Land in the balance: People, nature, economy (part 2)

Who wins and who loses when we decide how Scotland’s land is used?

The South of Scotland faces a complex balancing task: how to make the most of its rich natural capital while addressing population change and supporting thriving local communities. The panel will consider how place-based initiatives can deliver net zero, what stands in the way of land becoming a true driver of economic and social change, and what does fairness look like when weighing up opportunities for people, the economy, and nature. At a pivotal political moment, this event draws insights from expertise and lived experience to ask: how can land use decisions shape a fairer, more resilient South of Scotland?

Transcript

This transcript has been automatically generated so may feature errors.

0:00
I think we’re ready to make a start. Can I just check you can hear me at the back welcome everyone, and it’s thank you for coming along. It’s fantastic to see so many of you here at borders College, and we’ve got a lot of people joining us online, and I know from recent activities that we’ve held we’ve got a number of people joining us from abroad. So before we begin, I should point out that the fire arc exits are marked at the back. We’re not expecting any fire drill, so if an alarm sounds follow the fire exits as marked, can I kindly ask you to put your phones to silent? Thank you, just so that we don’t disrupt proceedings for those of us online now, I’m Professor Des Thompson. I’m a Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh, and I’m a Leverhulme emeritus fellow with the University of the Highlands and Islands. I live in Penicuik and spend as much time as I can enjoying the landscapes and wildlife off the borders. The Royal Society of Edinburgh is Scotland’s national Academy. The Science Society uses the combined knowledge of its 1,800 strong fellowship to give independent expert advice to government and its agencies. And the fellows are leading experts in the sciences, arts, business, professions and the third and public sectors. And through its work, the society seeks to inspire the next generation of innovative thinkers. And our working mantra is to make knowledge useful, and that’s what we’re hoping to do this evening. Now we’re here this evening as part of a series of events to help people engage with the issues that matter most to voters in shaping Scotland’s Future. Ahead of the May, 2026 Scottish Parliament elections running through the autumn, the society has devised a series of events bringing together communities, schools, experts, local organisations, to discuss the many issues that will define Scotland’s next political chapter. We’ve already been to some terrific venues, including community halls and schools ranging from Dumfries, Dundee, Aberdeen and even up in Aleppo in the northwest of Scotland. And we run these events in partnership. And this evening, we’re very grateful to the south of Scotland enterprise and to Borders college for making this gathering possible. Now this evening, we’re going to discount discuss the land and balance. How do we collectively make the most of the land and all it has to offer. Who decides on what’s best for us? How do we reach consensus and what is best when so many of the land uses are contested? I’ve no doubt we will have many questions for our panel of experts. Now, I’ll shortly ask each panel member to introduce themselves and offer some opening remarks, but just to say, in summary, I’m delighted to have our three panellists. Karen Gillespie, Chief Executive of southern uplands partnership, Eleanor Kay, Senior Policy Advisor with Scottish land and estates. Dr Andy Tharme, Natural Resources Manager The south of Scotland enterprise and Professor Chris Spray, emeritus professor of Water Science and Policy at the University of Dundee, and indeed, wearing many other hats, which no doubt we’ll hear about. So without any further ado, let me turn to the panellists to make a few opening remarks, and I’m going to turn to Andy first

3:43
Good evening, everybody. Can you hear me at the back? Okay, Super, thank you. Yeah. So, yeah, I’m Andy farm. I’m based in the natural capital team in soce, south of Scotland, enterprise. So really, I just wanted to, really, first of all, to talk a wee bit about so she’s interest in land use, and then particularly about the regional land use partnership and the regional land use framework that was produced under that. And then thinking about our vision for the future for land use that presents for 2045 and if I may, finish off with a couple of questions for for the audience, yeah. So really, that first point around, you know, land use and soce. Why is soci interested in land use? Well, clearly, in a region like ours, land use activities underpin our regional economy, particularly thinking about agriculture and forestry and maybe where under our the legislation that established soce back in 2019 it gives us aims to further the sustainable economic and social development of the south of Scotland, which you might imagine, but also to improve the amenity and environment of the region, including to maintain, protect and enhance the environmental quality of our region. And our work is guided by the Regional Economic. Strategy, which is overseen by the Regional Economic Partnership, which in itself, has an ambition for a greener, fairer and more prosperous region. So soce helps a link to that helps coordinate the regional land use Partnership, which I mentioned, which is actually a strategic group of the rep, and that oversees the delivery of Scotland’s first regional land use framework, which was published under a pilot project, one of the Scottish Government pilots, of which there were four across Scotland. So we produced the first regional land use framework. And south of Scotland also is also recognised as the National Natural capital Innovation Zone, which establishes the region as a living laboratory and a learning hub for the whole of Scotland as we strive to address the climate change and nature crises. So there’s a very much within our ream. It’s a strong focus and interest in land use. So in particular, thinking about our regional land use framework, as I said, That’s overseen by the Regional land use partnership as a strategic group of our regional economic partnership, and that seeks to raise awareness of the many issues around land use across our region. And in particular, it’s designed to try and help people make better and more informed long term decisions about land use to meet the national, regional and local needs, and it recognises the urgency of joined up action that’s required integrated action that is to address the climate and nature crises. To do this, it requires inclusive engagement between those making decisions about the land and the wide range of people and interests affected by such decisions. And it’s also important based on, and this is critical, on informing, but not controlling decisions about land use, and recognise the need for a more integrated approach to deliver integrated lands, landscapes, for example, as suggested in the next national land use strategy. Many of you will have seen the recent consultation of land use strategy four, so thinking about the vision presented within this framework, and this framework was produced under wide consultation over a two to three year period across the whole of the south of Scotland, and identifying those priorities for land use train change to address the important issues around climate change and and the nature crisis as well. So the vision within this, this framework, is one where we fully recognise and understand them, the value and importance of our natural capital. And within it, we paint a picture of this vision, both in the uplands and in the lowlands, where product, the productive use of land, is still central to land use. So where there’s livestock, production is sustained through regenerative approaches. In our uplands, our peatlands are restored and managed to support biodiversity, but also to store carbon, reduce flood risk and maintain water supply. Our native woodlands have increased significantly, expanded to natural tree lands and down the hill slopes through riparian corridors, connecting with the lowlands. Our productive forests are more diverse with a greater integration with native woodland, and are more resilient to climate change. New Energy developments range from the larger scale in our uplands through to smaller scale in the lowlands, including wind, hydrogen and solar plants, providing a more resilient energy system. And in the lowlands, there is a shift to more regenerative approach to agriculture, as well as in the uplands, conserving our soils, storing carbon, retaining water and reducing inputs. And there’s an emphasis on producing high quality food to meet local and regional needs. There’s also wide range of opportunities for tourism and recreation activities across the region. This, in itself, will help improve physical and mental health benefits. So that’s painting, that vision, that picture for the future, if you get this balance right of people, nature and economy, what might our landscapes look like in the future, and for the future, we’re talking about 2045 which is obviously not that far away. And this vision is built primarily on healthy and diverse ecosystems, delivering resilient communities, a well being, or, in other words, a sustainable economy, and with nature positive outcomes, through outcomes, through applying nature based solutions. In realising this vision, we expect that many of these changes have been facilitated by stronger, positive and pragmatic partnerships of land managers, communities, NGOs, public agencies and also, importantly, the private sector. There’s been new opportunities to share experiences and learn from the grown body of good practice partnership working benefits from better data about the region’s natural capital and the benefits it derives, providing a more informed approach to decision making and practice on the ground, and also, importantly, attracting inward investments, if we’re getting this right, monitoring has allowed progress to be tracked and approaches adapters. As needed for the creative use of things like digital technology as well, and again, thinking for this vision for the future, at this point, we’ll have a thriving regional economy that’s fair and inclusive, providing employment, innovation, skills and training opportunities. Our rich cultural landscapes are maintained by regenerative agriculture and sustainable forestry, as well as vibrant sustainable tourism, circular economy principles, decarbonize our energy system, shorten our supply chains, and there’s a focus on the production of high quality nutrition. Nutritionists, local food communities are obviously central to this vision. Community wealth building is established in terms of the recycling of the money in the local economy, providing benefits to not only local businesses, but to the communities themselves. Is well established, with a thriving rural economy directing benefits back into the local communities. And people are more engaged in decisions about land use, for example, around woodland creation and management, or improvements in managed access as well, there’ll have been an increase in the level of community ownerships, delivering a wide, wider range of economic, environmental, social benefits and physical activity will have increased and mental health is improving. Action is targeted on communities with the highest level of Multiple Deprivation and helping to tackle inequality and helping contribute to the just transition. And the end point of this is in 2045 our natural capital continues to be enhanced through a balance of both public support and responsible investments. So we may conclude at this time, just to pose a couple of questions, if I may, to the audience, so thinking about that vision for the future, and how we might make that journey towards that vision, to help realise this and recognising the urgency of the task. 2040, 4045, is only 20 years away. What do the audience consider to be the most important issues around land use to tackle? First, collaboration is clearly important. Secondly, so and it will be key. So, how do we enable communities to be better engaged, to positively influence decisions about land use change? And, thirdly, in terms of place based approaches, we think catchment scale approaches, place based initiatives will be important to enable the delivery of this vision. We’ve already started some work in helping the development of projects. For example, in the lime water catchment in the region, noted the net catchment over in Dumfries and Galloway. So how do we ensure that that that place based approach, the catchment based approach, leads to community wealth building, so that the local economy, environment and the community benefit?

