those planned for bottles and cans next year.
When things can no longer be repaired or reused, the materials from which they are made need to be recycled. The bill must include a commitment to phase out harmful chemicals, which make re-use and recycling unsafe, and composite materials, that are difficult to recycle.
It is not only environmental charities which want an ambitious circular economy bill. Many businesses, from those involved in resource management, to construction, to biotechnology and textiles; want to do the right thing and are leading the way in more circular practices. However, a more sustainable approach is often more expensive and legislation that ‘levels the playing field’ is needed.
The health of our planet is deteriorating at an alarming rate, placing us at a critical point in our history and leaving us with no alternative but to live more responsibly. We can no longer get away with taking what we want from nature and damaging its delicate balance with no repercussions on the precious life it helps to sustain. Put bluntly, this includes us and the future wellbeing of our children.
Nature is resilient. Given the chance, it has an amazing capacity to regenerate. It’s for us to heed the wake-up call before it really is too late.
Dr Phoebe Cochrane, Scottish Environment LINK
This article was originally published in the Scotsman on the 26th April 2022
[i] Only a third of the tropical rainforest remains intact (regnskog.no)
[ii] Over half of coral reef cover across the world has been lost since 1950 | Natural History Museum (nhm.ac.uk)
[iii] Threats to wetlands | WWT
[iv] https://www.resourcepanel.org/reports/global-resources-outlook
Farming has profoundly shaped Scotland: our people, our economy, our traditions, our landscapes
and our wildlife.
Nature is also a key part of Scotland’s identity. In a 2019 survey for Scottish Environment LINK, 94
percent of the Scottish public saw our natural environment as ‘very important’ or ‘quite important’
to both Scotland’s economy and its national identity. With 75 percent of Scotland’s land under
farming management supported by government grants, how we farm our land is clearly central to
our future.
The Scottish Government is currently considering how to replace the decades-old system of funding
for farming. This provides a key opportunity to encourage farming methods that protect and restore
nature and guard against climate change, instead of methods that contribute to climate change and
damage the natural environment.
As an issue, this reaches right across Scottish society. In rural communities, farms able to produce
healthy food and support jobs become a key part of the rural social fabric. Where those farms are
also maintaining areas of natural habitats, where species can live and move, rural communities
benefit even more – not just through the healthy environment but in having natural assets that
visitors are more likely to want to see.
And then there are the benefits to nature too: agricultural management is one of the most
significant pressures on biodiversity, with intensification, greater use of pesticides and fertilisers,
and changes to land use all impacting on species decline, soil and water quality and carbon storage.
To date, Scottish agri-environmental schemes have been used to balance production against nature
and ecosystem integrity and when they have worked, they have resulted in positive changes – in
breeding farmland birds for instance. But with the scale of the nature and climate crisis we face this
piecemeal approach is not enough.
The new system of agricultural funding must be focused on supporting farmers to manage their land
for nature, the climate and our people. Taxpayer funding must lead to the outcomes the public
expect: a healthy, vibrant and resilient natural environment that is able to provide clean water,
healthy and productive soils, carbon storage, healthy and nutritious food, diverse and resilient
pollinators and the native species and habitats that are part of our national psyche.
From LINK’s perspective this is about supporting all farmers, large and small, to make changes to
embed action for nature and climate into farming practice. Farmers must be able to access expert
knowledge, advice and training to support and develop sustainable local opportunities through
thriving nature, local food and resources, be that employment, accommodation, services or
becoming part of wider green tourism initiatives. What we shouldn’t do is fund farming practices
that harm biodiversity, fragment habitats, degrade soil or water and emit carbon.
On a recent visit to Monzie Farm in Highland Perthshire, we explored these issues with the Cabinet
Secretary, Mairi Gougeon, and showed her the sorts of farming practices we’re talking about and
that need more support.
Independent farm conservation advisor Richard Lockett said: ‘Farm like Monzie have a great track
record of managing land sensitively and producing good quality food in a diverse, wildlife rich
environment. We took this opportunity to show the Cabinet Secretary how well-funded, targeted
incentives backed by good advice is essential if we want to address the challenges of biodiversity loss
and climate change.’
Now is the time to be thinking about the future for farming. With reform coming, we must get the
changes right and ensure the industry is sustainable today and for the future. Scotland’s record of
action during this UN Decade of Ecosystem Restoration must look towards our legacy to future
generations as well as supporting people and nature today.
