 I will be chairing today's meeting following the resignation yesterday of Dean Lockhart. We're sorry to see Dean Goh, but wish him well in his new role and thank him for his service to this committee and for being a courteous and consensus he can chair of this committee. With the agreement of the committee, I would like to write on behalf of the committee expressing our thanks to Dean for his work, particularly in relation to the energy price inquiries to that, and obviously our long and continuing investigation into local government and its partners delivering on net zero. Once a motion agreeing the new Conservative member of this committee has agreed, the committee will agree to appoint a new chair at the first opportunity. So we're now in the 23rd meeting of the net zero energy and transport committee for 2022. It's our first meeting following summer recess, so it's lovely to see everybody, and if we can move to agenda item one, and we have consideration of whether to take items three, four and five in private. Item three is consideration of evidence we will hear today. Item four is consideration of the committee's work programme, and item five, we will consider a list of candidates for two adviser posts to support our work. So do we agree to take these items in private? That is agreed, so items three, four and five will be taken in private. Item two is our first evidence session in relation to the scrutiny of Scottish biodiversity strategy, and I refer members to the clerk and spice papers for this item. In June, the committee agreed to scrutinise biodiversity policy and the proposals for the Scottish Government's new biodiversity strategy. It will be the first substantive update of Scotland's overarching biodiversity policy since 2013, and the starting point in a process which will lead into the development of rolling delivery plans and statutory nature restoration targets through the introduction of a nature environment bill. The Scottish Government is currently consulting on this strategy, consultation ends next week, and the strategy should be published later this year. So we're going to hear from two panels today, focusing on land and marine environments, and the session will be an opportunity to discuss what is needed to address the biodiversity crisis, reflections on the outcomes specified in the consultation, and views on the legislative requirements and what else needs to happen to deliver these outcomes. So we're going to start with a panel focusing on land, and I welcome our panellists who are all joining us in the room today. Professor Elisa Moghera, Professor of Global Environmental Law at University of Strathclyde and Director One Ocean Hub, Susie Sonders, Policy Advocate Woodland Trust Scotland, Dr Paul Walton, Head of Habitats and Species RSPB Scotland, and Bruce Wilson, Public Affairs Manager, Scottish Wildlife Trust. You're very welcome, and thank you for accepting our invitation. We're delighted to have you here. So we've allocated around 17 minutes for this, and members will ask questions in turn. As you know, it will help broadcasting if you can direct your question to a specific person on the panel or set out a running order for answering if the question is relevant to all panels. I'd like everyone, members and panellists, to try and be concise in their questions and answers if they can. I'm going to begin with a question that I will want to put to everybody. I'll come to Professor Moghera first. Scotland has so far struggled to make progress in slowing and reversing biodiversity declines. In your view, what are the key challenges for Scotland and the reason that some targets have been missed to date? I will go along and allow everybody in this instance to answer that key question. So Professor Moghera, I think they'll come to you. Thank you so much and good morning everyone. I think the challenges in Scotland are very much shared by any other country on the globe. All countries are failing in meeting their biodiversity targets, and I think there are some common threats and pressures that every country needs to address. But of course each country can take more ambitious and more creative approaches to do so. Scotland has opportunities, I think, to be a leader in certain areas. But I think it's clear that biodiversity is lost because of the large-scale uses of our environment, be it agriculture, be it fisheries, and the fact that we don't give enough consideration to the values, the multiple values of biodiversity in our planning decisions. Those values are really the key consideration here. And so there's value in biodiversity helping us in mitigating and adapting to climate change. But there's also multiple values that biodiversity plays in relation to our fundamental human rights, to water, to food, to health. And so having that more, I think, more comprehensive understanding of all the benefits for our survival that we derive from biodiversity and how those should then be weighted in decisions on the use of the environment and natural resources in Scotland is really what's needed to change, and what can reverse the trend. Thank you. Ms Susie Saunders, please. Thank you. So native woodlands are some of our most biodiversity habitats we have in Scotland, and we can't address