Facing up to Climate Change: the Future of Land Use in Scotland

The Royal Society of Edinburgh, Scotland's NationalAcademy, is Scottish Charity No. SC000470

Facing up to climate change: the future of land use in Scotland

Aberdeen, 18 November 2011: Full note of meeting

Professor Alan Werritty: Welcome

Prof Alan Werritty opened the event, highlighting the four objectives set out in the programme:

To bring together stakeholders, policy-makers, researchers and industry representatives across sectors in North East Scotland for strategic discussion on the future of land use in the area.
To communicate the findings of the recent RSE Inquiry Facing up to Climate Change: breaking the barriers to a low-carbon Scotland and the latest research on the role of land use in mitigating and adapting to climate change.
To provide an opportunity to consider and discuss the implications of the Scottish Government’s Land Use Strategy for North East Scotland.
To feed in to the development of the Land Use Strategy Action Plan in the form of a report of the event being provided to the Scottish Government Land Use Team.

Prof Werritty noted that discussions in the morning would focus on the findings of the RSE’s report and latest research on land use and climate change; while the afternoon would focus on the Land Use Strategy which will be an on-going and pertinent issue for years to come.

Prof David Sugden: “RSE Inquiry Facing up to Climate Change: breaking the barriers to a low-carbon Scotland”

Science is decisive: levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere have risen beyond limits that are expected in natural cycles, and this has coincided with the intensive burning of fossil fuels.

The resulting changes in climate present a global challenge to society, questioning the way society is currently organised and how it operates. The Stern Report points out that “we know what to do” to reduce emissions, the difficulty lies in changing behaviour, values and mindsets.

The RSE’s inquiry focussed on examining how the gap between where we are now and where we need to be to meet Scottish, UK and international targets can be bridged. It identified a number of opportunities and barriers and makes recommendations on how these can be overcome.

The committee of inquiry was made up of a small inter-disciplinary, independent group.

The inquiry found that across Scotland there is a very positive vision of the benefits a low-carbon future could deliver, making full use of Scotland’s natural renewable resources, strengthening both its urban and rural communities and ensuring sustainability.

However, we must be prepared for already inevitable impacts of climate change. Particularly, there is a danger that policy-makers are planning for average predicted weather patterns when in reality Scotland must be prepared for much greater variability and more frequent extreme weather events.

City regions, where the vast majority of Scotland’s population live, work and travel, have a particularly important role to play in the transition to a low-carbon society, and three of the inquiry report’s ten recommendations are directed at cities. Barriers include discrepancies between national and regional goals, local authorities’ lack of all the powers, levers and resources needed to address the issues, and a lack of integration both within cities and between cities and surrounding regions, for example the absence of joined up public transport networks for commuters. The absence of strategic planning in city regions must be addressed.

The report concluded that land use is a sector that can provide multiple benefits, including in both mitigating and adapting to climate change, at relatively low cost. It is important that moves towards taking an ecosystem approach are continued. In order to manage land most effectively for multiple benefits, the inquiry report suggests that some level of indicative land use planning is required, and also calls for current and future land managers to be educated in such a way as to be able to integrate different kinds of land use.

The inquiry found a number of good examples of local communities using the transition to a low-carbon society to strengthen their populace and provide a more sustainable future. A wind turbine in Westray, for example, now provides income for the island. At Mackie’s farm in Aberdeenshire, the cost of three wind turbines was repaid in four years and they now provide both energy for the farm and a stream of income through reselling electricity to the Grid. Such a model could be used any where a community might gain from such an income, for example at hospitals or community centres. This would allow communities to engage and benefit directly from the move to low-carbon, increasing understanding and support for the agenda. However, there are still substantial hurdles for communities in doing this, in the case of Westray, for example, 800 legal documents were required; a lack of options for finance at the small scale local level remains a significant problem; and changing policy on Feed In Tariffs at UK level has created much uncertainty among communities and industry.

Reflections on the findings of the inquiry report include:
the need to ensure that all communities are able to benefit from the move to low-carbon, this would help to counter scepticism and encourage behaviour change;
that policies at local, Scottish and UK level, and beyond, must be coherent or they will cause barriers and create cynicism;
that city regions are an important focus for change and that investment must be made in low-carbon infrastructure to support changes to the how our cities operateand reform unsustainable practices;
that there is a huge amount of energy and drive at local community level and this must be better supported;
that changing land use presents some cost effective and short term options for making ‘quick wins’.