Deborah Long is chief officer at Scottish Environment LINK.
This article was first published in The Scotsman on April 21st 2022
“To save wildlife and wild places the traction has to come not from the regurgitation of bad-news data but from the poets, prophets, preachers, professors, and presidents who have always dared to inspire.”
J. Drew Lanham
Scotland currently ranks 28th from the bottom in the Biodiversity Intactness Index (RSPB & Natural History Museum, 2021). This means that nature in Scotland is more depleted than 88% of 240 countries and territories across the world. Perhaps even more bleakly, an alarming 1 in 9 species are presently at risk of extinction in Scotland.
Whilst these facts and figures importantly communicate the extent of the biodiversity crisis that Scotland currently faces, they can also make conversations around Scotland’s wildlife feel overwhelming because of the scale of the problem. The everyday experience, familiarity, and value of Scotland’s remaining extraordinary flora and fauna can get lost in these universal statistics.
For Members of the Scottish Parliament – those people who are currently tasked with leading Scotland and its natural environment towards a sustainable, thriving future – I imagine that the biodiversity crisis can also sometimes feel vast and impenetrable. Where policies are made that affect different species and habitats, the everyday impact of these decisions can perhaps feel distant from the realpolitik of Holyrood. Whilst MSPs are thoroughly interwoven with the concerns of their constituents, many of whom care and raise concerns about their surrounding natural environment, the voice of Scotland’s species and habitats can sometimes feel unheard in the decision-making process.
In 2013, the Scottish Government updated its strategy for the conservation and enhancement of biodiversity in Scotland, titled ‘2020 Challenge for Scotland’s Biodiversity’. One of the principle aims of this strategy was to connect people with the natural world and to involve them more in decision-making. That same year, Scottish Environment LINK and its members would echo this call back to Parliamentarians themselves through a new initiative that sought to connect and build relationships between MSPs and nature.
The Nature Champions initiative (then known as Species Champions) aimed to foster greater connection between politicians and threatened species and habitats beyond legislation. Through partnering MSPs with a particular species or habitat, the initiative hoped to ‘give a voice’ for Scotland’s wildlife in Parliament and raise awareness and promote action to restore and safeguard Scotland’s environment.
Nine years since the initiative launched, it has been hugely successful in linking MSPs with previously unknown or undervalued habitats and species. Incredibly, over 80% of MSPs were engaged in the initiative in the previous Parliament, and following significant evidence of its impact on decision-making, it has also inspired similar programmes in Wales, Northern Ireland and England.
Crucially, the relationships fostered between species and habitats and MSPs do not just include species and habitats that are already at the forefront of Scotland’s cultural identity – the golden eagles and Caledonian pine forests – but also those that quietly enrich ecosystems and their surrounding communities: the lowland raised bogs, flapper skates, flame shells and natterjack toads. The Nature Champions initiative has included many invertebrates, plants and fungi that are integral to Scotland’s iconic landscapes, but unassumingly go about their work and without fanfare when they are at risk. The Nature Champions initiative challenges this status quo and enables MSPs to develop a more nuanced view of what preserving and enhancing biodiversity really means ‘on the ground’.
Through the Nature Champions initiative, MSPs have had the opportunity to visit these extraordinary species and habitats in their own constituencies, to see them for themselves and more comprehensively grapple with the threats, community concerns and actions required to support their survival. Utilising the expert of advice of their accompanying LINK member host organisations, MSPs have been able to bring these species to the forefront of parliamentary debate to ensure that these wild things and wild places are present to inspire generations to come.
At present, there are currently 63 Nature Champions represented by MSPs in the 6th Scottish Parliament. There are still many species and habitats who desperately need championing to ensure that they are present in the minds of decision-makers as Scotland prepares for the UN’s upcoming biodiversity conference, COP15, alongside achieving the Scottish Government’s post-2020 Biodiversity Framework.
At LINK, we will continue to recruit and support cross-party MSP Nature Champions to ensure Scotland’s natural environment is preserved and enhanced going into the future. At the start of this Decade for Ecosystem Restoration, now is the time for Nature’s voice in the Scottish Parliament to be strong, loud and well informed.
You can find more about the initiative on our website, including which MSP is championing which species and habitat. You can also keep up to date with what the different Nature Champions are up to as well as learning interesting facts about Scotland’s wildlife and wild places on the Nature Champions Twitter page.