biodiversity loss without first addressing the decline in the condition of our native woodland. And the decline in the condition of our native woodland comes from a lot of issues, but some of the key issues that we have, and I suppose I would say those are some of the key challenges, are deer, so overgrazing by deer, an invasive non-native species such as rododendron ponticum. So the native woodland survey for Scotland showed that 50% of our native woodlands are in decline in condition because of overgrazing by deer and because of rododendron ponticum. So we really need to address those key issues if we want to see our biodiversity loss reversed, and we would recommend the best way to do those would be for the committee to recommend to the Scottish Government that they need to urgently implement the Deer Working Group recommendations and that they need to create a rododendron ponticum strategy, so a strategy for clearing rododendron ponticum from all of the UK. One of the great examples of this is Scotland's rainforest. So it's incredibly biodiverse habitat, it's bursting full of lichens, bryphites, it's an absolutely incredible place to go to, but it is threatened by things like rododendron ponticum. I think about 40% of the sites in Scotland's rainforest are impacted by rododendron ponticum, and it's a really great example of a place where ecosystem restoration needs to happen, and I think if we address those key issues, then we'll hopefully make some progress to restoring biodiversity in Scotland. Thank you. Thank you very much, and Dr Walton. Hi, I'd just like to entirely endorse what Susie was saying there about some of the specifics in terms of key ecosystems, key habitats in this country, of course native and ancient woodlands are part of that. In the wider context in terms of your question, convener, which is a very good one, why are we failing to halt biodiversity loss? I actually think broadly speaking we know what to do. I think the 2004 strategy and its 2020 strategy was produced in quite a collegiate way, there was a big sort of NGO input to it and also input from NFUS, COSLA etc, and it was done a sort of cross society, and what was in it was actually pretty good, I think, but the problem was it wasn't implemented and it wasn't funded, so we've seen a big change in the way biodiversity is funded recently in Scotland, so the Nature Restoration Fund, which is £13.5 million per annum for biodiversity conservation, is unprecedented, but the scale of the challenge is perhaps better illustrated by the Green Finance Institute, who independently estimated £15 to £20 billion is required to actually restore ecosystems, species and habitats biodiversity, ie biodiversity in Scotland, so there's a massive challenge and I think it is partly about resourcing, it is also partly about the political will to actually make things happen and critically about mainstreaming biodiversity across government, but also across land use sectors, so very broadly speaking, I mean our network of protected areas, it's not complete, it is not sufficiently well managed, but it's doing quite a lot better than areas outside protected areas. We need to figure out ways to integrate biodiversity thinking across land use sector, the sporting sector, agriculture, forestry in a much more effective and constructive way and I think these are the challenges and I'm not convinced yet, as we'll probably come on to later, that the current draft is actually sufficient to achieve that. Thank you and can I address that again to Bruce Wilson? Yeah thanks, I just do the usual of agreeing with everything else that's been said, but I'd probably highlight actually directly what's quoted in the consultation, which is what we have come to understand is that the key shortcomings relating to governance and accountability structures and mechanisms for mainstreaming biodiversity into all areas of policy, including economic policy making, have undermined our ambitions. Too often we're seeing great ambition on biodiversity, but we just don't see that mainstreamed in other policy areas. There's lots of opportunity coming up to do that, we've got the NPF for final going to be delivered, that has huge impact on how we can not only help biodiversity but realise opportunity from biodiversity and then the agriculture bill that we're going through as well. There's huge opportunity to mainstream some of this stuff, but we're going to have to do that and what I'm not noticing in this consultation after having just made that statement that's in there is how we actually achieve that with this Scottish biodiversity strategy. Thank you and this committee is keen to highlight the importance of the nature crisis and COP 15 coming up in particular, so we're going to broaden things out then before we narrow things down again. So maybe staying with yourself, Bruce, going to ask you what are the current expectations from COP 15 in your view and is the direction of travel from the consultation going to be sufficient to deliver international obligations? I'll put that to everybody before I then ask members to direct individual questions. Bruce? Well, we've obviously seen some delays with COP 15 due to the Covid situation, which is understandable but frustrating because we