Professor Colin Campbell: “RSE Inquiry Facing up to Climate Change: findings and recommendations on land use”

Increasing recognition that Scotland is not in isolation but that issues such as food security, water security and energy security are interconnected global problems.

The policy arena around land use in Scotland is fast moving. The Land Use Strategy, published earlier this year, is welcome in that it promotes an ecosystem approach and multifunctional land use. Other recent/current pieces of legislation that impact on land use are the Scottish Soil Framework and new Wildlife & Natural Environment Bill.

Integrating policies are increasingly important as land comes under greater pressure, a land area the size of Dunfermline is taken into the built environment every year – sealing soil which is lost, along with its associated ecosystem services. At the same time, agriculture and land use accounted for 20% of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions in 2009 (although forestry was negative) so the sector clearly must play a major role in reducing emissions.

It is worth bearing in mind that there are potential benefits and opportunities of the changing climate in Scotland. Future projections of land capability, compared to the land capability assessment exercise carried out in 1982, suggest that there will be an increase in potential prime agricultural land. This would allow Scotland to grow a wider range of food but trade offs would have to be made with biodiversity and other ecosystem services.

It is clear that Scotland’s land will have to cope with greater variation and extreme events; with coastal areas under threat, middle areas become squeezed by competing needs. It is important to understand the implications of this in Scotland particularly, as it is a European hot spot for the natural accumulation of carbon in soil.

The ecosystem approach is now well recognised by the Scottish Government, reflecting the interdependence between wellbeing and the management of natural resources. The difficulty with identifying and balancing ecosystem services - provisioning, regulating, supporting and cultural services - is that some of these services have clear economic value while others do not. However, they can still help us to make informed decisions, for example by assessing whether a certain action would have a general ‘positive’ or ‘negative’ affect on a range of services, which will enable the identification of co-benefits.

Key findings of the land use sections of the Inquiry report are that land use does provide opportunities to sequester and mitigate carbon, particularly actions on forestry, soil carbon and restoring peatlands at relatively low cost; and to bring additional benefits for other ecosystem services while doing so. The LUS, and the ecosystem approach within it, offer a way of balancing environmental, social and economic demands on land.

Incentive frameworks and the land manager’s understanding of different abatement strategies are both critical to effective land use in facing up to climate change. At present, incentives to support reduced emissions are modest, and farmers are mostly unaware of where emissions can be reduced. Effective carbon pricing and carbon trading in agriculture would help to address this. Increasing the practice of monitoring and measuring soil carbon, and coupling payments to farming methods to enhance and protect soil carbon more directly, would also act as an incentive.

‘Farming for a better climate’ and the focus farms this initiative involves have been extremely useful, but could go further. There is a need for greater innovation in tree planting, particularly integrating this with other types of land use, including farming, and a focus farm looking at integrating tree production on farms would be a useful tool in this area. Using land jointly for timber, arable crops and livestock is done to good effect in Scandinavian countries and Scotland could be much more innovative.

Implications of the Inquiry findings include that:
We in Scotland should enhance our understanding of the land’s capability for carbon capture and look at how subsidy schemes can help to achieve this;
Should consider a national target for soil carbon stock;
Land managers should be equipped to deal with more integrated land use;
Scotland’s land education sector should recognise the need for training managers in multifunctional land use;
If people benefit more widely from land being used less productively, then landowners will need to be incentivised to do so;
Government should consider how incentive schemes can encourage change;
Farming technology is starting to focus not just on yield but also on optimising resource use and minimising GHG losses. Land managers must be more aware of these double benefits;
The need to make increasingly complex decisions calls for greater availability and sharing of land use information.
Farms have great potential to become energy providers and should aim to be at least carbon neutral.
The LUS is welcome and marks a major milestone, but the Scottish Government must identify more specific delivery mechanisms.

Professor Pete Smith: “Reducing emissions through land use: what the latest research tells us”

UK targets to reduce carbon emissions by 80% by 2050 will require fundamental change in all sectors. Key land use options are to protect existing carbon stores, create new and increase existing stores, and reduce greenhouse gas emissions from within the sector. Bioenergy also provides some opportunities for replacing fossil fuels, but we must be careful to assess their impacts on soils and costs/benefits compared to other forms of land use.

Protect and enhance existing carbon stores

Nearly half of the carbon stored in soils in the UK is held in Scottish peatlands. The Land Use, Land Use Change and Forestry (LULUCF) sector in the UKis currently a net carbon sink of 0.5Mt of carbon. However this is a very delicate balance, the release of 0.04% of the carbon held in the UK’s peatlands would wipe out this sink.