Keep an eye out for this Friday 22nd April, where the Nature Champions account will be launching its weekly #FunFactFriday awareness-raising campaign to mark Earth Day.
By Andy Marks, Nature Champions Coordinator
In 2011, LINK published our first Rhetoric to Reality assessment. In it, we commissioned an independent consultant to assess 8 key areas of environmental policy on how far reality on the ground had matched the rhetoric of policy. Now, ten years on, we’ve commissioned another assessment. A decadal review seems timely: it covers the life span of two Parliaments, we’re at the start of the UN Decade of Ecosystem Restoration and we have a new Parliament with the Greens holding ministerial portfolios, the first time ever in UK politics. The Bute House Agreement is bringing environmental legislation to the fore and giving impetus to Scotland’s’ leadership on climate and nature.
“The challenges facing biodiversity are as important as the challenge of climate change, and I want Scotland to be leading the way in our response.” Rt. Hon. Nicola Sturgeon MSP, July 2019
Looking more widely, while COP26 in November didn’t go far enough to ensure the world halts warming to 1.5oC, it was good to see nature at the forefront and the clear recognition that the climate and nature crises are interlinked and urgent. The very recent IPCC report indicates we are most definitely not going far or fast enough on climate action. We need now to see momentum for nature and climate built upon and furthered at the Nature COP15 due later this year. That is our next opportunity to commit to targets to halt the loss of nature by 2030 and to restore it by 2050. Tough targets but we are living through a crisis.
This is just one of the many opportunities we have in front of us this year and just one of the many reasons why working together with our partners is so crucial. Wider and better collaboration has never been more needed – to bring people together, to win more hearts and to demand that government delivers the changes that are needed.
This report is our contribution to the debate. It is a springboard to help us identify what needs to happen in Scotland to meet our ambitions, and what we, as the environment sector, can do. We welcome the government’s leadership on the climate emergency and the statements around the nature crisis – we really want to help build that into reality.
This report was born from conversations amongst LINK’s 14 policy groups around the policy areas we wanted to examine. This was followed by interviews with Groups and their members to build the evidence for change, both positive and negative, and to identify a set of recommendations to help move us all forward from rhetoric into reality. The overall conclusion is that despite the very welcome rhetoric around the nature and climate crises, reality is not yet measuring up. In order for rhetoric to become reality within the next 9 years, we think we need improved scrutiny, audit and challenge, statutory targets, duties and powers, a much stronger voice for the environment across Parliament, government and society and we need to address the balance in power between the environment and economic strategy and it needs funding. Those issues are just as alive today as they were 10 years ago but by working in partnership with government and wider society, it is possible to make the significant changes we need to make in order to restore nature.
Even since we finished this report in April, the good news is that things are changing. Change is happening at an incredible speed here in Scotland. Within the last 2 weeks, we’ve seen, for example, the new interim principles for responsible investment in natural capital, which we welcome, setting a level of ambition that we support and very much want to see turned into reality. The Blue Economy vision has been published, and if the recent welcome commitments on Highly Protected Marine Areas, an inshore cap on fishing, completing protections for the Marine Protected Area network and Priority Marine features are delivered in full, that will be a significant step from rhetoric to reality. We want that pace of change to be maintained.
Our report is available to read here. We’d love to hear your thoughts: contact us via social media and let us know what you think.
Today, we are facing twin emergencies: climate change and biodiversity loss.
“The climate crisis is inseparable from the nature and biodiversity crisis. Scotland has a duty to show leadership on both.”
Rt. Hon. Nicola Sturgeon MSP, Sept 2021
Since COP26 in Glasgow in 2021, we have witnessed a very welcome focus on net-zero and the climate challenge. But there is another challenge that is just as important to the planet: the nature crisis. While it is as important, it is more difficult to grasp what we need to do. Partly because we haven’t yet agreed where we need to aim (our nature targets) and partly because action for climate change can contribute to the nature crisis.
The Biodiversity Intactness Index (BII) is one measure of how Scotland’s natural environment is faring – it measures how intact it is – and intactness equals resilience to change. We also have measures of species decline in terms of abundance and distribution/range through State of Nature Scotland Report 2019 (updated every 3 years). The BII shows the UK is bottom of the G7, and third from the bottom of EU countries. Within the UK, Scotland is doing slightly better than England, Wales or Northern Ireland but better than bottom is not great, especially for a nation that prides itself on its natural environment.