12:40
Thank you. No pressure there. Okay, it’s great that you’ve posed questions to the audience. Karen, I’m going to turn to you and then to Eleanor and to Chris.

12:50
Karen, thanks, Dez, can everyone hear me? Hi, I’m Karen Gillespie. I’m Chief Executive of the Southern uplands partnership. We work across the south of Scotland, including in the Scottish Borders, on climate change and community engagement with nature and on protecting biodiversity. So who wins and who loses? That was a question that was posed at the start of tonight’s talk, and I thought was quite interesting, because it immediately highlights one of the problems that I think we have, not just with land use decision making in the south of Scotland, but actually globally at the moment, which is a very binary either or situation, when, in fact, we live with an enormous amount of complexity. So everything about to say is about to say is try and think of it in terms of nuance. So there aren’t we don’t deal with either or there aren’t goodies and baddies in this conversation. So simply different stakeholders with different needs and different perspectives, and we together need to find a way to navigate that. So I’m going to focus firstly on the community side of things. Again, the there was mentioned in the intro for today about place based initiatives and Net Zero. Many of you in the room and presumably online, might have been involved in the place planning process for your local communities, and some of those may or may not have included Net Zero action or a community led activity within them. The point being that it’s kind of been left up to you, as it should be for the communities to decide these things for themselves and what’s right for their community, but there’s not necessarily a good link between that and what’s happening nationally. So where is the resource to help a community to navigate its way through through these kinds of initiatives? You take it a step further and think about communities that are trying to think about taking on ownership of some land or an asset and managing that that’s one route forward in the land use and land ownership conversation. Very often, communities need an immense amount of support that they you know, many folk involved will never have done anything like this before. Four so where do they start? There are many great intermediaries out there, but how do you begin to navigate that that kind of landscape, but money and resources aren’t everything, and neither is ownership. I think consultation and engagement around land use is what’s probably most important, and then the local community can decide what it has appetite for or need for, or whatever. So these things, I think, are very place based, very specific. It’s very difficult to make a blanket policy that fits right across the south of Scotland. And I think each situation where there is a land use conversation needs to be taken on its own merits and with its own complexity and range of voices. And when land owners, land managers are thinking about how they might want to move the dial, either to involve the community more in what they’re doing, or think about the biodiversity of the land that they manage, and how to move the dial on that being prepared to change plan is one of the things that is quite important for folk to build in to that mix. So it’s important that if you are going out and speaking to people and undertaking consultation, that that’s actually meaningful and that the result is listened to. Otherwise, it’s very clear that the community will just feel that it’s been used in some way to validate some existing plan. So meaningful, effective community engagement is really important. We need to better align policies and subsidies. This is the other major challenge, I think, around land use. At the moment, land owners and land managers often don’t know which way to turn because of the wide range of initiatives, possible subsidies, excuse me, that are out there, and it’s not always. Sometimes these things undermine each other. It’s not always clear whether something’s going to be economically if you make one choice, what’s the long term implications of that going to be not always clear, and government policy not always entirely reliable on this either. And I think going back to evolving communities ownership, community ownership isn’t the be all and end all. There are many other models of governance, communities and community groups might want to manage a piece of woodland near them, but they don’t want to take on all of the responsibility of owning it, for example. So it’s quite important that we look at what works for that situation in that context. And I think on that note, I will pass on great

17:39
questions. Karen, that’s terrific. Thank you, Eleanor,

17:43
it’s great. I can build quite nicely on from, from. Karen, please, yeah, wave your hand if you can’t hear me. I am Eleanor Kay. I am Senior Policy Advisor for Scottish lands and estates. My hat. I have many hats at SLE but I cover agriculture and climate change, and within that sits natural capital. And I also sit on the climate emergency response group, which is a sort of cross sector group looking to try and critique some of government’s proposals and policies, and sort of give a bit of a real world reminder to some of the things that we we get to see. So at Lesley, we represent their managers throughout Scotland with a variety of tenure and ownership structures, which Scotland is well known for. So it’s it gives us an opportunity to both work with them to understand the implications of Policy Development to rural businesses, but also to ensure that their knowledge and understanding of where things are going, what, what perhaps, does need to change to cope with the impacts of climate change, to understand the impacts of other sort of policy developments on their land management. So it’s a bit of a sort of two way approach which, which can be really useful. Our position at SLE is that integrated land management is the sort of focus of how we develop our thinking on policy, and it’s simply because everything is so interconnected from whether it’s housing policy and energy policy food agriculture, they are also connected in terms of business activity that you can’t look at One and ignore the other. So in summer, we published our route 2050 newest document. Route 2050 is a kind of series of works that we’ve done trying to set out a longer term thinking of our sort of policy positions, both what businesses need to be preparing themselves for, but what policy and government direction is also needed. There is no end of ambition in land management in Scotland to deliver what needs to be delivered, but there are complexities and hurdles that often slow it down or redirect it, and those consequences are not always. Are unknown, and it’s our role as a membership organisation to try and shout about these potential implications early. Our latest paper focuses on farms and estates for the future, and it looks at the positive contributions that land management can have for climate mitigation and economic development and employment opportunities within rural Scotland, but it also highlights quite a few policy challenges and and frustrations that we that we have. There are significant demands on land and growing expectations in Scotland. Not all of those come from government, but they are strongly influenced by politics. But what we find is that a lot of the necessary work that needs to happen to meet the climate targets, to meet our nature restoration targets, need quite an injection of capital, and we can’t ignore the fiscal implications of policy elsewhere in the UK that has a real impact on our attitude to risk and investment as businesses. It’s all very well knowing that something needs to happen to make a system more resilient and able to cope with the impacts of climate change, but finding that capital, and risking the investment in the current state of fiscal policy is really difficult, and it’s our role as an organisation to just try and remind politics, politicians, when, when this is coming up, we can’t ignore land reform. We have a new land reform act in Scotland, the process to develop the land use plans, which we expect to see for larger land holdings have a should have a really good tie in, or at least we’d like them to have a good tie in to regional land use partnerships and potentially arlops are the way that this message can get out into communities as to what is going On, and that consultation can happen in a more sort of connected way. It’s, it’s it’s right that local communities understand what is going on in in the land that they exist in. And it’s right that they, they know that there are objectives there, because some of this transition work that needs to happen looks really messy. If you start to put wader scrapes in the land looks like it’s been destroyed. If you want to do hedge cutting and relay hedges, it looks awful for several years. Knowing that there’s a process there and that there’s a there are benefits that have been identified within the catchment is really important, and that messaging is key. Like Like Andy has already mentioned, we also favour catchment based approaches for these things. Water is so integral to how we live in our local communities, whether that’s from flooding or through to drought, and how these land management changes that need to happen affect water has a really big impact on the local community. We need to be better at getting those messages out there, we also need to make sure that policy is connecting those those dots as well. We have a new flood resilience strategy for Scotland. We’re starting to see more work come from government down to local authority level to look at flood management plans, arguably, from SLE would like to see more of a wider water resource assessment, because this isn’t just flooding, it’s drought as well. And we saw quite broad drought issues in Scotland for this summer, and some of them are still going on that we haven’t seen this recharging. So there’s a lot that needs to happen. The problem we have, and I do have, I do have happy things, but the problem we have really is, is this growing use of framework legislation makes it really difficult for organisations like ourselves and businesses to start planning for the for the future, because when we get legislation, the details still to come, and it makes it really difficult to scrutinise a bill, but it also makes it difficult for businesses to plan what needs to happen, and then it makes it difficult for local authorities to plan as well, because many of these legislation sort of framework pieces at least include obligations that will be passed on to local authority. And unless it’s followed up with a resource, it’s really difficult to then implement it and actually get that strategy from a paper strategy to on the ground changes, because we’ve no end of on the ground changes that we need to see, but we don’t always have the means to take it from strategy to change. So I’ll I’ll leave it there. I was going to try and find a positive, but I’m not sure I’ve got one on my list

24:40
positives coming forward over the next hour or so. Thank you, Eleanor, that was that was marvellous. Thank you, Chris, the floor is yours.

