Restoring Scotland's Environment

INVEST IN NATURE AND RURAL JOBS

As part of our plans for a green economic recovery, the Scottish Greens will invest in the restoration and protection of Scotland’s parks, green spaces and natural environment. This will create green jobs across Scotland, particularly in rural areas.

We will invest at least £895m over the next five years in restoring nature whilst investing in rural communities, creating over 6,000 green jobs.

This will include, over the next five years:

• £150m for the nature restoration fund to restore key habitats, such as wetlands, rivers and our coastlines, creating 428 jobs directly and indirectly.
• £250m for more and better National and Regional Parks, creating 650 jobs directly and a further 455 jobs indirectly.
• £250m for public and community native woodland planting and regeneration, creating 715 jobs directly and a further 500 jobs indirectly.
• £100m per year for local authorities to invest in rangering and biodiversity protection, creating 1300 jobs directly and a further 910 jobs indirectly.
• £145m more to restore peatlands, Scotland’s most important carbon store, putting us on target to restore all peatland by 2030, creating 414 jobs and the same again indirectly.

RESTORE SCOTLAND’S NATURAL ENVIRONMENT AND HALT THE DECLINES IN NATURE

Currently 18% of Scotland’s land has protected status, but many sites are in poor condition and often designation means little in practice. Similarly, species protection is too often weak. This lack of meaningful protection and investment in protecting vital species and ecosystems has allowed the continued and catastrophic decline in nature.

We will:

• Expand protected areas so that a third of our land and seas are properly protected by 2025.
• Enhance species protections including the removal of loopholes and ending the use of General Licenses for protected species.
• Create a Nature Network for Scotland, connecting habitats across the country to ensure they are robust, coherent and proofed against climate change. The Nature Network will be given statutory weight in national planning documents and government policy, and will include areas for rewilding.
• Improve protected areas by introducing “highly protected areas”, where nature protection and restoration is the top priority, covering at least 10% of Scotland’s land and sea. On land this would not exclude commercial activities that are compatible with this goal.
• Introduce legally binding nature recovery targets.
• Establish Regional land use partnerships in every part of Scotland by 2023 to help deliver nature networks and restore our environment.

A key part of our vision for restoring nature is rewilding, which means restoring our damaged ecosystems to the point where nature can regenerate itself, while helping to rebuild rural communities and allowing people to reconnect to the natural world. Our glens and uplands - many of which have been destroyed by over-grazing and intensive management to support bloodsports - will be allowed to regenerate into the diverse habitats they were prior to deforestation, including temperate rainforests, while also creating wild areas within our towns and cities, giving everyone access to nature. Rewilding will create new economic opportunities and jobs in rural Scotland, helping repopulate rural areas.

We will:

• Require 30% of all publicly owned land to be used for rewilding, including land owned by Forestry and Land Scotland, Crown Estate Scotland, and Scottish Water.
• Support community-led rewilding areas that are easily accessible via the Communities Greenspace Fund.
• Support the gradual reintroduction of species native to Scotland where appropriate and in cooperation with local communities, including a lynx reintroduction trial.
• Ensure that farmers, crofters and land managers are financially rewarded for delivering public goods, including rewilding and species reintroduction projects.

MORE AND BETTER GREEN SPACE FOR ALL

The Scottish Greens will deliver an ambitious programme of reform and expansion of our National and Regional Park network. We will create at least two new National Parks and one new Regional Park. We will invest in our new and existing parks so that they have an adequate ranger service and more powers to deliver its goals. We will deliver a programme of public and community land acquisition so that more of our Parks are publicly owned owned and managed in the public interest.

As in the last Parliament, we will also oppose developments which exploit and degrade our National Parks for profit. As a matter of urgency, we will support a community buyout of the land currently under threat from a renewed Flamingo Land development at Loch Lomond.

The Scottish Greens also support increasing investment in parks and green spaces in both rural and urban locations, to improve access and restore and protect nature so that more people can enjoy nature close to where they live. We will create a Community Greenspace Fund to help communities acquire and manage land in order to provide quality recreational greenspace, including parks, land managed for nature, and community orchards and growing projects.

The Scottish Greens will continue to fight to ensure green space is protected from unsuitable development and will use the planning system to ensure that all new development results in a positive benefit for wildlife and the natural environment.

Changes to local taxation will also encourage redevelopment of brownfield land as a priority ahead of greenfield land.