Scotland’s natural environment is just as much under threat as in the rest of the world. The UN has designated this decade as the Decade for Ecosystem Restoration where the world needs to take real, sustained and effective action to restore ecosystems. We have 9 more years to restore the planet and it has never been more urgent.
Ecosystems support all life on Earth. The healthier our ecosystems are, the healthier the planet – and its people, our societies and economies. The UN Decade on Ecosystem Restoration aims to prevent, halt and reverse the degradation of ecosystems on every continent and in every ocean. It can help to end poverty, combat climate change and prevent mass extinction. It will only succeed if everyone plays a part.
Scotland’s ambition to reach net zero by 2045 is already clear. COP15, later this year, will agree global ambitions to halt the loss of nature by 2030 and to restore it by 2050. Both these climate and nature targets are tough to meet. Both can also be tackled through nature based solutions. There is one particular and hugely important example: Nature Networks.
Nature networks are not just an environment policy priority however. To work, they need to be delivered through many strands of policy. One key one, currently out for consultation is the National Planning Framework 4 (NPF4). To be effective and successful, which we believe it absolutely has to be for nature and climate emergency reasons, NPF4 will be a crucial mechanism to embed and enable delivery of Nature networks across Scotland.
Today we face a key question: how can we embed nature restoration within the next 9 years into the planning system to deliver for climate and local communities? This is not a question of choice. It’s a question of how we do it and how we do it effectively and quickly. We can’t afford to bolt nature restoration onto other actions or worse, forget about it until it’s too late.
We’re still only now working out what we’re aiming for in terms of targets for nature restoration. There is widespread concern that nature restoration will get left out of the new planning priorities in NPF4. The new Scottish Biodiversity Strategy and its delivery plan, is due October 2022 and will be key in identifying what we need to do for nature restoration. However, the mismatch in timescales between the design of NPF4 and the biodiversity strategy is a challenge. We clearly need to build action for nature restoration into planning now and, unfortunately that means, in advance of knowing what those targets for nature restoration will be.
NPF 4 has as its ambition and action: ‘tackling and adapting to climate change and restoring biodiversity…through ‘radical change.’
How can NPF4 deliver this radical change?
- Development plans must facilitate biodiversity enhancement, nature recovery and nature restoration across the development plan area
- NPF4 needs to build capacity and support for Nature-Based Solutions to climate change
- Restoration requires linkages: a National Nature Network integrates nature into places that are planned, designed and built on land and at sea.
A National Nature Network is one path to the net-zero, nature positive future we need.
If NPF 4 is to act as a central mechanism to deliver for net-zero and nature positive change, it needs to align with other relevant policies and plans that are also currently tasked with delivering elements of a Nature Network, including Regional Spatial Strategies, Land Use Strategy, Regional Land Use Partnerships, River Basin Management Plans, Forestry Strategy.
It will mean requiring adjoining Local Authorities to coordinate, collaborate and deliver their own nature networks across boundaries in order to link into a national network. These need to define and take account of key components, including woodlands, corridors, stepping-stones and landscapes that are porous to nature.
Vital to the success of NPF4 will be including policy that protects biodiversity gains and builds in future long term network growth.
Thriving biodiversity is good for people, not just because we need to tackle climate change and biodiversity loss for the planet, but because it makes good sense in terms of creating more pleasant places to live which support our health and wellbeing.
These are the reasons why we are looking for a transformative NPF4 that:
- Leads a nationwide shift in planning places to benefit nature, climate and communities
- Pivots from ‘business as usual’ to a new approach that tackles the nature and climate crises to meet future generation needs, and not just today’s
- Embeds a new approach to future prosperity that restores nature, increases our resilience to change and offers a future worth having to new generations
You can find out more about what a nature network is in this film below. More information on nature based solutions can be found here.
By Malachy Clarke, Public Affairs Manager for Friends of the Earth Scotland and a member of LINK’s Planning Group.
Transport is Scotland’s biggest source of climate emission, accounting for over one-third of all emissions. It will be impossible for the Scottish Government to meet their proposed 75% reduction in emissions by 2030 without taking radical action to change our transport system. Encouraging walking, wheeling and cycling through an integrated transport system that encourages public transport and doesn’t give priority to cars will be key to achieving this goal.
The Scottish Government is beginning to accept this and has made some welcome changes, such as expanding free bus travel to under-22s. However, they have not gone far enough. Public transport should be free to all at the point of use, segregated cycle lanes are a necessity for ensuring people feel safe enough to use the roads. The Scottish Government must commit to increasing active travel infrastructure and bold ideas to reinvent our transport system and move people out of private cars and into public and active transport.