24:47
Thanks so much. Good evening. I’m the imposter. I don’t live in the borders. I’ve been born, born and brought up in rural Wiltshire, but I have spent the vast majority of my working life in Scotland and the last. Three decades, walking, canoeing, fishing, harassing the swan populations elsewhere, of the tweed during that time, I’ve been a trustee and indeed a chairman of tweed forum. I have to admit, for five years I was CEPAs Director of Environmental Science, so responsible for a lot of the monitoring that went on here. And I’m currently still the science manager for tweed forum for Scottish Government’s long running 15 years evidence based study of natural flood management in the edelstone water and what we can do there. And the last thing of relevance here, I guess, is that I was the author, along with Andy, actually, and Derek is in the audience of the framework report for what was the first ever pilot of the land use strategy that was done here in the borders. And some of you may well have contributed to it. We certainly talked to a lot of folk. Thank you. And we produced a framework of how the land use strategy might be taken forward. So I’m going to talk about three things they do. Sound dull, governance, evidence and finance. I’ll try and really enthral you with each of them. So governance, the original idea for a land use strategy, was brilliant. It was visionary and it was simple. It really was to try and meet the challenge we were set tonight, and it was launched by Richard Lochhead in Aberdeen in 2010 the then minister. And basically, what he said was, how do we balance what we want from our land? We can’t increase it. There are 84,000 square kilometres. So how do we get all the things we want out of it fairly and equitably so that we still have communities, but we’ve got agriculture, we’ve got forestry, we’ve got water quality, we’ve got timber, Wildlife, Fisheries, tourism, energy recreation, access, landscapes, carbon management. How do we do it all? And the problem is that 15 years on, and we’re on the fourth version of this land use strategy, there’s still no governance structure in place to actually resolve that. Now, we’re not a dictatorship, so we’re not going to tell people what to do, when to do. Thank heavens. But we actually haven’t got a system which lets us try and influence it. We’ve only got four tools we could use. We could tell people what to do with the land. You are only able to do that there. We could negatively influence them. You can do what you like, but the tax rates if you do it there, or for that type of activity, are going to be unbelievable, and the admin is going to be stunningly difficult, and we’re going to delay the decisions, and we’re going to be uncertain. I’m looking at a bunch of people who seem to think that’s yeah, anyhow. Or you can do the other side. You can go, we’re going to incentivize you. What we’d love you to do is to do this action here. So if you take that land use, we’re going to make it so attractive, we’re going to make it simple. We’re going to give you long term contracts. We’re going to back them, and we’re going to, once we’ve said it, we’re going to do it, and we’re going to make you make the decisions that we would like, because actually it’s in your interest. And the last one is we’re going to actually provide evidence, real evidence, not just opinions. And so if we take as an example, the current national strategy for woodland expansion is 22% so my challenge would be, what percentage should we have in the borders? And let’s take that down a bit further. What percentage should we have in the gala water or further down? There isn’t a method. We haven’t got a controlling mind saying, I’ll tell you what. We’ll put 15% in the borders, and we want it all put in above hoyk. We’re just picking places, honest. That’s all I’m doing above hoyk. So we’re going to make the planting rate above hoyk so attractive, and we’re going to make it so easy that that’s what we’re going to do, and that’s one way of influencing things we could go forward. So what about evidence? Why am I interested in that? Well, we all make decisions on opinions. Absolutely guilty. We all do. And the problems with opinions is they’re very rarely based on facts that are transparent and repeatable. I speak as a scientist, you know that are transparent and repeatable and used by everyone else. But opinions are hugely important, and so is evidence. So are facts, and not just academic facts, facts from people who’ve lived the land, who know where it floods, who know what does or doesn’t plant here. Who knows what will happen if you actually do this because they’ve done it. Their grandfather probably is fathers too. Their grandfathers have done it all the way down. That’s lived experience. That’s hugely important. So we need to mesh all these evidences together. But as I said, it’s really difficult, because we actually make decisions on opinions all the time. As I said, I’m very happy. Be to do that, but when we talk about farming or forestry or affordable homes or the speed of the Internet connections or declining job opportunities, let’s try and have evidence that we can all at least agree on we may not agree what we do with it, but that we do that. And my last one is finance, because ultimately, a lot of this always comes down to short term and long term finance and the finance flows. If I were a farmer in this part of the world right now, I would sit on my hands because of the uncertainties. Someone else mentioned uncertainties about my long term financing south of the border, for good or for bad. They have they know what’s happening. I think up here, we still do not know long term, what we should invest in as a farmer. And so sensibly, you sit on your hands and you wait, you keep your opportunities open. But I’ll now give a little bit of evidence and explain where this evidence came from. It comes from the Scottish Government’s farm business survey, and I’m going to pick on farming. I could have picked on forestry, because forestry, except I don’t have the evidence and I couldn’t find it. The average farm in Scotland. And the key point there, and that’s the word average, has an annual farm based income of about 35 and a half 1000 pounds, but without public subsidies, that represents an 11,000 pound annual loss. So the public is subsidising that form of land use, and I’m very pleased, because what I get for my subsidy is really good quality food produced the standards I like, with a security for the farm manager to keep it going. I’m supporting I hope local communities, that’s really important. So if we change that, if we decide that actually what we’d like to farm is floods, carbon, water, quality, anything else, it’s vitally important that the farming community or the land management community get paid the right amount for doing that, or whatever else. And if you go south of the border, they’ve actually started moving there. And that is, if you’re south of the border, you were asked to allow your field to flood as a measure of natural flood management. You will be guaranteed a 20 year contract, 1489 pounds per hectare per year. For that to happen, won’t happen every year, but that’s a simple, guaranteed, 20 year contract. That’s a very different sort of discussion we might have. So that’s where we sit. I think we need to be thinking about finance. We need to be thinking about fair payments. And I’ll finish with one other thing, which again, came from a farmer in Peebles. And quite rightly said, this is all very good, but actually there’s a food security crisis. There’s a timber crisis at a national level. It’s just, how much do we import? How much do we actually rely and I think, and I may be wrong, that the figures are something like, we import 80% of our timber use, we certainly import 40% of our agricultural use. And if we’re not producing the agriculture here are we outsourcing it to somewhere else that we’re happy to see destroyed? These are really difficult balances just within the gala water before I make it the borders, and I’ve now just made it the whole globe. So with that small challenge, I’ll shut up. Great.

33:22
Thank you, Chris. Everyone join me in thanking our panel, because these were fantastic introductions. It’s really difficult making opening remarks like that, so thank you. That was That was excellent. Now we’re going to have our Q and A Fraser will keep an eye on questions online, but I welcome you all put up your hands. It’s very much a conversation we want to have here, so don’t be be shy. We have a photographer here, so don’t just put up your hand if you’d rather not be photographed. But I’m sure you’re all willing to be photographed. Who would like to ask a question first or make a comment now, don’t be shy. Don’t no one. Yes, we’ve got a question at the back. Yes, please.

