Peatland restoration could be a new rural industry, the Highlands and Islands’ Green MSP said, hosting a Holyrood exhibition to enthuse MSPs about the importance of this “globally rare habitat and vital carbon store”.
Ariane Burgess says peatland restoration “offers a different way of looking after our land – building value for the communities and young people living there.
“Greens in Government have secured £250m of investment in peatland restoration until 2030 and locally we’ve seen hundreds of thousands supporting projects across the region.
“In Glencoe, the Nature Restoration Fund recently granted £249,736 to a peatland restoration project [1], £236,000 has been granted to a peatland restoration channel in Lochaber, and RSPB Scotland’s Forsinard Flows nature reserve received crucial funding from the Scottish Government’s Peatland Action initiative for work to help repair and restore drained and damaged blanket bog across its peatland habitat.”
Wild places charity John Muir Trust welcomed an announcement by the Scottish Government, a coalition between the SNP and Scottish Greens, to explore options for councils to introduce a carbon land tax to encourage more action on climate and nature.
Scottish Greens’ co-leader and Green Skills & Biodiversity Minister Lorna Slater made the commitment at her party’s autumn conference in Dunfermline.
Ms Slater said the move should incentivise landowners to restore their degraded peatlands and create more woodland, both key tools in tackling the climate and nature crisis: “Nature-based solutions to the climate crisis are essential if we are to meet our climate and nature commitments.”
The Scottish Government’s announcement coincides with the recent campaign led by the John Muir Trust, where 50 civil society organisations now support the charity’s proposal for a Carbon Emissions Land Tax (CELT) – one of the largest group of organisations to publicly back a climate action measure in Scotland.
The trust pioneered development of proposals for a CELT as an entirely new form of taxation designed to encourage landowners of Scotland’s largest estates to reduce carbon emissions.
The tax as envisaged by the trust would not apply to ordinary homeowners, tenants or smaller business properties but focus solely on landholdings of 1,000 hectares and above – that is, areas covering the equivalent of 1,500 Hampden Parks or more.
Mike Daniels, the trust’s head of policy, said: “Too much of Scotland’s land, especially in the mountains and uplands, neglects its huge potential to realise climate and biodiversity targets. We applaud the Scottish Government’s intention to address this huge gap and build a cross-party political consensus for a carbon emissions land tax.
“Landowners can minimise their carbon emissions and potential land tax obligation through ecologically sound land management practices such as native tree planting, restoration of peatlands and a range of other initiatives.”
The trust added: “A recent YouGov poll also showed strong support for a carbon emissions tax on the biggest landholdings, with 64 per cent of people in favour and only 14 per cent opposed to the proposal. Almost 80 per cent of voters agreed landowners who produce polluting greenhouse gases should pay costs resulting from it.”
Later this month the trust expressed its “deep dismay” at the decision by the Scottish Government to approve the 29-turbine Cloiche wind farm on “fragile” peatland in the Monadhliath Mountains (see page 11).