Already it has committed to reducing car km usage by 20% by 2030.This is a truly bold and ambitious target and one that Friends of the Earth Scotland welcomes. To meet these goals the Scottish Government will need to reverse a trend of increasing car usage that has gone on for almost 50 years. This will require radical change across our entire transport network.
The routemap for achieving 20% reduction makes it clear that new fourth National Planning Framework needs to play a big role in these changes. NPF4needs to reduce car journeys and make it easier to use sustainable transport. However, neither the plan for reducing car km, nor the current draft of NPF4, are clear on what actual tangible changes will be made to our planning system to achieve this.
There is a huge responsibility on this document but there are no significant details on how the Scottish Government or the NPF4 will meet these needs.
There are a number of measures that could be included to reduce car km usage and increase public transport. Such as:
- Help councils bring buses back into public ownership
- Requirements on density within urban areas
- A robust ban on out-of-town retail parks and any developments that are entirely car dependent (for example, the drive-thru coffee shops we’re seeing pop up across Scotland have to become a thing of the past.)
- A halt on new road building
- Increased bus infrastructure
- Redress the cost imbalance. Public transport costs have consistently risen across Scotland while the cost of motoring has dropped.
The Scottish Government could also make commitments on ending the construction of new trunk roads and diverting the funding into improving walking and cycling and helping councils start new publicly-owned public transport operators as a means of meeting their 20% car km reduction goals.
The Scottish Government is proud of their commitment to ’20 minute neighbourhoods’. However our politicians have yet to grapple with the reality of this commitment. Many communities have lost their only bank branch, and some areas of deprivation don’t even have an ATM. How can we help people use only local services, which they can walk or cycle to, when private companies have abandoned so many communities? The Scottish Government must take a holistic approach to supporting communities across Scotland by supporting high streets, community centres and local clubs to ensure local neighbourhoods are robust and thriving.
The Scottish Government can use the NPF4 to take radical action to tackle climate change and make our neighbourhoods safer, cleaner and more livable. Unfortunately the current draft of the NPF4 fails to do so in any meaningful way.
This blog was written by Malachy Clarke, Public Affairs Manager for Friends of the Earth Scotland and a member of LINK’s Planning Group.
The events in Ukraine are shocking and the ongoing acts of aggression against Ukraine and its people are truly terrible. The daily news images are clearly tragic. We all stand in solidarity and support for the people of Ukraine.
The impact on global food production is another pressure on our planet, heaped upon the existential impacts of climate change and nature loss. Those crises have not gone away. Scottish Environment LINK Food and Farming group members are deeply disappointed to see farming unions both in Scotland, and the UK, arguing for the lowering of environmental standards using the dubious pretext of food security.
These calls for the temporary suspension of greening rules, specifically around Ecological Focus Areas, so that more land can be made available for crop production are extremely troubling for three reasons:
- Cutting into the tiny amounts of land currently put aside for nature will not make any difference to the level of food production possible in Scotland
- Very little grain in Scotland goes directly into human food chains: most is used as animal feed or in the whisky industry. Wholescale change into different food crops would be required, not merely taking more land into current production.
- There is so little land put aside and managed for nature that continuing to chip away at the little that remains, puts Scotland even further back in its long journey towards halting the loss of nature.
eNGOs across Europe are united in calling out this appropriation of land from green measures into production and what would amount to a rolling back on sustainable food policy objectives within the EU Farm to Fork and Biodiversity strategies. We stand with our colleagues in Birdlife International and their open letter, available here.
The arguments are flawed. Firstly, we know that almost 80% of our cereal harvest in Scotland is used for alcohol production or animal feed. Around two-thirds of the EU cereal harvest is used for animal feed or biofuel. Feeding grain to animals (even the most efficient ones) means converting 3 or 4 units of human edible calories or protein to 1 unit. We can ‘afford’ to do this because there is no shortage of cereals.
Secondly, we know that tackling the climate and nature emergency is the only way to ensure long-term food security. The poor harvest in North America last year was caused by drought, while this was counterbalanced by good harvests in India and Australia. As the climate becomes more chaotic, the risk of multiple harvest failures in different parts of the world increases.
Finally, this is all based on the false premise that farming and nature are a zero-sum game. Scotland is committed to becoming a world leader in sustainable and regenerative agriculture. The way forward – for Scotland, for Europe, and globally is farming with nature.