34:13
Hello. Can you hear me? Is that working? Yep, that’s my name is Donna Strachan. I’ve got a lot of different hats. I have a business and outdoor education. I’m a youth worker. I’m a community development worker, and I specialise in youth led climate action. I’m also doing a master’s to look at what you’re saying about the evidence base. And what I’ve noticed is that that young people’s contribution their voice, and not just not just their voice when adults are making decisions, but their work. Have been working in mid Lothian for the last 10 years, developing youth led climate action. And we know that there’s a link between education, outdoor education, and Pro Environmental Action. We also know there’s a link with nature, connection and caring enough to do anything about. About it, so I’m trying to foster that, and I also deliver qualifications. So I’ve got, like, a plan of how I’ve just moved to the borders from Midlothian, I’ve got a plan and how to do it, and I think that’s maybe when we’re sharing evidence that we we bring in young people’s knowledge. And I’ll be studying next year about what works in youth led practice from the perspective of young people. So I’d like to, at some point be able to get young people to share that information with with the wider sector. Excellent.

35:31
Thank you. And we’ve quite deliberately had a number of schools events, because, you know, it’s the next generation, and the generation after that is so important. So thank you for that, and thank you for mentioning outdoor education, which is so immensely important and very dear to some of our hearts. Now, who would who wants to respond?

35:50
Chris, I’ll respond. And before you do anything else, speak to the person two to your left, who is Derek Robson, who, like me, has led more groups of schools and teachers round various bits of tweed forum than I’d care to remember, but you’re absolutely right. I was in Peebles high school only last week talking to students there, and I know tweed forum have an education officer, and we’ll beat a path to your door if you don’t beat one to us. But you’re absolutely right. And the great thing about youth is they hold us to account and stop us kicking the can down the road. And that’s, you know, one of the best things they can do.

36:28
And they do it very well. Even grandchildren do. And then Karen,

36:35
it’s very good. When we’ve developed the regional land use framework, we struggled to it was a challenge to engage with young people. I mean, we held over 30 events across the region, Dumfries and Galloway and Scottish Borders, and they were open events, but we didn’t capture many young folk coming along to that. And they are probably the most important stakeholder in all these discussions. It is their future that we’re talking about in terms of going forward under the south of Scotland region land use partnership. We have, we have young people represented by the Youth Advisory Forum, which Susie helps coordinate. So there’s a representative from Dumfries and Galloway, and one from the border side. Appreciate that in the loathing area currently, but something may emerge in the Lothian area. But yeah, we do have to find ways creative ways of engaging with that audience, and some of that outreach has to happen in the schools and embedding things within the curriculum. But yeah, no, it’s an absolutely vital point, and it’s something that we really need to do a lot more

37:39
on. And then, Karen,

37:42
yeah, I just wanted to, I guess, build on what others have already said with and particularly what you said about that people don’t want to protect what they don’t know and don’t love. And I think that that is certainly a major sort of sense of focus and purpose for my organisation and building nature connection in particular, we shouldn’t assume that because someone lives in the countryside, they know very much necessarily about what’s around them. We talk quite a lot about not just physical access and the kind of access legislation that we have the benefit of in Scotland, but also access of the mind. So that’s giving yourself permission, giving others in your group permission, and obviously, with landowner permission in certain circumstances, you know, exercising responsible rights to access. But I think just coming back to the kind of training and the kind of work that you’re doing, am I right in thinking that that is within the third sector? Yeah, I work with

38:41
charities and third sector. And it’s the forest the outdoor learning Award, which is equivalent to the Forest School. We work with kids. We work with young people that are not doing something in school, and they actually not

38:59
getting qualified. So, fantastic work. The point being that it relies largely on charitable donations or generous donors or so forth, the occasional government grant. But something that is actually so fundamental to our ability to be humans on the planet is being you know, because of public sector cuts and so on, there just aren’t the kinds of programmes that were around, certainly when I was growing up. So I think that would be a major plea, is to make sure that for the next Scottish Government, we’re looking ahead to next year’s election, that there is good resource, especially for that kind of experience, for young people, there’s many other organisations, like royal Highland Education Trust do an amazing job with their farm visits. There’s all of these kinds of initiatives are helpful, but without them, we risk a generation that is disconnected from the land, never mind ready to have a. A conversation about land use, but also that we can learn from so brilliant.

40:03
Thank you. Karen Eleanor, you want to come in? Yeah, just quickly.

40:07
I think it’s the kind of thing. It’s that sort of benefit that that sort of access to understand more about the place in which you live, and ideally we’d like you to keep living there. We have a real depopulation issue in rural Scotland, if you’re not, if you’re not connected to the landscape in which you you live, it’s very easy to leave and not wish to come back. And that’s, you know, that’s that’s a real problem, especially when we need so many green skills to deliver most of what government expects to be delivered for climate mitigation. But I think it’s the kind of benefit that perhaps needs to be valued when we’re looking at a community wealth building sort of approach in in in policy. Because this is a, this is economy, this is the jobs, this is this is keeping people sort of accessing the land. It’s making it attractive for tourism and you can’t take, you can’t ignore that, but unless it’s unless it’s referenced in in policy as a benefit, and therefore, you know, recognised through your forestry application. Is there access to the forestry that gets you more points? Is is there, you know, is it part of your farming subsidy that if you make it available for school visits, you get x amount you you see it through leaf accreditation as an amount of money for a school visit. There are ways in which we can do this that don’t rely on charitable donation, that become embedded in how the how the sort of system works. Great.

41:29
Thank you. And we’ll probably just have one or two panellists dealing with further questions, just so that we can get through a number of questions. So that’s brilliant. Donna, do you want to add anything before we move on? Because that’s a great that’s absolutely so important.

41:45
Yeah, so the this, I’ve made a big proposal for all of this, where it’s like to initiate the climate action. But what it would be is that while young people are getting qualified, why qualified? While they’re doing the climate action, they’re also creating outdoor learning sites that the whole community can use so that it has this deeper connection. A lot of young people don’t feel like they don’t have a space to be. So these outdoor learning spaces that they create can be that place to be as well. And then eventually they’ll be running their own groups, because they can that they progress those qualifications. And then I write myself out of programmes, usually, so yeah, happens without me? Then that’s

42:20
a real sign of success, isn’t it, connecting people in nature. Now we have a question here and then a question, yep,

42:27
Hi, good evening. Philip Kerr with multiple hats, one of which is the community rep for the Scottish Borders and the regional land use partnership. So obviously, what Karen said about place plans and also information is absolutely key to this as well. And I believe that as communities, particularly the rural ones who are now starting to do base plans, have a better understanding of the opportunities you will get better interaction. And I think you know, there is a need to fill the void of infrared information and natural capital so we can actually understand what we’re dealing with. You know, there are 69 communities in the Scottish Borders, as Andy points out, is probably the hardest job on the regional land use is more than heights. 57 we’ve got here, but we’ve also got, you know, impact investors coming in. And one of the difficulties is actually the impact investor trying to link up with a community, to bring what they think is right, but difficulty in finding the information at a community level, what the community wants, because community is still formulating it. So I think if better information, just as Donna has said, is also helpful for communities, for natural capital, for biodiversity and other elements, and I think that can really help enabling the interaction that is required at a community level, because at the moment, there is still quite a long gap. I mean, an illustrative example is things like smart metres. You know, we in rural communities want access to cheaper electricity tariffs, but we can’t get them because the signals aren’t there. Yeah, and that’s something that clearly should be brought in if you want to universalize it and make it attainable, improve the signal so the smart metres can actually work.

44:13
Thanks, Philip. So better, better communication. Much clearer communication. 69 communities, no pressure. Anyone want to respond to that? Andy, I guess, speak up. Speak up.

44:28
Yeah, as Philip said, you know, we recognise it as a critical challenge. You know, setting out in the vision that, you know, communities have to be central to this, but, and as Karen related to that, it’s the capacity of communities to be able to deal with it. There’s a combination of of increasing awareness and there to be more outreach and engagement communities and helping them understand the issues, providing further information. But it’s also having their capacity, because I guess we’re familiar more with there being Community Development Trusts and communities development officers developing pro. Projects in that but there’s, there’s a growing need for this to be sort of more focused on a land use basis. And we know that some communities are progressing that to Dumfries and Galloway, for example. Glen Kens are pushing forward their own land use plan under their community action plan, and are looking to to employ a community officer with a particular focus on land use and to be able to engage the community, and by which we obviously mean land owners, land managers and people who live within those settlement areas. So that’s recognised, and it’s a message that came through. You know, our consultation on the regional land use framework, that there’s terms of resources is a big need there as well. You know, whether that’s through government or other sources of funding, but that capacity really does need to be built if we ought to make that better connection between people who live in the local area and our local landscapes.

