 The next item of business is the statement by Mary McAllan on interim principles for responsible investment in natural capital. The minister will take questions at the end of her statement and so there should be no interventions or interruptions. I call on Mary McAllan Minister. Up to 10 minutes please. Thank you very much, Presiding Officer. The recent COP26 conference in Glasgow highlighted Scotland's international reputation for its natural capital and the supporting policies. Those include the First Minister's endorsement of the Leader's Pledge for Nature to Reverse Biodiversity Loss by 2030 and our significant public investment in woodland creation and peatland restoration as nature-based solutions to climate change. Our natural capital has become an increasingly attractive proposition for private investment. This investment is largely focused on delivering carbon management but it also supports a wide range of benefits, including economic development, particularly in rural areas, by diversity improvements, resilience of food supply and natural flood management. The investment is welcome and necessary but it must be responsible. We share concerns about the need to ensure equitable sharing of the benefits of this investment with local communities and with wider society, including when the investment involves the purchase of land or carbon rights for the purpose of carbon offsetting. That is why, during COP26, we emphasised our ambition to deliver a values-led high integrity market for natural capital. Responsible investment delivers a wide range of our environmental, social and economic policy priorities that is high integrity so that it verifiably restores and enhances nature and that is genuinely values-led so that it supports a just transition and involves and benefits communities. This commitment is now also embedded in our national strategy for economic transformation. Private investment in natural capital is critical to enabling the pace and the scale of action that is required to fulfil Scotland's world-leading ambitions on addressing climate change and halting ecological decline. We have already committed significant public funding in the natural economy, more than £500 million over the course of this Parliament, but the fact remains that no Government can alone meet the funding required. The Green Finance Institute has estimated the investment gap for nature restoration in Scotland to be around £20 billion over the next decade. We are determined to ensure that this necessary private investment is socially responsible and provides wider public benefit, including for our local communities. As stated in our global capital investment plan, we want to work with investors who share our values so that we encourage the right kind of investment in our natural capital and we want to work with communities to ensure that they are both empowered and poised to benefit from our journey to net zero. Our approach offers significant opportunity across our economy in terms of increased investment in good jobs and in fair work, in land management and in the supporting ffintech, agritech and supply chain sectors. Indeed, NatureScot estimates that there are currently around 200,000 nature-based jobs in Scotland and that this sector has been responsible for a third of the jobs growth in Scotland over the past five years. Increasing the right kind of private investment will be important for continued jobs growth, particularly in rural communities, and will also provide new income streams for farmers and land managers. We know that young people are increasingly interested in nature-based careers, which help to fight the twin, nature and climate emergencies. In order to restore our natural capital, ensure a just transition, deliver good jobs and secure a vibrant future for our rural communities, we must design a market for investment with those very objectives at its heart. Today, we are setting out our ambition and strategic direction to support and promote the type of activity that we wish to see, striking a balance between the need for responsible private sector investment that supports our policy priorities such as climate change, mitigation, fair work and a just transition and, on the other hand, the need to support community rights and ambitions. There are examples from other industries such as onshore wind energy of how the benefits of land-based private investment can successfully be shared with local communities. Furthermore, our groundbreaking land rights and responsibilities statement, published in 2017, sets out principles underpinning the Scottish Government's vision for a stronger relationship between the people of Scotland and our land, where ownership and use of land delivers greater public benefits through a democratically accountable and transparent system of land rights and, importantly, responsibilities. We are currently conducting the statutory five-year review of the land rights and responsibilities statement to assess whether it requires to be updated to remain fit for purpose and contemporary challenges. Presiding Officer, the Scottish Government is committed to this and to community empowerment. For example, the new Scottish land fund is now open and has awarded a total of £6.5 million to more than 80 projects this year alone. The budget for this year is £10 million and will be doubled to £20 million by the end of this Parliament. The new land reform bill will aim to ensure that the public interest is considered on transfers of particularly large-scale landholdings, tackling problematic scale and concentration of ownership that can hamper community ambition. We will aim to introduce a pre-emption in favour of community buy-out, where the public interest test applies and where it is appropriate to do so. Our proposals will complement existing community right-to-buy mechanisms