BUILD A CIRCULAR ECONOMY

To meet our climate targets and protect the natural environment, we need to urgently transform the way we consume and manage resources in Scotland.

Our material consumption accounts for up to three-quarters of our entire carbon footprint, and addressing this by moving away from a take-make-waste economic model could reduce Scotland’s carbon footprint by 11million tonnes of CO2 by 2050.

We will:

• Introduce a Circular Economy Bill with targets to reduce our overall consumption of raw materials, our carbon footprint, and a duty to produce Resource Reduction Plans.
• Use public procurement to support the transition to a circular economy, in accordance with the EU Green Public Procurement Guidelines.
• Replace landfill tax with a local waste disposal tax to disincentivise incineration and waste exports.
• Oppose the construction of new incinerators as they alleviate the pressure to reduce waste, cause air pollution and are bad for the climate.
• Keep pace with Europe and fully implement the Circular Economy Plan.
• Ensure products are built to last by working with the EU and UK governments to secure mandatory, robust and longer warranties for electrical and white goods.

TACKLE PLASTIC POLLUTION

The Scottish Greens are committed to tackling plastic pollution and delivering a dramatic reduction in the use of single-use plastics within the next decade.

We will:

• Phase out pointless plastics, including single-use, non- essential plastics that that can easily be replaced by 2025 while ensuring disabled people have non stigmatising access to plastic straws until suitable alternatives are developed.
• Move towards a circular economy whereby all packaging and products sold in Scotland must be readily able to be reused, repaired, or recycled, with producers responsible for the costs of managing their products throughout their lifecycle.

A WOODLAND NATION

Woodland creation could play a major role in tackling the climate and nature emergencies whilst creating rural jobs, giving everyone more opportunities to enjoy quality green space, and boosting rural tourism. Just 18% of Scotland is currently forested, but our vision is to increase this to 40%, and for at least 60% of this to be native woodland. The Scottish Greens will focus on building the public forest estate and supporting communities, small-scale foresters and crofters to create and manage more woodland.

We will:

• Target the Scottish Forestry Grant programme at native woodland creation, including productive mixed and broadleaf woodland as well as woodland where nature and recreation is prioritised.
• Support local government to take an active role in identifying land for and then delivering reforestation.
• Commit £10m p.a. more to the Scottish Land Fund, earmarked for reforestation schemes
• Give Forestry Land Scotland (FLS) a duty to grow Scotland’s National Forests. An additional £200m will be made available for this purpose, enough to grow the public forest by approximately 50,000 hectares.
• Support community ownership by encouraging the transfer of ownership from Forestry and Land Scotland and Local Authorities to communities via a simplified Community Asset Transfer Scheme.
• Use existing rural development schemes to support the development of businesses linked to forestry.
• Address grazing pressure in the uplands by increasing the deer management grant, implementing the recommendations of the Deer Management Working Group, and encouraging a reduction in sheep numbers via existing agricultural support schemes.
• Ensure that compensatory planning to plant new trees is enforced when trees are felled for development, and require developments over a certain size to pay towards public forest planting.

THE SCOTTISH GREENS WILL ALSO

Work with Nature to tackle the climate emergency

• Ban peat extraction and sale for horticultural use.
• Ban the burning of peatlands and license any other proposed burning.
• Establish Land Management Contracts to reward farmers and land managers financially for delivering natural flood management solutions.

Put in place strong environmental governance

• Take forward a review to strengthen Scotland’s environmental governance measures, including the establishment of an environmental court.
• Review the role of SEPA, NatureScot, Marine Scotland and Environmental Standards Scotland to ensure they are empowered and fully aligned behind tackling the climate and nature emergencies.
• Appoint an independent Future Generations Commissioner and turn the Just Transition Commission into a statutory body to protect the rights of future generations and oversee the transition to net zero.
• Introduce a Human Rights (Scotland) Act to enshrine fundamental rights, including the right to a healthy and safe environment.

Protect our water resources

• Retain Scottish Water in public ownership.
• Deliver a Scottish Water investment programme that protects and enhances the environmental status of rivers and beaches, upgrading Victorian sewage infrastructure so it can adapt to the growing pressures of the climate emergency.
• Ensure Scottish Water invests in renewable energy solutions, water use efficiency, climate adaptation, flood mitigation, reforestation and re-wilding across all its assets.