Hansard

I will look at the issue from the standpoint of meeting our sequestration targets and the role that farming can play in that. That is not to diminish the importance of forestry from a commercial and economic perspective. The sector contributes £1 billion a year to the Scottish economy and supports 25,000 jobs. That really matters and, from a reducing emissions perspective, so does using wood in construction instead of other materials.

As convener of the Environment, Climate Change and Land Reform Committee, and given that this Parliament today commenced its scrutiny of the new climate plan, I want to focus on carbon sequestration at the initial stage. That said, there is a common thread running through the replanting issue, whether it is approached from the perspective of climate change, biodiversity, flood management, health benefits, water quality or commerce. Those are the raft of challenges that require to be overcome if we are to start planting 10,000 hectares a year and to move on to 15,000 hectares a year by 2024-25, and if we are to increase woodland cover from 18 to 21 per cent by 2032. Those challenges will require action.

It is only fair to offer some perspective on the issue. Although the 10,000 hectare target has not been reached to date, Scotland was responsible for 83 per cent of the new woodland created across these islands in 2015-16 and, in terms of delivery and ambition in that area, we are light years ahead of England, Northern Ireland and Wales.

However, the fact is that we have set targets and we will require a change in attitude and approach if we are to get to the planting levels that we require to secure all those necessary benefits and to ensure that there is not a crisis in access to wood for commercial purposes in years to come. We need to get over the old mantra that planting trees on less productive agricultural land is a sign of farming failure. We must find a means of making it easier for tenant farmers to plant on their farms without suffering detriment. We also need to identify parcels of land of the kind that Peter Chapman mentioned that are not currently utilised for any meaningful purpose and which would be suited to hosting forestry on whatever scale. Further, we need to deploy the land use strategy on a regional and more local scale to ensure that we begin to integrate land use far better than we have done up until now.

Implementation of the Mackinnon report where it identifies ways to remove barriers to planting will help us on this journey, as will, in terms of enticing farming participation, the move to allowing farmland planted under the forestry grant scheme to still be eligible for basic payments. If that is topped up by the Scottish Government’s planned exploration of a scheme that would see farmers paid for sequestering carbon through tree planting from 2020 onwards, as identified in the climate change plan, we might just secure a real breakthrough.

Although we should be demanding much more of farmers by way of emissions reductions without increasing financial support, there is nothing wrong with incentivising them to deliver new step change behaviour that brings about measurable carbon sequestration benefits. Some good work is going on already in terms of establishing new woodlands and improving the management of existing small-scale ones.

With regard to the latter, I was interested to hear recently about LEADER funding being used to support the first stage of the innovative Argyll small woods co-operative project, which is helping farmers and other small woodland owners manage those woodlands. In terms of the former, some interesting work is going on in central Scotland, with the central Scotland green network providing support and advice to farmers within the green network area around opportunities for woodland creation. That is laying the foundations for farmers to access the Scotland rural development programme forest grant scheme. In the past 15 months, 1,500 hectares of woodland creation has been approved and supported by £10 million in funding.

Clearly, courtesy of Brexit, the future nature of LEADER and the SRDP are in doubt, along with a 55 per cent underwriting of the forest grant scheme from the European agricultural fund for rural development, but in the short term at least, those funding streams are accessible for these important purposes and to establish some momentum.

However, in increasing planting in keeping with the woodland carbon code, we need to be mindful of another environmental impact—that of deer. The deer management issue is one that the Environment, Climate Change and Land Reform Committee has been wrestling with these past few months, concluding its extensive evidence gathering only this morning. The public purse in Scotland is facing an annual bill of around £30 million to install new fencing and repair existing protections to keep deer out of our current forest footprint and allow it to flourish.

As we deploy public money to fund new planting, with all its sequestration benefits, we must seek to reduce the risk of the double whammy of having to then increase spend on measures to protect that investment from the impact of deer. I believe that the central Scotland green network scheme already has a fencing element in the funding. We will always need to fence, but I contend that we need to strike a better balance between that and culling.

Another challenge for forestry is coping with the ravages of disease: 12,000 hectares of publicly owned woodland have had to be cleared over the past six years in response to disease impacts. It therefore makes sense that, although full control over forestry will pass to Scotland, we will still maintain cross-border co-operation on plant health, alongside developing common codes and shared research. The UK forestry standard is helpful, for example, in resisting the pressure from some quarters to allow planting on peat of a depth of more than 50cm, which is completely counterproductive in carbon sequestration terms.

It is welcome that the standard is to be revised to improve the sustainability of woodland development. However, I note—as other members have—the concerns of respected bodies such as the Woodland Trust on an aspect of full devolution of forestry functions. As we have heard, those bodies are fearful of the consequences of forest policy and regulation being moved in-house, as it were, to be overseen by a forestry division of the Scottish Government. The concerns around the impact of that may well be unfounded, but I hope that the cabinet secretary will address them directly in closing and that, more importantly, the Scottish Government will proactively engage with those who hold those concerns in order to secure support for and confidence in future governance of the sector.