This means rewarding practices that deliver environmental benefit at very little or no cost to production. This would include buffer strips next to water courses for water quality for example, where fiddly pieces of ground with a negative gross margin have a disproportionate value for nature.
“The EFAs create safe corridors and essential food sources for iconic birds like barn owls and kestrels.” Denise Walton, Peelham Farm
“Lots of the EFA options like undersowing and catch crops can actually increase food production in the long run as well as improving the soil. Field margins also provide a home for the bugs which eat the bugs which eat the crops, so also help with sustainable food production.” Pete Ritchie, Nourish Scotland
The real lesson of this crisis is that we must look at the resilience of our food and farming systems. More than ever, we must shift towards environmentally friendly farming practices, such as agroecology, organic farming, and agroforestry, which provide the only path to ensure long-term food security, food sovereignty, and the overall sustainability of food systems.
Simply growing more grain and doubling down on unsustainable practices is not the answer. We need to think about the use and costs of nitrogen-based fertilisers and focus instead on the ways in which we can fix nitrogen naturally, and how we can use grass and food waste rather than wheat for animal feed.
We should maintain and improve Ecological Focus Areas, not drop them. We should be adopting a strategic approach to land use, and the current atrocities in Ukraine should not be used as an excuse to undermine efforts to tackle the twin climate and nature emergencies.
Thankfully, after a great deal of worry on the part of our members, we were somewhat relieved to hear Cabinet Secretary hold to the vision statement published last week and continue to support nature-friendly, climate-friendly farming in Scotland. She said “I want to make clear the Scottish Government’s commitment to supporting farmers and crofters to meet more of our food needs, and to do so more sustainably. However, it is really important that we maintain and enhance nature and that we do not scale back our efforts in that regard. Events in Ukraine, tragic as they are, do not lessen the adverse global impacts on the climate and on biodiversity that we are facing. Indeed, they only strengthen the case for doing more because, ultimately, that is how we can make our farms and food production systems more resilient”.
We agree. Now is not the time to add to the planet’s food insecurity and damage to ecosystem services that support us all. Now is the time to invest in resilient ecosystems able to produce food, and all the other services we depend on, thus increasing our own security and that of the planet.
Dr Deborah Long, Chief Officer, LINK
By Helen Todd, Campaign and Policy Officer for Ramblers Scotland
Imagine there’s a disused railway line running through fields near where you live. It lies parallel to a busy road and connects two villages. It’s used by locals walking their dogs, but it would also make a great off-road route for walkers, cyclists, and horse-riders. Or even people pushing buggies or in wheelchairs. There’s potential for it to extend even further to the nearby town. Then someone gets planning permission to build a new house partway along the line. The far end of the plot includes the railway line. Soon they’ve fenced the whole area as part of their garden, severing the link. Now you’ve lost the dream of a safe path for your kids to cycle to school. Or for a longer distance route that visitors and residents alike will enjoy. If only someone in the planning department at the local council had thought ahead! They could have inserted a planning condition to force new owners to keep a strip of land for public access.
This is one example of how the planning system can protect and secure access rights for public benefits. But it’s not only an issue in rural areas. Planners can demand the creation of routes within new greenfield or brownfield developments. They can ensure rough ground or woodland remain accessible, for the benefit of nature and people. By setting conditions or securing agreements with developers, they can ensure those with deepest pockets pay for the work.
Scotland’s National Planning Framework Four (NPF4) is currently out for consultation. This document will incorporate every element of Scottish Planning Policy (SPP). It will also set out proposals for national developments such as electricity transmission lines. The current SPP says that you must consider Scottish access rights, under the Land Reform (Scotland) Act 2003, when planning or developing land. This makes access rights a material consideration in planning. Yet this specific reference doesn’t appear in NPF4. Without this explicit mention, will public access lack protection in future?
Despite this reservation, there is much to welcome in NPF4. It has plans to help people get outdoors and be more active. Well maintained and accessible natural places support our everyday health and wellbeing. They contribute to good placemaking. It’s particularly important that access to green places is spread around all communities. There are some very positive policies in NPF4. Those include making sure that local authorities support active travel and improve parks and natural areas.