and existing guidance that supports community engagement in land-based decision making. That includes our guidance on engaging communities in decisions relating to land and the Scottish Land Commission's good practice programme, which comprises a series of land rights and responsibilities protocols. In addition, the Scottish Government is working in close collaboration with partner agencies, including the work that the Scottish Land Commission is taking forward as a matter of urgency to help us to better understand the implications of investment in natural capital on the land market. In advance of more formal policy developments, we are publishing today a set of interim principles for responsible private investment in Scotland's natural capital. Those interim principles set out our ambition for this market in Scotland. They spell out our commitment to ensuring that the interests of thriving and empowered local communities and the wider public are at the very heart of our approach both now and in the future. As a priority action under the national strategy for economic transformation, we will develop new market infrastructure, rules and governance for responsible private investment in natural capital. That approach will build on existing investment mechanisms such as the woodland carbon code and the peatland code. Market development will of course take time to come to fruition and will depend critically on partnership work across the public, private and third sectors. On that note, I extend my gratitude to the economic, environmental and societal agencies whose insights and expertise have been instrumental in the development of those principles. I mentioned that Government cannot achieve the scale of our ambition alone. We need to build a broad coalition of the willing. That collaborative approach will be continued through discussion with communities, land managers, investors and other stakeholders on those interim principles to discuss how they will apply in practice, to help us to develop best practice and to develop options for market infrastructure. To that purpose, we will engage on the interim principles through existing initiatives such as the Scottish Forum for Natural Capital, the Scottish Nature of Finance pioneers and networks such as those used by the Scottish Land Commission to support the land rights and responsibility statement. Collaboration will be critical to achieving our aims. No Government has all the answers or has all of this worked out yet, but we are here. We are ready to lean into this challenge alongside those who share our commitment to a high integrity, values-led market and, indeed, to learning by doing. That will not be easy, but the things that are worth doing seldom are. I hope that this is a challenge that we can all get behind and I very much look forward to working with Parliament to turn that vision into a reality. The minister will now take questions on the issues raised in her statement. I intend to allow around 20 minutes for questions after which we will move on to the next item of business. It would be helpful if those members who wish to ask a question were to press the request to speak buttons now, and I call Rachel Hamilton. I thank the minister for prior sight of her statement. The statement goes some way to addressing the interim principles for responsible investment in natural capital. We welcome aspects that the minister touches on today. However, it falls short of the expectations of many in rural Scotland. While we on these benches support investment in natural capital, it has to be done responsibly and ensure that rural livelihoods are not lost in the process—a sentiment that we all share. I recently spoke to the Scottish Tenant Farmers Association in relation to the loss of agricultural land as a result of the expansion of large-scale forestry by companies seeking to offset their carbon footprint. We have not only seen tenant farmers moved off their land, but other rural workers, including gamekeepers and gillies. Tenant farmers' primary concerns are surrounding agricultural tenancy laws, which allow for the facilitation of disposal of land for greenwashing. Alongside the new interim principles, will the minister consider further supporting tenant farmers so that they too can benefit from net zero and these principles and seek to ensure that tenancy laws in Scotland reflect the need to prevent productive agricultural land being lost to so-called highland clearances? I am very aware of the opportunities and challenges that are presented by the move to net zero and the centrality of our land. That is partly the reason why we are here today. Among that, I am aware of the concern of farmers and of tenant farmers as part of that and, indeed, of crofters. My colleagues across government, because this is a genuinely cross-government effort, engage regularly with farmers, crofters and tenants. To give Rachel Hamilton some comfort on the extent to which the Government is aware of that, I would read to her the principle six of the principles that we are publishing today, which is headed investment that supports diverse and productive land ownership, and point three of which reads, where there are leases or other forms of tenure in place, for example in agricultural tenancies or crofting tenure, investors should identify and engage relevant parties early in decision-making and consider opportunities for shared benefit. As I said, this is the beginning today and this is not the end. There will be a process following the publication of these principles, which will involve further engagement and the development of best practice. I hope that that inclusion can give Rachel Hamilton some comfort on her point. Given an important statement on the ferries was bumped for this one, it really ought to have contained a lot more substance. Today's statement