are already a significant way into the decade of ecosystem restoration that the UN has set down, so we're starting from a point of hindrance and we need to rapidly pick up the pace internationally and in Scotland. We broadly know that from the COP 15 process we want to make sure that the leaders pledge for nature, which First Minister in Scotland has signed up to, which is halting the reverse of loss by 2030. That's something that we hope to get further endorsement from the COP 15 process, but again, that 2030 date, we've not got much time, so we need to act on that. There's also coming out of the COP 15 process, very importantly, high-level targets, and that is something that I think all the organisations that are represented here agreed on, that we need to bring biodiversity up to that level that we have with climate so that people are focusing on targets. I think that's probably most of the things that I would want to see out of the COP 15 process at the highest level, and then obviously I want to see that reflected in how we do things in Scotland. It's linked so much to our aspirations around sustainable development goals, the wellbeing economy and what was said previously around human rights as well, so it's very important that we get that right in Scotland. Your advice to this Parliament and the committee is really important in that regard, so Dr Walton, and then I'll just come across the panel. Yes, what we would like to see, I would like to see coming out of COP 15 are ambitious, smart targets for nature across the world, and by that I mean targets that are specific, that are quantifiable, that are measurable. Frankly, the prospect of bringing hundreds of Governments together to agree such things is massively challenging. There's no doubt about that. My feeling is that if Scotland waits for those international targets and then entirely judges everything against those, it may well, in practical terms, I hope not, but it may well not be enough to reverse biodiversity loss in this country, because we have seen international targets on several occasions be drafted up, be put into international treaties and then not being met for biodiversity. This has happened consistently. As my colleague said, Scotland can actually be a leader in this, and I would like to see us, of course, look to those targets as some sort of backstop minimum, but in fact Scotland needs to go quite a lot further, and for that we need our own smart targets for nature. Those need to be signposted in the Scottish Biodiversity Strategy and then they need to be put into legislation in the Natural Environment Bill and Act, which are coming in the latter part of this Parliament, and that, I think, is the key route to success. I would just like to completely agree with everything that everyone has just said. That may be a theme of this evidence session, but I agree completely on the smart targets. We don't necessarily have to wait for those to come out of COP 15, as you were saying. This strategy provides a really great opportunity for us to set our own smart targets for holding biodiversity loss and its recovery. At the moment, the strategy does not do that. It is just broad outcomes that are not super clear, and I know that we will probably come on to this in a bit more detail later, but it is just a perfect opportunity to highlight the fact that we can put smart targets in this strategy, and we should. I can expand on that a bit later. Thank you. I will come to Natalie Dawn to start the member's questions. I think that the main expectation for this COP is coming up with this global biodiversity framework that can really pinpoint how it can take transformative action. I think that there is a global understanding that incremental change has not helped us reverse biodiversity loss or have enough with mitigation and adaptation to climate change. The hope is that the global biodiversity framework can give an indication of where transformative action comes from. There is also scepticism that we might get that indication in that framework, partly because of the difficulties of getting consensus among 196 parties. But what is essential, I think, for Scotland, even before that COP, is that that process has identified what has not worked in the past. I think to make progress in Scotland and elsewhere at the very list needs to build on what we have learned internationally that has been a mistake in conservation before. One thing we have mentioned already is looking at biodiversity in isolation as opposed to mainstreaming it in other sectors, but that means that biodiversity needs to indicate to other sectors what it means for that to be taken up in, say, climate adaptation or transport or fisheries. We can expect other sectors to just do the homework on their own. Secondly, and I think that has been picked up in the consultation paper, but I think not quite in the right understanding is that whole-of-society approach. What that means is that, yes, we need government leadership, but that's not enough. We need everybody to understand the values of biodiversity and contributing, and that means that we have to recognise who's already contributing to biodiversity, and that's missing in the consultation paper. We know that crafters and other local