45:54
Okay, great. Thank you. Philip, of course. Eleanor, yeah, when

45:59
we talk about community engagement, which is really important, and we’ve got some great sort of best practice frameworks as to how we should do this and who needs to be engaged. We do run the risk of consultation fatigue if we don’t get this sort of time demand right, because it’s it’s once you’ve had invites to, you know, five meetings in a quarter, you’re less inclined to turn up. And you can either take it as well. They’re fine with whatever’s happening because they’re not here, or you only listen to those prepared to turn up and say, I don’t like this plan, but they’re a minority. But they are the the motivated minority, and it’s some of this is because you have national targets, but an unwillingness to distil it down to land local capability, because we do have land capability mapping, we do know fairly confidently in good places of chunks of Scotland, at least, where commercial forestry Would would definitely work, would be a good idea, but that you could do other things in that area. So we probably have more information that should be shared at a local level to help, help guide local communities to understand what they’re what they’re being sort of proposed, but we can’t. We can’t have a default of a national target distilled to local communities having to make every single decision, because no one’s willing to step in and say, some of these things do need to happen for the for the wider benefit of a catchment. It’s it’s not fair to put all of this on local communities.

47:39
So just before I come to you, Karen, so, so what’s your suggestion there? Eleanor, because that’s that’s very well made. So how do we overcome that?

47:49
I think there needs to be stronger information alongside government setting a target to distil it down to, you know, as local as you can get to at least if you’re going to expect local voices to strongly guide the decision making, then let them be the best informed they can be. But that too much of this is very complex, open access data that’s open in the loosest sense, but it takes an awful lot of effort to make it understandable, even for those who have the skills to do so,

48:24
you’re quite right. And very often these consultations are rather lazily phrased. They’re written passively rather than actively, so there’s not really an eagerness to engage with it.

48:34
Karen, yeah, well, I think we’d be in favour of going one step further instead of the kind of passive consultation type relationship, but something that’s more looks like, more like CO design. So where there’s a genuine partnership and a genuine conversation between communities and landowners land managers, I think it’s really important that we that we talk about community like it’s some sort of homogenous blob. And I think it’s really important to remember that, especially in the south of Scotland, landowners and land managers are part of the community and quite often involved. And you know, there has there has been that tradition of centuries of stewardship of the land and of the local community and the economic drivers that surround that have changed. Some of the population drivers and so on have changed. But there’s no reason why those kinds of constructive, collaborative conversations can’t and shouldn’t take place in a way that’s really meaningful for that place, so rather than kind of some sort of cookie cutter policy. So yeah, I think that would be come

49:45
in and I’m going to go to Fraser.

49:49
Well, guess what? What’s just been described by Eleanor and Karen is, is potentially the place that government sees the regional land use partnerships having, you know, it’s to try and provide that bridge from from the local. To the regional to the national. So it’s at an early stage of evolution, and as you mentioned, the recent consultation on the fourth land use strategy has just occurred. But that need for better policy integration perhaps the opportunity to enable the more strategic planning at the regional level, to consider where we meet the national targets. Where is the, where is the right land use, in the right place? In effect, there’s potentially a role there. But, you know, we’re in this. We’re in a kind of melting pot at the minute, but I see the all ups of having a potential role to help guide that.

50:37
Okay, great. I’m going to keep us going here. Fraser, have we got a question online?

50:41
Yes, it’s online. This from Jane, who asks, With the rise of renewable energy projects, how can land use in the south of Scotland balance energy development with environmental conservation and community needs?

50:54
So the conundrum for the growing number of wind turbines? Yep. Who wants to take this on? Chris first.

51:03
Well, the key thing here, I’m reminded of a comment that the then director of planning for Scottish Borders council made an evening meeting, I think it was in Selkirk, where Derek and I were talking to folk, and he said, The problem with this is that even if we try and put together a balance that looks correct for South East, South West, Scotland, wherever it is, I even as the director of planner, then get I was going to use the word trumped, but anyhow, I get over overseen by national decisions about where these bits of infrastructure will go. So actually, I don’t have the ability to influence that, and that’s true in lots of other places as well. So I think this comes back to my thought that, you know, 15 years after the launch of this strategy, we still haven’t got a way by which we can get a national target pushed into a regional down to a local that has a feeling for what the local actually is and what the local communities want. So I don’t think there is yet an answer there. This is back to the fact that this isn’t about win wins. This is about trade offs. You know, a piece of land that is good for wind farming is not good for other things. So we need to think where to put it. Back to that question again.

52:31
Yeah, it’s a great gene. It’s a great question. But Chris, you mentioned in your open air about the importance of evidence, so I just wonder thinking about the cumulative impacts of successive wind farms, either in existence or planned. Do you think the evidence base is sufficiently robust when it comes to thinking about cumulative impacts, thinking about bird strikes again?

52:54
Well, bird strikes, we’re getting more and more information as we go along, and partly that’s funded by, actually, the wind farmers, because we’ve got far better ideas about the flight paths of birds and the rate of hitting with wind farms. So that enables us to make a better decision, if you like. But the cumulative effect of a lot of wind farms is really important too, I think, from that point of view. And what can you do with the land around a wind farm? You know, what is the evidence that someone has done something useful in that sense? Do you want to respond to

53:27
that? Thanks. Chris,

53:30
yeah, I think I’m probably right. James Playfair, honey. I too wear lots of hats. I am a fourth generation farmer, and even in my lifetime, sort of 50 years working in the borders here, we have seen considerable changes. The one thing that has not changed is investment in our infrastructure. Okay? I mean, my wife was involved in the tourist industry for a while. We used to do farmhouse Bed and Breakfast. We were one of the, I think, the only house in the borders that could provide en suite, farmhouse Bed and Breakfast. And it’s an old house. However, people want facilities, and it also what occurred to us was the tourists that they passed through the borders England finished at Newcastle and Scotland started at Edinburgh, as far as you know, these English folk that were passing through, never mind the Europeans and other foreigners. So we have a small population. And I think we punch above our weight in a lot of things that we do. We export. Everything out of the borders. You know, we’ve got no processing here in the borders for our local produce, agricultural produce. That is so how do we improve what we’ve got in the borders without investment? And it comes back to this investment all the time and improved infrastructure. The talk about trying to put a national park in, but we didn’t have the infrastructure. Didn’t have water like the Lake District to accommodate it. So yeah, I’m probably stirring the pot a wee bit good. And say, Well, yeah, but, I mean, come on, we haven’t got what we need to satisfy the dreams that everybody seems to want to talk about. We talk with local communities, try and get them involved, not interested.

55:56
So let’s realise the dream. So you’re pleading for investment, greater infrastructure supported by investment. So before I turn to the panel, have you got a quick win something that would make a big difference in terms

56:09
of investment? Does the postcode lottery work

56:13
does in some parts? Yeah,

56:16
yeah. I mean, it’s trying to get I mean, government isn’t going to invest huge sums of money in this part of the world because we ain’t got a big enough population to justify it?

56:27
No, but it’s, as you say, it’s a massively important holding area. It’s an area that many people pass through, but it’s got fantastic riches to offer to people.

56:39
Chris, I think digital infrastructure would be my number one. If you’re going to do that, let’s have an internet that works absolutely everywhere at high speed, because then we can all work from home and build those local communities, and they can stay in their local communities. I think that’s one thing. Tweed forum, Scottish Borders Council and a cast of 1000s are doing a project called destination tweed, which you’re probably aware of, which the highest profile bit is, there’s a footpath, bicycle path going from Moffitt all the way to Berwick upon Tweed. But actually, what’s underpinning it is lots of opportunities for, you know, the wee crook, the bunk barn that’s being redone for, you know, for tourism, everything else economic. And the aim, you’re quite right, to try and get people to stop in the borders, rather than do that rush through until it gets too many. Of course, at that point, I’ve got one other point, just if I go back to that thing about wind farms, and it’s about perspectives and youth, I still lecture quite a lot at University of Dundee, and I quite often put up a picture of a wind farm. And 10 years ago, there would have been Woo. Now there’s absolutely no response from the youth I’m now talking to that this is something they don’t like as a view or anything. And you suddenly realise that you know my perspectives, my opinions have been passed by. I mean, I’m getting old. I know that, but

57:59
that’s what you get used to, what you’re familiar with. Andy, do you want to respond on the infrastructure issue?

