Hansard

I will speak to amendment 136, in my name, as well as amendments 135 and 49, and others. Picking up on Maurice Golden’s comments, I note that perhaps all the amendments deal with a number of weaknesses that exist in the climate change plan. They attempt to put in place policy frameworks to drive progress and, in some areas, break new ground. That leads to amendment 136 on blue carbon. I recognise that Claudia Beamish has demonstrated leadership in this area. We have needed to take a leap of faith with blue carbon, but the evidence base on it is now building up. Amendment 136 seeks to increase the requirement on ministers to consider the role of marine carbon stores, such as kelp forests and salt marshes, in reducing Scotland’s emissions. Those blue carbon features not only process and store atmospheric carbon but play a physical role in helping us to adapt to the effects of carbon change such as the rise of sea levels and, by buffering coastlines, storm events. The recently reviewed climate change plan briefly refers to blue carbon and indicates that evidence on which action could be based is lacking. I welcome the fact that the Scottish Government has set up a blue carbon forum and is prioritising research in that field, but it is important that that research translates into meaningful policy action when the time is right. Amendment 136 would require ministers to state their policies and proposals for mitigating greenhouse gas emissions through the good management of blue carbon features in marine areas. Amendment 135 is on unconventional oil and gas. The debate on fracking of recent years is familiar to us all and I will not reopen arguments on that today—we could spend weeks on it. The Government has announced an indefinite moratorium on fracking and coal-bed methane extraction in Scotland. That prohibition or moratorium—let us be careful which words we use—takes the form of statements in the national planning framework and energy strategy that rule out the development of operations in Scotland. Amendment 135 would require a similar statement to be included in the climate change plan to ensure that Scotland’s opposition to fracking was embedded across the Government’s full suite of policies. It is important that there is a reference to unconventional oil and gas in the climate change plan, given that much of the context for the Scottish Government’s policy position on it has come out of concerns about climate change and fugitive emissions, among other associated issues. Detailed scientific studies and other work have been done on that so, given the science base behind the Government’s position, it is appropriate that it is reflected in some way in the climate change plan. Amendment 49 is on what I am calling a whole-farm climate action plan, which the Government would be required to produce. It would be separate from but embedded in the main climate change plan. Members are well aware of the discussions and evidence that we have had on this issue. I appreciate that John Scott’s amendment is similar. The system that is used to calculate Scotland’s climate change emissions separates agriculture from land use, which often means that farming gets credited with emissions that come from agriculture but not with the positive sequestering effect of good land management and forestry that also take place on our farms. The action plan that would be required under amendment 49 would bring those two areas together for the first time and would give a net figure for the impacts that our farms have as a whole on climate change. 10:15 The provisions that the amendment would introduce would require a plan to be set out for how emissions reductions from our farms will progress, taking account of a range of areas. My intention is to bring forward a framework. It would be tempting to have targets for this and that, but the framework that I have set out will be familiar to many members. We have spoken about the importance of research, knowledge transfer, advice, land management accreditation and nutrient resource budgeting. I do not want to set exact policy prescriptions in the bill, which would have to stay there for ever; I want to ensure that good, joined-up action is being taken by the Government to bring those elements together in a sector plan that is focused and turns agriculture from being, perhaps, one of the problems that we have with climate change to one of the strong solutions. Amendment 101, in the name of John Scott, is very similar to amendment 49—we are almost on the same page. However, I do not believe that putting a requirement into the climate change plan does what is necessary. There are already elements in the climate change plan that could be said to address the area of whole-farm emissions, but that does not deal with many of the concerns that we have had in committee about the joined-up nature of the policies that we need. I think that a separate plan needs to be built out from the main climate change plan that goes into the detail of how we are joining up that work. I am happy to accept amendments 49A and 49B, which highlight the importance of sequestration and of agroforestry, which is massively undervalued with respect to climate change and how we make agricultural systems more resilient in the face of climate change and its impacts. Amendment 101 would create a separate land category, using the idea of “mitigation land”. I know that John Scott is keen on that, and there is a lot of merit in what he talks about, but I would be a bit concerned about what would in effect be unintended consequences if we created a climate change set-aside. That could have impacts on biodiversity. Part of the solution lies in integrating land management, for example by integrating carbon sequestration into how we graze pasture through mob grazing techniques. That is not about setting aside land and telling people that they cannot grow anything on it any more, because that is the climate change bit; it means ensuring that agricultural management as a whole delivers carbon sequestration. There may be scope to have peat bogs and particular habitats that are set aside for climate sequestration. However, the proposals are more integrated and more holistic, to use John Scott’s word from the stage 1 debate. That is what we are trying to get out of this process. Turning to the other amendments in the group, I would say that heat is the big issue here. It was a huge issue in 2009, and an amendment was made to the bill then to require a heat target. I do not think that we have seen enough progress as a result of that. At the time, the industry believed that a target around heat would be enough to drive things, but I do not think that that has happened at a sufficient level. We now require to get more specificity and focus through the bill, as we have not had as much progress as we thought we would get. As regards the focus on electric or ultra-low-emission vehicles, we must move quickly on that in a very short period of time. There are big issues there, and a focus on that in the bill would be welcome and beneficial.