NPF4 aims to create “20-minute neighbourhoods”, where you can reach everything you need on foot, bike or wheelchair. This is a good ambition, especially in urban areas. It has the potential to cut car journeys – currently over half of all trips are under five miles. Having pleasant, safe green networks to walk the dog or get to shops, school or work will improve quality of life. It will also reduce congestion and pollution. There’s also a commitment to a national walking, wheeling and cycling network of long-distance paths. This builds upon existing work in NPF3. While there is a need for more pace and ambition for the network, this is good news.
It’ll be difficult to deliver on these policies unless we ensure access rights are protected and planned for. Without clear references to access rights, NPF4 could result in the loss of greenspace and public access. For example, it could prompt expensive tussles to regain routes after householders have already planted daffodils over them!
Scotland’s planning system aims to manage development in the long-term public interest. Being able to get outdoors into nature and get around your local community is fundamental. That’s why LINK wants policy 12 – on ‘blue and green infrastructure, play and sport’ – to be placed within the wider context of statutory access rights.
By Helen Todd, Campaign and Policy Officer for Ramblers Scotland
By Nikki Sinclair, Green Belts Alliance Manager , APRS | The Association for the Protection of Rural Scotland
Scotland’s Green Belts
A Green Belt is the designated open land around, beside or within an urban area where there is a presumption against most types of development. Green Belts are designated by local authorities in their Local Development Plans (LDPs) to: help protect countryside by containing urban sprawl; preserve and enhance the landscape settings of towns and cities; give urban residents access to open areas; and direct any necessary growth into more appropriate locations within settlements. Scotland has 11 Green Belts designated by 21 Local Authorities – maps of all the Green Belts can be found on the APRS website.
Scottish Planning Policy
The purposes of Green Belts and the limited types of development allowed on them are currently set out in Scottish Planning Policy, 2014 (SPP 2014). As they are viewed by some developers as restrictive and inflexible there have been calls for reviews of Green Belt policy in order to weakening the protection against development they offer. Since 2014, Scotland’s Green Belts have been reduced by both planned land releases during LDP reviews and by significant speculative developments, mostly for housing. Many of the latter have been permitted on appeal despite being contrary to the LDP, via a loophole in SPP 2014 that allows contributions to housing land supply to be given more weight in planning decisions than other aspects of sustainable development.
The Scottish Government tried to address this loophole in 2020 with amendments to SPP. However, these changes were overturned at the Court of Session in July 2021 in a case brought by two developers who argued the manner in which the consultation had been undertaken was unfair. Part of the Government’s motivation to amend SPP urgently was that the loophole applies when more than 5 years have elapsed since an LDP was adopted. Covid has exacerbated the usual delays with LDP reviews, and on top of this, many planning authorities held off reviewing their plans until NPF4 and the proposed new guidance for LDPs were in place – both of which have been delayed themselves.
It is possible that 14 of the 21 local authorities which have Green Belts will have ‘out-of-date’ LDPs by the end of 2022, although hopefully a few of these will adopt replacement plans before then. Unfortunately, the introduction of an NPF4 which removes the current loophole will not come soon enough for some areas of Green Belt and other unallocated Greenfield sites that developers have their eye on.
Benefits of Green Belts
Throughout the NPF4 consultation stages APRS has promoted strengthening the presumption against development on Green Belt land and the upholding of a plan-led system. APRS has been making the case that designating and limiting development on Green Belts has multiple benefits in terms of climate, biodiversity, and landscape. In addition, as became even clearer during the pandemic lockdowns, they offer access to nearby countryside which can improve quality of life and wellbeing for the large proportion of the Scottish population that live in urban areas.
Green Belts contain significant areas of prime agricultural land, and semi-natural woodland. Even if much Green Belt is not considered important enough to be protected for nature conservation alone, by remaining as open land or ‘green infrastructure’ it can allow greater connectivity between key sites. They can also reduce urban air pollution and alleviate flooding. Green Belts have potential, through appropriate management, to do even more to tackle the climate emergency and nature crisis and to provide opportunities for home-grown food, outdoor education, improved active travel and recreation for local communities.
In terms of climate and meeting net-zero, Green Belts help direct development to more appropriate and sustainable brownfield sites, including vacant and derelict land, and encourage the re-use of existing buildings. In the recommendations from Scotland’s Climate Assembly (2021) there was 95% support for the call to “Strengthen planning restrictions immediately so that development on greenfield sites should not be permitted until all other development options, such as brownfield and existing building repurposing, have been considered and legitimately rejected”. There was even more support for “Create thriving town centres by focusing on the conversion of existing properties into high quality housing and community spaces rather than building more edge of town developments”. These recommendations perhaps recognise that the loss of open land near urban centres is regrettable in itself but also that more urban fringe developments are unlikely to enable future residents to have sustainable lifestyles, making net-zero targets ever harder to reach.