58:06
Thanks your question. James, yeah. I mean, I suppose it could reflect on the regional economic partnership itself is, in a way, trying to address some of those bigger issues. I mean, it’s led by the two local authorities in the region, so she have a role in coordinating this. But the I mentioned the the all up being a strategic group of the rep, the other strategic groups have got around housing and transport and also skills. So this issue about trying to join things up better than the region is starting to take shape then thinking specifically about, you know, the fact that the region’s overlooked and people travel through the region, then we have to think creatively about what can we do to attract visitors here? And part of that might be around nature based solutions. So there’s a desire to have things delivered at a landscape scale, to deliver the whole range of benefits and services that society needs. So, for example, around the water management that Chris and Eleanor referred to. So we could do something really creative, which developed something which is very much attractive to the to the investors. It has to be at scale. It’s something that can enhance our natural capital and, in itself, create a visitor attraction as part of that. So I think that’s the kind of thing that we have to have to start looking at. I mean, we obviously have an example of something like centre Parks has come in as a visitor attraction and development, but we can go and think a lot more creative than that in terms of catchment scale, type initiatives. It’s the likes of tweet, forum, Sun partnership, board, as forest trusts have worked on for many years in the region, that kind of what we might consider as more traditional as a nature conservation initiative, which thinking about the whole package a holistic approach, and making that something which is worthwhile, not only for local people to enjoy and engage, but something which is getting much attractive and attractive, not only to visitors, but to the investors. Crucially, because there’s Ellen upon. It out, we’ve got a big funding gap, and that’s not going to close anytime soon from the public purse. So we are really going to have to work hard to make sure that the south of Scotland is is the place to come to for that private investment,

1:00:13
which it should be. Eleanor wanted to come in

1:00:16
more on the added value to the various things that we do produce from an agricultural perspective, but also timber. It’s if we’re not, you know, we need to be adding more value closer to where a project, you know, raw ingredient is, is produced. It makes complete economic sense. And commercial activity does need to sit alongside nature, restoration and and sort of natural capital, sort of investment. They they can go hand in hand. They need to go hand in hand. Scottish Government has significant commitments to food and drink production, and that is adding value to things that we produce, but only if the only, if the rev only if the investment is made, and a lot of that comes from digital infrastructure. It comes from energy production, and Scottish Government has a huge commitment to export more, but we don’t, you know, we want to be exporting stuff that’s had most of its value added within Scotland. And we can tie these kind of things, from artisanal production into into tourism, sort of options, but actual commodity production and turning it into a more valuable product. That’s, that’s, you can’t connect that to tourism. You can’t not in the same way, but it has an enormous economic benefit to a local area, but only if we’re looking at these things in a in a more connected manner. They’re not they’re not opposite, they’re not against each other. But you have to find, you have to find a way to add more value to our commercial production,

1:01:42
we need the synergies. Yeah, exactly any Yes. Fraser, just behind you gentlemen in the green jersey.

1:01:50
Hi. I’m Donald mcphillamy forester and involved with greener Melrose. And do you think part of the problem is that borders farmers are fiercely independent, and I would say that foresters are even more independent, you know, often working through independent management companies, or certainly commercial owners of forestry who have never set foot in their forests, you know. So they’re kind of operating with a, with a with a spreadsheet, and not, not really, with any knowledge of the trees on the ground. And in other parts of the world, they seem to manage quite well in terms of, you know, cooperatives, you know, growing olives or or, and in Finland and Sweden, with forestry cooperatives of membership of, like, hundreds of 1000s of people, and that’s part of the problem as well, is like, we don’t have enough owners in SLE I’m sure you’d be delighted if you’re 10 times as many owners, which would mean that 10 times as many people would have a stake in this, and then those people would be part of their local communities Just by family connections. So we have sort of, like an elite group of landowners, far too few of them. And we have landowners who are fiercely independent, foresters who are fiercely independent. And would it not be a lot better if they could just learn to work together a lot more and come up with some solutions? And then we get back to, sort of the land use strategy iteration one, which, if I remember rightly, was done with maps, and you looked at the whole catchment and names and ownerships didn’t come into it. It came into geology and soils and land capability and so on and and, you know, we’ve got a you know, we don’t. We shouldn’t be sort of tied into the existing structure. We have to kind of break out of the end the existing structure in some way.

1:03:50
Good on you. Donald, thank you for that. And I’ve known you for around 30 years, and you’re expert in forestry, so thank you for that so well, an immediate response to that, Karen,

1:04:00
I completely agree. I think the added benefit of that kind of cooperation is resilience. So the other thing in the room, in the world is climate change, and the all of the uncertainty that’s going to bring that’s going to bring change for farming and forestry, whether those sectors, whether we like it or not, I don’t think the border is as unique in having independent minded farmers and foresters, certainly met many of them in many other parts of the world. But I think one of the well, there’s many reasons why we don’t have the situation that you outlined, historically and unique features of kind of Scottish history in this part of the world. But I think one of the ways that the state could make a difference is by not leaving it up to private sector speculation. So at the moment, someone could put in a planning application for a wind farm, more or less anywhere where they want to with in partnership with Lando. Similarly with the forestry scheme. And I’m not saying that that’s not a judgement on those lines. Juices. It’s more the process by which those that land use is decided is not always opaque. It’s not always in the public or, sorry, transparent. It’s not always in the public domain. Folk may not even know about it in the case of some schemes. So I think for government, and perhaps through delegation to regional land use partnerships, being brave and allowing that perhaps something might play out slightly differently in one part of the country than another, and that’s okay, because it’s a decision for that part of the country, so it doesn’t need to be a kind of one size fits all.

1:05:39
Andy, do you want to comment?

1:05:41
Yeah, no. Thanks to all for your question. Yeah. I mean, I suppose you know, for the region, land use partnership and for delivering that vision and collaboration is actually key, you know. And you know, developing partnerships and improving the engagement between the different sectoral interests want better word. You know, we obviously in a different place than we were 4050, years ago, in terms of people who live in the region. How connected are they to the land? Now, we live very different lives. You think of our upland valleys, those communities would be largely populated by people who lived and worked on the land in some way, 5060, years ago. And that’s it’s very different now. There could be commuters, people working from home, that kind of thing. So it’s within a different, different place. So we’ve got to do some, you know, reflected on the local to the national engagement that the arlok can place that bridge building. But within the region, we’ve got to do a lot more in terms of building bridges between the different interests there, the land owners, the land managers, the communities, the different stakeholders. And we can draw upon the experience of excellent partnership work in the region. So the likes of the tweed forum, Sun partnership, Buddhist forest trusts that have mentioned, you know that they’re trusted by many of the stakeholders involved. And it’s going to be a process of, think of of gentle persuasion and engagements, not about wielding big sticks, etc. It’s about trying to foster that collaboration. I think so hopefully, over the course of the next 20 years, we’ll we’ll be in a different place, but regional land use partnerships could potentially be the fulcrum, or the place to try and catalyse that?

1:07:24
Yeah, but, but we do have a climate, nature emergency. You mentioned 20 years. We just haven’t got time, so we’ve got to try and move at pace, you know? And I was thinking reflecting on the land reform bill, there were 400 amendments that went forward under that bill. So clearly, there’s some very important work to be done there, but we have an emergency. We need to work at pace, and that’s what I’m sensing from you, Donald, in your in your comment, there conversation.

