Scottish Environment LINK welcomes additional funding for nature announced as part of today’s (8 March) Scottish budget deal. An additional £10m funding for biodiversity towards a new scheme supporting a wide range of projects to restore Scotland’s nature, protect our wildlife and address the causes of the nature and climate emergency is welcome. We hope this is the start of an ongoing and longer-term commitment to funding work to restore nature in Scotland.
The budget deal, agreed between the Scottish Government and Scottish Green MSPs, also secures an additional £5 million of funding to support farmers and land managers to adopt nature and climate-friendly farming practices.
Deborah Long, Chief Officer of Scottish Environment LINK, said: “At a time when Scotland needs to kickstart a green recovery from the Covid-19 pandemic, today’s announcement of additional funding to support nature in the next 12 months is very welcome. The funding will support additional projects to restore Scotland’s nature and landscapes and Scotland’s environmental charities are ready to play their part to reverse the nature and climate emergency while creating opportunities for skills training and employment. The increase in funding for nature-friendly farming is welcome at a time when we know emissions from agriculture and the negative impact on biodiversity needs to reduce. However in order to fully address the impacts of nature loss and climate change a substantially revised funding settlement with climate and nature at its heart is needed for farming in future years.”
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Details of the budget deal are available at: https://www.gov.scot/binaries/content/documents/govscot/publications/correspondence/2021/03/correspondence-between-scottish-government-and-scottish-greens-on-support-for-budget-2020-21/documents/scottish-government-letter-outlining-details-of-the-agreement-with-the-scottish-greens-to-support-the-scottish-budget-2021-22/scottish-government-letter-outlining-details-of-the-agreement-with-the-scottish-greens-to-support-the-scottish-budget-2021-22/govscot%3Adocument/Letter%2Bfrom%2BCabinet%2BSecretary%2Bfor%2BFinance.pdf