does nothing to address the fact that Scotland's land market continues to be dominated by private investment and wealthy individuals continue to own vast amounts of land. The Scottish Government is seeking to improve transparency around land ownership with the register of persons holding a controlled interest in land, but the enforcement measures announced for non-compliance of this register a week. A £5,000 fine will not deter those wealthy landowners who can afford to pay, so can the Minister confirm whether the Scottish Government will remove public subsidies from those landowners who refuse to comply? Although the Scottish Government have published these interim principles today, it is unclear how landowners will be made to comply with them. Can the Minister confirm if these principles will be incorporated into the land rights and responsibilities statement and whether the Land Commission will be given the powers to turn these interim principles into an enforceable code of practice for landowners? Her concerns are the concerns that I share and all of which I am considering as we develop both this work and indeed the land reform bill. The Parliament voted for what was then and what is still regarded to be the world's most ambitious targets for emissions reduction in the world. What that means is incumbent on all of us to make sure that we can achieve those targets. We are fortunate in Scotland that we have ample scope in our natural world to sequester carbon to support biodiversity, but what is absolutely clear is that Government cannot fund that alone. There is a £20 billion investment gap between what the public sector can do and between what is needed to fulfil the land-based work that will allow us to fulfil our targets. The member is asking me to answer her question. I am afraid that many of the questions that she has posed today are part of legislation, for which the consultation is still being developed. It would not be appropriate for me to come to the chamber and divulge that information prior to public consultation. However, what I can assure her of is that I am considering all of this work, together with the review of the land rights and responsibility statement, together with the advice that I will get from the Scottish Land Commission on the issue of what is informally being called green layers, and all of that will be fed into the legislation as it is developed. The principles clearly touch on issues that will be of huge interest to the agricultural sector. How do we ensure that we take the crofters and tenant farmers with us on this journey as we seek to restore and enhance nature? He is absolutely right when it comes to Scotland's land. Our farmers and our crofters are key, not only as we rely on them to produce our food and, indeed, to fulfil the Government's good food nation ambition that we are rolling out just now, but their stewardship of our land makes them an absolutely key player in the delivery of net zero Scotland and one that lives in harmony with nature. Just as I did with Rachel Hamilton, the Scottish Government is very seized of the importance of supporting farmers to deliver sustainable food production, to fulfil what we need them to and what they are well poised to do in terms of climate mitigation and support for biodiversity. The member knows that that work is being undertaken through the ARIOB by my colleague the Cabinet Secretary for Rural Affairs and Islands, but it is also front and centre of the work that we are publishing today. I refer the member again to principle 1, investment that delivers integrated land use, principle 6, investment that supports productive land ownership and 6.3, the section that I read to Rachel Hamilton. Last year, there were 5,600 hectares of peatland restored against the Scottish Government target of 20,000 hectares. That is the fourth year in a row that those targets have been missed. Ambitions and targets are only relevant if there is a route to achieve them, so there is a lack of qualified men and women in the green economy. Can I therefore ask the minister what the Scottish Government is doing to ensure that the education system is supported to develop green economy qualifications to enable the natural capital ambitions that the minister talks about to be realised? I think that the member touches on the crux of the issue that we are facing here. The public sector has a role to play in setting targets, emissions reduction targets and peatland restoration targets. We can invest money as we are doing in order to try to provide stability in the market. We are doing that with peatland restoration. We have committed a quarter of a billion pounds over the next decade, but there is inevitably a gap. Those principles that we are publishing today are exactly about trying to rise to the challenge of that gap, leveraging in private investment, but doing it in a way that is responsible. He is absolutely right to mention the importance of skills, because it is not only essential for all the work that we need to undertake in woodland creation, peatland restoration and marine habitats, but it is also something that young people are continually crying out to be involved in. They want to be part of green sectors of the future. There are a number of pieces of work that are being undertaken in my portfolio, including a review of land-based learning. I know that there are, for example, investments that are being made as part of our skills guarantee in land-based work as well, but I should like to assure him that we are trying to rise to the challenge of that, not only because it is necessary, but because young people are calling out for us to do so. Thank you Minister for your statement, which highlighted the estimated investment gap for nature restoration in Scotland as being around £20 billion over the next decade and how Government