1:07:51
I don’t think we have enough collaboration, yeah, you know. And if we had both of those, bit more of those, because, you know, you try and get hold of a group of farmers, for example, or foresters, you know, to have a conversation about some of these things, and they don’t have these kind of evening discussions that they used to have, you know, that seems to be a thing of the past. So, you know, how do you actually engage with different sectoral interests and try and make them less sectoral? You know, we’ve got these big monoliths of land use, and we need to kind of try and be a bit more integrated. I did a paper for Commonweal on land use, and the kind of conclusion was we should have mosaics, more mosaics. So knots are big slabs of Sitka over sort of several valleys, followed by big slabs of sheep grazing country over several valleys, but instead breaking it all up into a smaller scale somehow. Yeah, diversification, resilience through diversification, because in those odd little corners, that’s where the wildlife lives. Yeah, no. Thanks. Thanks.

1:08:57
Donald Fraser, is there another question? Thanks, yes, please.

1:09:03
Marianne Broadgate from I live in Melrose, and I work for an IT company, but I’m very interested in this stuff, and I’m very interested especially in systems and models. And I think the Orion on the table here is our economic system, which drives all of this. And whatever you’re doing, you’re pushing against it to do because it’s exploitative, and I wonder whether what we’re doing to nurture and ferment sort of change and gender changes in things like economic thinking. And you mentioned cooperatives Donald, lots of the things that you said feed into that they were old systems that worked well before they were pushed into this new economic system, this economic system, which is now global and very powerful and very exploitative, which basically creates fewer and fewer centres with more and more power and. You know, more and more power and fewer and fewer hands, just exactly what you’re talking about with the land ownership and so on. And we know that just what you were saying as well, Ellen, that interconnectedness is so critical, and it actually crushes all of that as well. And what we need is resilient, distributed networks of things, where things are smaller and people are more engaged locally. You know, why is it that it’s cheaper to fly in food from Spain than it is to grow it locally here? Why is it that in Berwickshire we’re growing grain for American beer and, you know, whiskey, when we should, when we could be growing food for ourselves, which would be a lot healthier for everybody. And I think when people are when things economic activity, you know, we should have lots of economic activity here. We’ve got so many resources, but because of the way the modern system works, all of that stuff’s been offshored. So how do we create and I think we can keep we can’t legislate and incentivize our way out of this, we need to fundamentally change the models upon which we’re operating, to create these sorts of differences, where you’ve got sharing models, cooperative models, community based models, and then everybody is engaged naturally. At the moment, you know, I work for an IT, company that is all around the world, and I don’t engage with anybody in the borders at all for my job, and so many people are in that situation, I work my ass off to and I’m lucky in this respect, to support local businesses as much as I can. I never go near supermarkets because they are ultimately exploitative and the way the food system works everything about it. So how I do think that thinking about the different alternative models for doing this would be a way to drive the change that we need at the speed we

1:11:49
need, and to have these featuring and consultations? Yep, anyone want to respond to that? And then there’s someone at the back,

1:11:56
Chris, I think that’s a really good point. And I think the key is that if we leave it to the market alone, that is where it’s going to go. So we have to ask, you know, government, if you like, in its various forms, to set a new agenda that allows alternative forms of economic system. You’re quite right, because otherwise, that is where it will go. Couldn’t agree more,

1:12:21
offshoring, Yep, absolutely right, yes. Gentleman in the light green jersey, I’m colour blind, so I’m

1:12:30
trying Peter Douglas. Actually, I represent the NFU for environment and land use, so I’m well versed in quite a lot there’s and I’m an indigenous farmer. We’ve been here since the year. Dot I’d like to bring up a few things that we’re talking about just on the food point of view. The worst thing about our Scotland’s food and drink problem is is that all of the Councils just get all their food from you know, we produce this tremendous food and get exported aboard. And the risk of saying the wrong thing with our kids and our prisons are nurses get some guff from Indonesia or something that comes back, and it’s something that needs to be addressed if we’re going to produce all our good food. I would just like to the one word didn’t like was the subsidies we’ve actually have been supported since the war, since a long time in agriculture. The reason was, was the dig for victory, and we responded excellently, and we’re beginning to respond to the new ideas that are coming through now. And the NFU gets a lot of flack because it actually is maybe a wee bit in bed, but the Scottish Government, but we are actually working on food production, and it’s going to be conditional, which puts us ahead of the of the south of the border, I would say the natural capital, which is the one that crops up everywhere. I’m slightly wary of it, because whenever I go, I’ve been to lens meetings, I’ve been to LUNs meetings, I’ve been to inns meetings, I’ve been to tweed forum meetings. And natural capital always comes up, and it worries me. I quote Leonard Cohen, he thought he saw an eagle, but it might have been a vulture. And I think this natural capital. We all see an eagle, but we’ve got to be it was just about a word of warning. We have to be aware of the vultures, the wolf in the sheep’s closing or the other way around. And my idea of natural capital is my red face, not as red as James’s jumper and working hands. And that’s the sort of people that we need to have to Baker community, and I don’t like to harp on about the farm, the farmers have been the sort of bedrock of it. And if there’s so many other things, and the other one was, was that the farmers can do biodiversity, but the general public has to do net zero. You know, we all talk about this, this nature and emergencies, but the farmers are beginning to the biodiverted that might have been lost with the dips in the silage effluent is coming back now, I would say, and the new phrase is maximum sustainable output from the farms. I mean, I think that’s quite something that we could remember from tonight.

1:14:53
Sustainability so important. Thank you. So bit random. Anyway, no, no, not random. I’m so glad you mentioned golden eagles, because that’s been. A massive success story in the south of Scotland. Brilliant work, Chris, do you want to respond? And then there’s another hand going up, yeah.

1:15:08
Well, thank you very much indeed for that. That was really excellent. Conditionality, you’re absolutely right. And I think I had an interesting discussion with Johnny Hall NFU. I think there’s some great opportunities. What I’d love to do is to sit down with tweed forum and you and a few others but Keely the Scottish Government, to see how we can influence the right direction. Because, as I said, you know, when it comes down to it, we’re currently importing a phenomenal amount of our food, and anything we don’t produce here is yet more imported from elsewhere. Yeah, great. And that

1:15:46
was the other thing I did my first day. I took some Americans round Hermitage, Castle and littlesdale and everything, and I got 50 pound but don’t mention it to the taxpayer, but I think the borders is crying out. We have all these people coming in the borders, and we don’t do holiday houses, but whenever the tourists see me on the road, they all want to ask questions. I think there’s a desire for knowledge about our borders history. There’s a gap there for someone to fill. And I could tell the story about can’t organise

1:16:14
together, is actually climate resilience. I mean, it’s an opportunity. It’s a terrible one, yeah, but it is actually something that impacts absolutely everybody. And you said it’s water scarcity as much as anything else. It’s our soil health that seems to me the one thing that brings everything together.

1:16:29
We’re running out of time. So could you just hold back here exactly?

1:16:32
Sir. Neil Richardson, I didn’t have a hat at all, just I’d be interested in the panels feel. Feeling about the balance between local and national government in terms of planning. There’s been an awful lot of talk about community this and community that. But you know, right now we’re having the pylons built right across, going to be built right across the tweed Valley, up the Ettrick Valley. There’s a consultation process going on. I don’t know anyone who doesn’t see this as a cynical tick box exercise, and if the council does oppose it, then the government is just going to steamroller it so it doesn’t do an awful lot for feelings of community and well being. But you could argue that’s me being a nimbyist, and we need to have these power lines. And you know, if you listen to local communities all the time, nothing ever happens. So what is the balance?

1:17:31
So just before the panel respond, have you got a suggestion there as to what would help that tension between local and national government?

1:17:40
Well, I’m slightly torn, because I do think that we can’t get anything done in this country. It takes absolutely forever to get planning for anything and the needs the bound, I think the pendulum swung too far one way. However, I don’t see why we have to destroy most of the Scottish environment to help out English electricity users.

