Douglas Chapman: We need to learn land-grab lessons to protect climate health of our sea

Businesses are starting to explore marine ecosystem restoration projects around the globe for potential carbon credit opportunities to weave into their corporate climate plans.

On paper, this may sound like good news for projects such as seagrass restoration in Scotland looking for funding sources to continue and expand their important work.

But just as the current so-called “land grab” in Scotland for carbon offsetting and rewilding credentials is pricing out potential local community initiatives, is there a real risk that this unfair dynamic could be replicated in our marine resources?

The newspapers in Scotland have been filled with articles on “green lairds” buying up tracts of land to pursue their environmental goals and capitalise on government eco tax breaks and subsidies, often to the detriment of local groups. As policy director at Community Land Scotland Dr Calum MacLeod recently said, we urgently need new land reform legislation to ensure that large swathes of rural Scotland are not merely traded “as a credit on a corporation’s carbon ledger”.

Could there now be a new frontier in this natural capital “Wild West” with a resource that is seven times greater than the size of our land?

Scotland has 617,000 square kilometres of marine area and 18,743 kilometres of coastline. The potential for climate mitigation and adaptation brownie points by enhancing marine biodiversity is another area where strategy and equality should take precedence over private opportunism. Our marine environment needs protected from any carbon off-setting “gold rush” which might give an unfair advantage to private ownership at the expense of public and local community interest.

The key issue here is one of rights and control. Who owns Scotland, and to what end? How should we manage our incredible natural assets to the sustainable benefit of our environment and our people? Relying on the whims of certain landowners to get it right on nature restoration is a hit-and-miss approach – for every “green laird” who has enhanced biodiversity with native tree planting and local jobs, another might spot a chance to greenwash or continue the grouse shooting activities that have so decimated our landscape.

WE can’t just rely on good fortune with our marine habitats either once the carbon offset interests turn their attention from the land to the sea – especially when so far in Scotland, it is the passion and commitment of local community-led groups that has created many of our most successful blueprints in marine restoration.

The Community of Arran Seabed Trust, who set up the No Take Zone at Lamlash Bay on the island, are trail blazers in the power of community action, establishing the first community-led marine reserve of its kind in Scotland in 2008. This was the result of dogged campaigning for 13 years to end unsustainable inshore fishing methods through dredging and bottom trawling. As a result, seabed biodiversity has increased by 50%, and in 2016 this bay became part of a much larger legally enforced Marine Protected Area.

Across Scotland community action like this is being replicated as an urgent response to our nature crisis.

Alan Munro, of Fauna And Flora International and the Coastal Communities Network, has recently published a paper entitled Sowing The Seeds Of Recovery, which examines Scottish community-led projects on seagrass restoration to determine if there is ambition nationally for a shared vision of marine restoration.

Munro highlights how communities have stepped up to the challenge of increasing our climate resilience through replanting seagrass meadows to protect our coastline from flooding and erosion, to improve water quality and fisheries and to capture and store carbon.

Despite challenges in terms of resources, funding, permits and licences, community groups are reaping the benefits through ownership of their seabed and their cultural, historical and social connection to the sea. He believes this type of community-led model has huge potential to be replicated at scale through collaborative partnerships such as the newly established Restoration Forth project, which includes areas in my constituency in West Fife. In this case, communities alongside conservation NGOs, academics and local private and public companies are integral to the design and delivery of a shared restoration vision for the Firth of Forth.

The key here is keeping the grassroots commitment and connection to nature through representation in discussions and design of a national strategy framework for restoration, with more opportunities for local participation, not less as is the case in the current “land grab” scenario.

Taking a “lessons learned” and strategic approach to the biodiversity and climate health of our ocean means we can get ahead of any unfair and unequal acceleration of natural resources into private hands for individual carbon-offsetting benefits.

As the window of opportunity narrows, let’s make sure we don’t make the same mistakes with our marine abundance as we have with our land.

Douglas Chapman is the SNP’s small business, enterprise and innovation spokesperson