alone cannot meet that gap. As you have said, responsible private investment will be critical here, so could you please expand on how the Scottish Government will balance this in a way that ensures harmony with its land reform ambitions and any aspirations expressed by communities? As I have said today, we are absolutely committed to taking action to ensure that increasing levels of natural capital investment in Scotland are delivering benefits for local communities and wider society. That is part of fulfilling our legal commitments to emissions reduction, but equally that important legal commitment to a just transition. I have mentioned already that package of work that I am expecting from the Scottish Land Commission to help the Scottish Government to find a pathway to balancing the need for private sector investment in natural capital with community rights and with that all important legal commitment to a just transition. That is all reflected in what we are publishing today, which are principles for a values-led high-integrity market, all of which are set out in the papers that have been published. Moving forward, we will take what we have published today, which I am pleased to note is already being welcomed by stakeholders. We will take it to communities, to crofters, to farmers and to investors. We will use those principles as a vehicle to better understand best practice and to inform how we set the rules for the market, and there are a number of land-based pieces of legislation due to come through this Parliament this term, which I expect all of that work will feed into. I call Rosa Grant, who is joining us remotely, to be followed by Emma Roddick. This statement is right to in detail, especially regarding green lairds, who are already buying up huge swathes of Scotland. Will she bring forward proposals to regulate our land market to stop being bought and used where there is no public interest? Will she confirm whether the right pre-emption for communities will mean that they no longer have to register an interest in the land? I know that this is something that she cares very much about, which she and I have had exchanges on in the Parliament before. I would like to assure Rosa Grant that the work and the other work that is being taken across the land reform and environment portfolio, and indeed others, is entirely geared with the objective that a net zero Scotland should be a country in which more people live and work sustainably on our land and not less. Community empowerment is a huge part of that. There are examples of how we can empower communities that can be through jobs, for example, as was mentioned before. It can be through community benefit. I think that we will all across this chamber have examples within our constituencies and regions where we see town centres transformed by funds that have flowed from renewables development. As regards the pre-emption, I will have to tell Ms Grant what I told her colleague, which is that I am still very closely considering the content of the land reform bill and how it will function, but I hope to publish the consultation shortly. The minister made mention in her statement of jobs and rural communities, is there anything that the Scottish Government is able to do to ensure that private investors make a contribution towards the rural communities that they will come into contact with? The member touches on an important issue, changes in the market and the centrality of our land to our climate and nature aspirations, which is driving the rapid development in our market. It presents opportunities and risks. What we are publishing today is the Scottish Government seeking to mitigate the risks and to rise to the opportunities. Some of those opportunities, some of which the member has mentioned, could be community benefit, as I have just discussed with Rhoda Grant. It could be jobs and it could be a series of other things. On jobs, we know, as I said to the member on the Tory benches, that people increasingly are looking for jobs that will help them to contribute to the restoration of our natural world. Not only that, but those could be jobs that allow young people from constituencies like my own who perhaps feel that they have to leave in order to find opportunities to stay within their local communities and to contribute to something really substantial. Just on the specifics of the question that Emma Roddick raises, I would raise the chamber's awareness to point 2, principle 2, investment that delivers public, private and community benefit, and point 1, investment in and use of Scotland's natural capital should create benefits that are shared between public, private and community interests contributing to a just transition. I thank the minister of early sight of her statement. I also add my welcome to the long overdue recognition at COP26 of the role nature and biodiversity must play in helping us to keep global warning below 1.5 degrees. Scottish Liberal Democrats believe that restoration and rewilding are key to achieving our net zero and biodiversity targets. Will the minister therefore commit to setting additional targets for rewilding of publicly owned land and how will she ensure proper due diligence is carried out into any private investors? I tend not to use the term rewilding because sometimes I worry that it is rewilding to the absence of people. As I have said, my vision for a net zero Scotland and the Government's vision is of a rural Scotland with more people living and working sustainably on the land. Although I think that there are aspects of rewilding that we support and it can be actions that range from very small scale actions to landscape scale actions, I prefer to use rewilding and re-peopeling together. I know that that is something that the member will appreciate. As regards targets, I will not pre-empt the