A review of the effects of agricultural management show that we could do things better to lessen the release of carbon, and nitrogen, from soils. Management guidelines that recognise ecosystem services, support the protection of stocks and ensure that developments, such as woodland planting or wind turbine construction, are located properly would make a big impact.

Reduce emissions from agriculture

At present, agriculture is a relatively little recognised sector in the move to reduce overall carbon emissions, despite its relatively high overall emissions, particularly those arising from land conversion to agriculture. When taking into account such conversions in the tropics, around 20 – 30% of global emissions is due to agriculture.

Therefore, the agriculture sector offers an equivalent mitigation potential to the energy sector, industry etc. Emissions from agriculture are subject to market fluctuations, as prices for crops rise, ploughing is increased and carbon emissions rise. This could be countered by changes in the carbon price.

Additionally, land managers can improve nutrient management, tillage management, agronomy, changing agro-forestry practices, and grazing land management. The costs of changing practices to mitigate emissions will vary: for example planting new types of seeds (agronomy) will be low cost, changing tillage may require investment in new equipment.

Bioenergy to displace fossil fuels

Research shows that using energy crops to displace fossil fuels can have a positive or negative impact on emissions from the agriculture sector. Measurements of GHG costs suggest that woodlands should not be replaced with any energy crop, and that grasslands should not be replaced with oilseed rape. The impact of oilseed rape on arable land is neutral in respect of GHG emissions, but will, of course, have implications for food crops and income streams.

Conclusions/policy implications

Research into land use management and its role in facing up to climate change therefore suggests that the protection of existing carbon stocks in peatlands and woodlands should be a priority. Degraded peatlands should be restored and new tree planting is welcome but should be done on soils with low carbon content.

Emissions from the agriculture sector can be reduced through better management and changing practices, this would improve efficiency at the same time. Management practices must be appropriate for the soils/conditions they cover.

In this debate it is important to consider implications for food security, rural livelihoods and displaced emissions, with careful consideration of the balance of land use for food, fuel and conservation. In particular, energy crops must not displace woodland/natural habitats, but should be grown on appropriate land.

Panel and floor discussion: “The role of land use in adapting to and mitigating climate change”. Key points:

In order to integrate the ecosystem approach into local level policy, it will be important to have all the relevant information and to involve more people in policy development. This will require more time, deeper communications and more awareness raising.

The ecosystem approach will be as important to urban areas as rural, particularly with respect to the benefits of open spaces in towns and cities. The recent National Ecosystem Assessment has a chapter devoted to urban space, which covers issues such as carbon sequestration, air quality and health.

Complex planning and legal frameworks for community renewables contribute greatly to volunteer fatigue, more should be done to simplify these processes.

There is a forthcoming EU Directive which will deal with soil sealing, but as yet there is no guidance at Scottish Government/regional/local levels on what this means. Welcome that in recent years there has started to be a return to a presumption of not building on prime soils and further protection from urbanisation will help. However, it is worrying that there is insufficient data being collected on the land that is becoming urbanised.

Planning does not currently have a central role in many local authorities but in order to integrate competing demands on land, strategic planning must be given proper importance. This needs stable political support.

Implementing fundamental change in land use management will require a significant change in mindset. Classical linear ‘systems thinking’ will no longer be enough; managers will need to become much more aware of the broad range of environmental systems. The move to adopting an ecosystems approach should support this change. Institutions such as the SAC do now offer training in management and sustainable environment management.

It is one of the roles of scientists to influence government. There is an urgent need to make politicians aware of the limits of Scotland’s natural resources in supporting ‘economic growth’. Philosophy must reflect this.

Discussion on Scotland’s land must take place in the context of global food demand. Scotland’s land and climate enable it to grow crops at high yields, and internationally there is no sense in displacing this activity to somewhere that can produce only at lower yields, as emissions per unit produced will be higher.

As long as food prices are high and carbon prices are low, there is no incentive to land managers to prioritise carbon storage over food production. Volatility in cereal prices can make crops unattractive but it also makes it difficult to compare income streams with, for example, the planting of trees, in the long-term.

The most effective use of land will vary from farm to farm, but options should be provided to farmers in language that makes sense. Highlighting that agro-forestry/diversification will give more flexibility and make a farm more resilient to fluctuating prices would demonstrate actual benefits for farms in taking such an approach, not just to respond to incentives and subsidies.

Professor Roger Crofts: “The Scottish Government’s Land Use Strategy”