communities, for instance, are ecosystems towards. There's no recognition of that role at all, and maybe for Scotland as a whole starting from the recognition of what's working right now is as important as then focusing on what's not working, but also really thinking about not a top-down approach, targets imposed from above and implemented, but really thinking around a process that's bottom-up and that's, as we were mentioning, based on human rights in terms of a participatory process that brings people in, that makes them see why this is essential to their well-being, to their health, to our survival on this planet, and all of them will recognise the role that they can play. Because what we have seen time and again, I'm working on this across different continents in the world with colleagues, is that every time we set environmental targets without real genuine consultations and recognition of the roles that some in society already play, we always set ourselves to failure, so we just can't do that again if we really want that transformative change to happen. Thank you, and that reflects some of the comments that we heard in the Edinburgh International Culture Summit discussing climate change of people and nature and that connection, so thank you very much for that. I'm going to move now to Natalie Dawn, and after her I'll come to Liam Kerr for his questions. Natalie. Thank you, convener, and good morning to the panel. It's nice to have you all here. So we've talked this morning about some of your priorities, and I know that we'll expand a little more on those throughout the session, but I'd like to focus on how you feel that Scotland's efforts to tackle the biodiversity crisis compare with other countries. So what could we learn are other instances of best practice? I think that I'd like to come to each of the panel on this, because I think that it would be good to have your different point of views, but I'll start off with Bruce Wilson. I know in the Scottish Wildlife Trust submission it was noted that Scotland should learn from the experience of other countries and draw on strategies and plans elsewhere, and New Zealand was mentioned specifically. Could you maybe elaborate on those strengths and show how that has proved successful? Yep, certainly. So we did, we sort of try and, when this consultation was posed, do a little bit of a literature review about, for example, what we did find, and we particularly liked the work done in New Zealand because it chimed with the First Minister's wording around the wellbeing economy and how important it is for us to be trying to strive towards that. So in New Zealand they've tried to base their biodiversity strategy around the four capitals approach, so looking at things like their natural capital, their economic capital, and viewing it in that way. So they've tried to achieve the mainstream element by looking at those four capitals as one, and that's what we really liked about that example. I think taking that approach, which the Government had previously committed to here in our Covid response, the economic response of that, but it's since dropped down the agenda a little bit in the national strategy on economic transformation. We'd like to see that brought up again. The way that the environment is contextualised in the economic strategy, there are ambitions around the natural environment and natural capital and we think that needs to be boosted up a level to mainstream through there. That would read across, so that example there would read across as well into our national performance framework. We think that we need many more environmental indicators within the national performance framework and we've seen that happening from a few other places as well. I would actually say as well, there are a few things that we could probably learn from south of the border with regard to implementation. They've taken a little bit of a lead there on how we map our work on biodiversity on the landscape and they have things called nature recovery networks. We've got nature networks up here, but we're very much at the discussion stage on those and that's about delivery and that is something I think we could learn from people south of the border that have had experiences there. We were impressed with the way that New Zealand has taken steps to mainstream that policy through their, sorry, the biodiversity policy through the rest of their work. All right, thank you very much. I'll go to Dr Walton now, please. The example of New Zealand is a very interesting one, but first of all I'd like to talk about progress in the European Union actually. The EU, a while back, someone published its own biodiversity strategy, which is actually, broadly speaking, warmly welcomed by the NGO, environmental NGO community. It was quite a consultative process to arrive at it. It was launched on the same day as the EU's Farm to Fork strategy, really emphasising the links between agriculture, which of the five main drivers of biodiversity, of habitat change and agriculture as a vehicle of that, is the biggest one across the world and in Europe and probably in Scotland as well. That integration was achieved then. This is now going to be translated into EU legislation via what will be a regulation, which all EU