1:18:12
Yep, it is right. Thank you. Who wants to respond to that? Karen and then Sandy

1:18:18
lots in there? I will stay out of the specifics of that particular situation and planning in particular, and just talk about some of the what I’m hearing in what you’ve just talked about, which are some of the bigger picture dynamics here, which are around what I would call rural just transition. So to what extent in the South, in rural South Scotland in particular, are we hosting Scotland’s carbon targets, Scotland’s biodiversity targets at some point in the future, and so forth, and at what point is that recognised in policy? So I live in rural Dumfries and Galloway, so I’ve come a little way here to be here today, but obviously still very much in the south of Scotland. And you think school closures, you’re seeing all of the kind of depopulation that’s happening in many rural plant places. And I think some, if there’s a way, I don’t have a magic solution for this, other than, I think some of the somewhat, perhaps, for some folk, ironically, some of the practice that has come out of onshore wind in terms of community engagement, community benefit, community consultation, actually has quite a lot to teach us. It’s not perfect, but there are at least mechanisms by there and potentially resource to support communities to respond. So I’m not commenting on that specific situation, but just to say, I think that there does need to be a national conversation, or certainly in the south of Scotland, we need to articulate this nationally, that our needs are different than they are from the central belt or from other parts of Scotland, and that we’re entitled to certain services. You know, if we’re. We’re, you know, there’s a quid pro quo here, isn’t there? If we’re going to be hosting all of these

1:20:06
trees, Andy, do you want to respond? Then I’m going to go to Fraser,

1:20:10
yeah, again, without wanting to get drawn into the specifics of the of the scheme. But, you know, it represents perhaps one of the hardest choices we’ve talked about. You know, it’s not all about win, win. There’s trade offs to be had, and it’s about, how do we meet that national requirement as a society we need, you know, not an upgrade and updated, good infrastructure to to enable the energy system to be used, to be modified, so it’s a green energy system, then it comes down to the place. So where, where does it need to go? I mean, inevitably, it’s to export renewable energy supply south of the border. It’ll have to come somewhere through the south of Scotland region. So then it comes down to the question about, well, on balance, where do we find that location? So and again, not just about that as a land use issue, for many of the land use issues, that there’s potentially a place there for more strategic planning to help guide this, to have more meaningful engagement locally. So it’s that tension, if you like, about meeting the national ambition, but what are the local needs as well, and finding somewhere in between that to say, well, this is acceptable, this is not but ultimately, I think, as Chris had said earlier, that there are going to be situations where it’s it’s not win, win, and some hard choices to be made, and we’re all part of that. There’s local residents. We’re all part of that, that picture as well. You know, it’s like the climate change issue is not going to go away. It’s going to affect us all. And the more that we can work together to find solutions to this, the better. But it’s that is a particularly hard situation and difficult situation,

1:21:50
I think you’ve put that very well Andy, and it’s it’s having the right conversation that’s so important. Briefly, do you want to respond to that?

1:22:01
Well, I mean, it was specific on the project. I can’t see why we it might cost a little bit more to stick the power lines down where existing power lines go to England. But why do we not do that rather than just choose the cheapest option and Trundle it over the top of our beautiful countryside? Okay?

1:22:25
No, it’s, it’s helping others. Okay, there’s quite something, and there’s already

1:22:32
the undersea. Well, we’ll give you, hold on a sec. We’ll give you, we’ll give you a microphone. Freeze You sure you’re right.

1:22:39
Lady, lady in red has said she’s content. That’s great. Thank you.

1:22:46
It’s this issue about community wealth building, so if you like, there’s a compensation that comes back to where it is affected, and that’s that’s used to work in a way that benefits the local economy and the local communities as far as possible. So it’s not ideal, but we have to try and find means of doing that.

1:23:03
Yeah, okay, Eleanor, and then we’ve got one more question.

1:23:06
You make a really important point, and we’ve kind of seen it more and more in other things as well. When you kind of get forestry planting, and the first one affects a couple of species that you wanted to kind of protect, but it was okay because they could go elsewhere. But then you see it move across the hill, and the lack of understanding of the cumulative effect of that. And you see it with with wind farms, that you’ve perhaps not had this retrospective assessment of the cumulative effect of pushing this infrastructure in. And it’s hidden, but not hidden, that there’s a hierarchy as to who gets to kind of say, well, it’s still happening, regardless of what you say, and it does need to be addressed. I agree, and especially for some of the stuff that we’ve sort of seen, for where these pylons want to go, you do hear about it’s going to go into a field where there are so many breeding pairs of lap points, and you go, Well, why wouldn’t you move it over? And it’s incredibly frustrating. We’ve seen it with the Rural connectivity, the r1 100 project, where some of them just didn’t make sense where the pilot where they were going to go, and it didn’t have any benefit that you could realistically see. And it takes communities asking the questions loudly enough and putting the points to the right people, making sure that their politicians are getting told again and again they’re not happy about this. You cannot be a passive observer on on this. It ultimately it might not make a difference, but you have got to make your point, because it’s not it. It is too often that we see it wouldn’t have been a significant change in cost. And when you look at the end of the project, they’ll have gone over by that anyway, to have shifted it. And the benefit would have been the same, but the benefit to the area not being touched would have been far greater. And so you have to make the point. You can’t I talked about consultation fatigue earlier, but there are some things you have to push through and and make your point as loudly and often as you can.

1:25:08
Great. Thanks. Eleanor, we really are running out of time. We’ve just got a couple of minutes left. Fraser, had you got

1:25:14
a quickie? Another and the from the online audience asked, there seems to be a clear role for local government here. We use local councils to manage and regulate planning in our towns and cities, subject should they have a bigger role in land use decisions?

1:25:28
Eleanor and then Karen

1:25:30
I as a as a policy nerd, I get incredibly frustrated at the lack of interest in local elections and the low turnout when the day to day decisions that they make that have an effect on your everyday life is significant, and actually, local authorities do have a huge role already, from the from the arlop work, from the local place plans, local flood plans, Good Food Nation plans, they all come from Central national policies that are delivered at local level. They already have a significant influence on your life and the local environment that you live in. So yes, we should be expecting more, and we should pay more attention to who we’re electing

1:26:11
good. Thank you, Karen, and then I’m going to come

1:26:13
to you completely agree with that. I think I just wanted to make a pitch for just your question around planning, I don’t think it’s that we need more local authority involvement in planning. I think we need more involvement, or more enablement of community involvement in planning. So I would love to go back to a time before local government reorganisation, or some future point post with a new governance settlement where we Community Councils are mandated and resourced in a way that they’re not currently to engage in the planning system. So in England, we have parish councils that have aren’t necessarily loads better, but certainly have some budget and a bit more clout. In the rest of Europe, we have much smaller locals of unit governance, local units of governance that can control and have quite a lot of say, and most importantly, have some budget and yes, elected, but also paid staff to enact that, so it’s not reliant on volunteers. That’s what I would like to see. The last word.

1:27:22
Well, speaking as an SBC, SNP councillor, I completely agree that local authorities do need to play a greater role. However, what I’ve noticed with the process in that, because I’m not only administration in the council, and there’s very few of the councillors who are in that administrative role, the rest of the councillors really don’t have any say at all. And even within those councillors are within the administration. There’s very few of them on the planning committee, and the rest of us do not get to see any of it. And really it is the communities around and about us who are feeding through to us as local representatives to then go back to our own Council and say, This is where you need to link up, and this is what you need to listen to, and this is who you need to listen to. One of the projects I’m trying to get through at the moment is to establish a community and school food programme in the back of the walled garden in Wilton Park. And one of the disappointing aspects of this, and I’ve spoken to lots of local stakeholders with regards to this, and all of them are very keen, very interested, and that’s from the community. However, one of the things I’ve noticed is that the council officers can be quite risk averse in terms of having any kind of supportive attitude towards communities. In fact, I had an email today that just felt to me like that the officers that I was talking to just poured cold water over everything, and it was really frustrating for me as a local representative, because Hoyt, where I stay, is a very socially deprived area, and the community there is quite separated from its natural environment. And I would like to see that changed. And I would like to have their food production with the children, so they can see that they are connected to horticulture, that they can have, you know, they can have skills in it. They can have jobs in it, and they are also then eating food that they’ve grown themselves. And they can see those connections.

1:29:27
I’m going to stop you. Great note to finish on. Time’s up. Time’s up. Everyone that has been fantastic. Thank you very much, everyone. I want to thank Eleanor, Karen Andy and Chris borders college and so see for having us here, Fraser Daria iagan for looking after us here, on behalf of the RSE, and I want to thank all of you just watching you participating in this and seeing your faces and the bits you agree with and disagree with, but I hope we. All go away from here, either online or on here, better informed as to the discussion we’ve had. So please join me in thanking everyone who’s contributed to this.