LINK Thinks

LINK Thinks is a space for members and others to express their views about Scotland’s environment. If you would like to contribute a blog please contact information@scotlink.org. The opinions expressed in this blog are the author's and not necessarily those of the wider LINK membership.

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Highly Protected Marine Areas – FAQs

07 Apr 2023

What are “Highly Protected Marine Areas” (HPMAs)?  Highly Protected Marine Areas are areas of the sea that are placed under strict protection to support ecosystem recovery and protect against climate change.  The Scottish Government has committed to giving a small proportion – just 10% – of our seas this strict protection. This is in line […]

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Highly Protected Marine Areas can help tackle the ocean emergency – Calum Duncan

05 Apr 2023

No-one knows more than the communities living around Scotland’s vast coastline how important and stunning our seas are. The health of the ocean, and particularly the seabed, is at the heart of sustaining communities reliant on wildlife tourism, fishing and aquaculture. The ocean regulates half the oxygen we breathe. Our lives literally depend on it. […]

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Letter to First Minister Humza Yousaf

28 Mar 2023

On his election as First Minister, Scottish Environment LINK has written to Humza Yousaf to congratulate him on his appointment, with the letter signed by 31 members of the environmental coalition. The letter urges strong leadership and action in a number of crucial areas, while acknowledging the progress already made in recent years, notably through […]

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Is Scotland being left behind in the transition to a circular economy?

09 Mar 2023

At the end of last year the European Environment Agency (EEA) published the report, ‘Circular Economy policy innovation and good practice in Member States’, which highlights areas of progress in countries across Europe. As well as good examples, the report examines the barriers and challenges which are shared across EU countries. In this blog I […]

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Targeted species recovery is essential to restoring ecosystems

16 Feb 2023

Talk of targets and plans can seem a million miles away from the glint of an Atlantic salmon running a Highland river, or the rich, vibrant patchwork of the Hebridean machair. But the fate of those things rests hugely on the actions of government over the next few months and years.

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Humanity’s war on nature: was COP15 a battle cry or a white flag?

13 Feb 2023

It’s now a month since COP15 in Montreal. The COP15 summit gave us commitments to global nature targets to halt the loss of nature by 2030 and to restore it by 2050. We also saw commitments to conserve and manage 30% of the Earth’s land and seas for nature; halt the extinction of known species, […]

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Nature Pays the Price

10 Feb 2023

The publication of the draft Scottish Government Budget 2023/2024 prompts another look at what gets spent, in real terms, on core environmental protection and management in Scotland.  The plot below (Fig.1) shows that from financial year 2010/11 through to the current proposal for 2023/24, there continues to be sustained underfunding.  This period is chosen as […]

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Reflections from a back garden on COP15

09 Feb 2023

From one of LINK’s Honorary Fellows, Claudia Beamish On this bright day which augers spring, I pottered in the back garden amongst a range of peeking bulbs, budding shrubs and fruit trees.  There the breeze stirred my autumn-long pondering on why COP27 caught the headlines while COP15 did not? The twin crises – nature and […]

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A nature positive economy needs to be circular

11 Jan 2023

In recent months the term ‘nature positive economy’ is being used more and more in recognition that our economy has a huge role to play in achieving the goal to be nature positive by 2030.  To strive for a nature positive economy is included in Scotland’s National strategy for economic transformation (2022). Little has been […]

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