I attended a recent screening of Why Not Scotland? The film was an enjoyable introduction to case studies of applied and natural regeneration, notably in Norway, Poland and Italy, and how the spirit and technique could be applied elsewhere. However, from what I saw and heard, the blueprint stops short on how to achieve change on the scale proposed in Scotland. The ambition is not for small pockets of healthy woods and marshes, but for 30% of the existing land and coastal seas to be rewilded, taking us back to the time before intensive use, waves of clearances, or modern harvesting practices. This is grand indeed.
The opening sequence gave a ranking for the nation with regards to ecosystem health, as 212th out of 240. The figure has been broadcast for a few years and is based on information collected and modelled by the IUCN Nature 2030 programme. The UK has a biodiversity intactness index of 40%, compared to the high 70s for the world as an average. Data is easily downloadable from the Natural History Museum if you’d like to model the sets.
However, in Scotland, land change has occurred through reasons of economics, by those who have owned and controlled the resources. Though north of the border we have, by and large, the right to walk where we choose as enshrined by recent acts, so long as we exercise responsibly, the influences on landform have never been held by the common person. (For the sea, different factors are at play, including an international context.)
Despite the proto-revolutionary proposal, we do not live in a country that will ever become an agrarian state (fortunately) or where the status quo will shift without the cash incentives. Britain is just too stable for such a change, with overlapping forces of aristocracy, state, church, merchant, guilds, banks, foreign-owned utilities and, more recently, Californian data behemoths.
The majority of land in Scotland is concentrated into the hands of a small number of private landowners or by the state agencies. The way to create change, in my view, can only start at the economic-political level, by appealing to both sets of owners through the value of their portfolios. My argument is that private landowners do not want to be out of pocket, and public bodies must be seen to provide good value for money, particularly given the cost-of-living crisis. The primary levers have to be, I believe, the demonstration of benefit through calculating stable or increasing asset value to lands that could be rewilded (or any other shift), and rewarding appropriately. Of course, I speak generally, rather than specifically, because people of noble spirit exist everywhere, and notable examples already patch the Highlands. Understanding the individual players and building relationships is a delicate and time-consuming process, and as important as planting the right trees nurturing the understorey.
Meanwhile, the oiling of all other stakeholder dimensions, which would include infrastructure, park bylaws and even crown mineral rights is just too befuddling to get anything done quick. Just Google HS2 if you don't believe me.
On the Scotland the Big Picture website I followed through to the Nature-based Solution Initiative at Oxford University. The concept is that you can define a monetary benefits from the implementation of ecosystem services, using relevant economic theory and multi-disciplinary collaboration. One of the two projects they have listed for Scotland is the Eddleston Water regeneration in the Borders. This includes a large tree-planting project by the river that often contributes to flooding in Peebles and downstream through the Tweed Valley. For this initiative, the group clearly quantified the value to climate change, ecological health and socioeconomic outcomes using one of many modelling tools, selected after proper investigation. The scientific narrative is to be highly commended, and will be assessed with defined metrics, before, during and after.
Taking this one step further, I'd suggest that for the rewilding projects across Scotland to flourish in such a scale, the assumption is that any calculated, agreed value saved or created from nature-based solutions should, in theory and in practice, pass back to those who hold the assets (as well as to those hired to implement the regeneration). This is not subsidy, just business. And maybe you think that the distribution of wealth is not fair to start with, but that's how things sit and we can all become richer in our lives together or play the zero sum game instead.
But let me return to the numbers. The blanket 30% is the same that Deng Xiaoping attributed to Mao Dedong with regard to his failings, ie rather flippant and lacking in analysis, and therefore not worthy of retort. For Scotland's ecology I want to quantify the hectares, see the polygons, understand the patchwork plans over time. The literature given at the show should have contained statistics and projects to be recycled-paper worthy, and neither propogandist nor fluffy. I hope we're not too late to gain credence.
Screening films that show wonders in other parts of the world that do not exist here yet are a double-edged sword. They may bring hope, but equally complacency or disappointment. At the session I attended, the many questioners from the floor bought into the necessity of the programme, and their comments were specific, not general. Feedback included the desire to forage for a variety of mushroom, to reduce eco-anxiety by visiting a local woodland, and for pupils of the high school to learn outdoors in line with the Curriculum of Excellence. If you do the work, benefits of such examples could be quantified: reduced food miles, fewer prescriptions, better exam outcomes. The reasons for improved nature for the nation should therefore be gathered, costed and referenced, and help drive the financial and political machine to deliver lasting change.
I shall watch the space with interest.
Images
A treeless Ladhar Bheinn, Knoydart, from the east
By the River Tweed at St Boswells
Commentaires