content of some of the work that my colleague Lorna Slater will be taking forward in a natural environment bill this session, but I have no doubt that Ms Slater will be keen to engage with the member on that. Can the minister say more about the way in which those principles will help to continue to race people's relationship with the land in Scotland and the pattern of that relationship, given that that relationship has often been skewed historically by iniquitous patterns of land ownership and use? It is a really important point because that iniquitous pattern of land ownership is partly why we are here today and it is why the Government maintains an unwavering commitment to continuing Scotland's land reform journey. Too often, in decades and centuries gone by, developments in Scotland have happened at the expense of communities and as part of a just transition we cannot allow that to happen again. We must learn from mistakes of the past. We want empowered communities to be able to benefit from the opportunities that land and land use change over the next 20 years will present. The principles that we are presenting today will be taken forward, as I have mentioned, as part of an on-going engagement process. That will allow us to develop an evidence base to ensure that best practice is being undertaken and to inform future laws, including those that may be taken forward as part of the land reform bill and others. I'd like to thank the minister for advance sight of her statement. It's heartening to hear the Government reiterate its commitment to community empowerment through mechanisms like the preemption in favour of community buyout where a public interest test applies. Could the minister outline what is being done to support communities to get organised so that they can grasp the opportunities that will arise as a result of the new legal mechanisms delivered by the Scottish Government and the Greens? I agree that, although we have a job in the executive and in the legislature to ensure that the rules are there to facilitate land reform, it is equally important that communities are able to utilise it and to be supported to do so. Thankfully, communities in Scotland have more options than ever before to take ownership of land and assets, including several distinct rights to buy in existing legislation, and they can now choose which route to community ownership best suits their aspirations. Measures, of course, in the forthcoming land reform bill, will aim to complement what has gone before and to support existing rights. However, I should say that communities ought not to wait for the next land reform bill and to use the opportunities that are available to them. That includes grant support to help communities with the acquisition of land and land assets that are available through the Scottish Land Fund, which I mentioned in my statement, and the grants that are available of up to £100,000 as part of that. My feeling is that the land reform laws that have gone before have created a culture in which communities now feel more able to use and buy assets to suit them. They are not always using the legislation to do that. That is a good thing, but the march of land reform in Scotland continues at pace. The minister talked at length about the need for private investment in natural capital and said that there was a £20 billion gap. However, I do not think that I heard in the statement how the Scottish Government will encourage and incentivise individuals and firms to make those investments, and what the identity of those firms and individuals might be, and where, for example, they are registered as companies. I wonder whether the minister can assist me now. I thank the member for the question. The question of leveraging funding and mobilising that funding is a very good one. Ultimately, investors value certainty and that the principles that we have published today provide clear policy signalling, telling investors where we stand in Scotland, which will allow investors to take investment decisions based on that knowledge and the certainty of the Government's position. The interim principles, as I said to the member's colleague, are the start and not the end. They are designed to be a vehicle for engagement with the investment community that will ensure that we establish a market that works for investors and for communities. Following on from Liam Kerr's question, can the minister go into any more detail about the kind of natural restoration enhancements that she envisages private sector investment bringing about and perhaps any examples that she has currently in Scotland or elsewhere? It is another good question and it goes to the heart again of why we are here. I bring my comment back again to the fact that the Parliament said that world-leading climate targets are committed to treating the climate emergency on a twin-crisis basis with the ecological emergency as well. We are very fortunate in Scotland that marvels of our natural world will come to our rescue in these challenges. The member asks for examples. Woodland creation is a key example. In the last few years, Scotland has planted 80 per cent of all trees that have gone into the ground across the UK. Peatland restoration is an example. It is truly a win-win in the climate and nature emergencies, sequestering carbon, supporting biodiversity and creating green job opportunities. Renewables on and off shore is another good example of land-based investment. An example of increasing importance is blue carbon, including with seagrass and salt mart restoration. All of those are ways, natural nature-based processes that will help us to take on the climate emergency. All of them are opportunities that Scotland is so well placed to utilise. That concludes the statement. There will be a very short pause before we move on to the next item of business.