The Draft NPF4
Specific policy on Green Belt is contained in the section of the draft NPF4 titled “Urban edges and the green belt”. The clear statements of the multiple benefits of Green Belts to the environment and quality of life which are set out in the two paragraphs of preamble and in policy 29 a) are welcomed. The rest of Policy 29 is also supported although APRS will be making some suggestions for improved wording and the inclusion of the term Green Belt in the glossary. We welcome the removal of the above mentioned loophole from national planning policy and hope Scottish Government resist any calls to insert replacements for it in either the final NPF4 or the delivery programme. This would undermine the framework where policies such as reinvigorating town centres, planning 20-minute neighbourhoods, brownfield first and protecting Green Belts all support each other.
The six Universal Policies must apply to all planning decisions and their wording must be clear enough to ensure appropriate weight is given to the climate and nature emergencies in both LDPs and decisions.
“Perhaps the most important aspect of today’s Green Belt is that a legacy of open land has been passed down to us from previous generations. They did not squander it for short-term gain: neither should we. It is a precious resource that should be used responsibly and passed on to future generations.” From: Repurposing the Green Belt in the 21st Century (2020), Peter Bishop, Alona Martinez Perez, Rob Roggema and Lesley Williams, UCL Press, London
Further information on Scotland’s Green Belts and on the APRS Green Belts Alliance – a network of interested local groups and individuals – is available on the APRS website.
Nikki Sinclair
APRS | The Association for the Protection of Rural Scotland
Scottish Charity No SC016139
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By Clare Symonds, Convener of Scottish Environment LINK’s planning group.
“A new approach to planning could protect Scotland’s wildlife for future generations,” says Clare Symonds.
When you think of the Scottish nature we all know and love, what comes to mind? You might picture misty glens, coastal cliffs lined with seabirds, or open parkland near to home. The wide outdoors feels happily far removed from the technical documents, offices and debating chambers where the plans that shape how Scotland’s land is used are drafted and decided upon.
However, these planning decisions – and the policies that shape them – are crucial in determining the extent to which Scotland’s wildlife and natural habitats are protected and restored. Our planning system has a huge influence on how much space we can make for nature in our towns, cities and rural areas. Its impact can be as small scale as requiring new building developments to include areas of greenspace through to more innovative approaches like installing green roofs which provide vital pockets of nature in built up areas. It can be large scale changes too such as designating new national parks or strengthening protection of greenbelts.
This spring, politicians will be debating and voting upon a new ten-year strategy for Scotland’s planning system: the fourth National Planning Framework. Scotland’s people have until the end of March to submit their views on this framework which will set in train the direction of Scottish planning for the next decade.
As this is the same decade in which scientists tell us we must make major changes to reduce our contribution to climate change and reverse the global biodiversity declines, this new planning framework must put in place transformational policies that will guide Scotland’s planners and developers to make low-carbon and nature-positive choices.
There are many ways this transformation could be brought about, and Scottish Environment LINK, the network for Scotland’s leading environmental organisations, has set out some key changes the government must include in the new planning framework to ensure our wildlife and habitats are protected. A top priority is to establish a Scottish Nature Network which would link up vital habitats, making it easier for wildlife move from place to place as well as linking up with green spaces in our neighbourhoods. This must be taken forward at a national level in Scotland, just as the UK government has promised to do in England, rather than locally as current proposals suggest.
It’s also important that the framework strengthens key measures that protect our natural spaces, from greenbelts encircling towns to Wild Land Areas in some of the most remote parts of the country. Enabling new developments that can benefit nature, such as the creation of new National Parks, would show that the Scottish government is truly taking the nature crisis as seriously as the climate emergency.
At present, the draft proposals from the Scottish government do not go far enough. Though the document contains many statements signaling that, for example, “we must rebalance our planning system so that climate change and nature recovery are the primary guiding principles for all our plans and decisions,” too many of the policies it sets out for nature and climate are optional, things that “should” be done.
If we want to avoid ploughing ahead with a ‘business-as-usual’ approach to planning, simply put, the ‘shoulds’ need to become ‘musts’.
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Clare Symonds is convener of Scottish Environment LINK’s planning group.
This article was first published in The Scotsman on March 1st 2022