member states have to adopt it, and what is being termed a nature restoration law. That's just been published, the draft, and it's going through what's called the co-decision process at the moment, but it is really ambitious and it sets really clear, very specific quantitative targets for nature restoration. Whereas, indeed, the UK Government has put targets for nature into legislation, they are, in the RSPB's view, simply too weak and the EU ones look much, much more encouraging. I think that in the context of the continuity act in Scotland and Scotland's commitment to, you know, keep pace with or exceed environmental standards in the European Union, this is something that needs to be looked at really, really carefully. So, I think that that's what I'd say on the larger scale. Just to get back to New Zealand, one of those five drivers of biodiversity loss is the role of invasive non-native species and New Zealand has absolutely led the world in legislation and public policy around invasive non-native species. The graph of new non-native species arriving in New Zealand through the 20th century and the century before just rises up steeply. When the legislation came in, the biosecurity legislation, it falls off a cliff. It's the most remarkably successful piece of legislation, a set of legislation anywhere in the world on invasive non-native species now. Our countries are not directly comparable. We have a land border, for example, but in terms of the size of our human population, it's broadly similar to New Zealand. I think that those examples in terms of invasive non-native species are something that we need to look at really carefully for one of those five big drivers of biodiversity loss specifically. Thank you. I'll look into that specifically. Suzy, I'll come to you, please. So, there are a lot of really great examples around the world, but I think that there are also some really great examples from within Scotland of people helping biodiversity, so I just wanted to highlight a few. Our native woodland, as I've said before and probably say a lot of times in this session, is one of our most biodiversity habitats and in particular our ancient woodlands, but they're in really poor condition and ancient woodlands at this moment in time only cover 2% of our land in Scotland and, lots of facts and figures in, 43% of those have been degraded by plantations. So, one of the best things that we can do to halt biodiversity loss and reverse it is to restore those ancient woodlands because they have remnants of ancient woodlands within them. So, a really great example of where that's happening is a site called Lockar Cague in the Highlands, so definitely worth looking into. They're sensitively removing a non-native conifer species and allowing the ancient woodland to restore there, but in terms of wider ecosystem restoration, I think a really great example of how these efforts in the Scottish Biodiversity Strategy might look in however many years' time is a site called Glenfingless that's within the Lockloamed and Trossocks National Park, so the woodland trust acquired it over 25 years ago and have been undertaking wide ecosystem restoration, so woodlands, peatlands, all of those things, and it's now a transformed landscape. So, yeah, I think it's good to look outside of our country, but I think it's also really great to look within our country of examples where nature restoration has happened. Yeah, absolutely, things that we're doing that we should be promoting more of nationwide, absolutely. Professor McGarrol, come to your thoughts. Yeah, thank you. Maybe I'll give an example from South Africa, but not about what the South African Government is doing, but actually what some of my research colleagues are doing in South Africa that has given already some indication of transformative change, and that has been really using research funding to create partnerships where researchers from across marine and social sciences and the arts are working with local communities, NGOs, and local government to bring knowledge together, so really to understand what locally we know about nature and biodiversity and climate change, together with the knowledge that's already within government and co-develop solutions, and then find through that an approach that addresses also local needs and justice issues. And I think that what is incredible in that is that it sounds very complex and it is, but it really helps integrated thinking, which is what usually makes us fall short in our efforts to effectively conserve or use sustainably biodiversity, and we think that joined up thinking again can come from above, but in fact it's the local level where you live and breathe that complexity, and so linking that knowledge and asking researchers to help in that process has really been quite transformative in South Africa and very complex issues related to offshore energy and protection of the ocean and protection of very distinctive cultural connections to the ocean. And so I think there's an element there that speaks to both funding, but also the opportunity for Scotland, such an incredible, vibrant community of researchers here that has done a lot of pioneering work on ecosystem services, for instance, to work together to implement the strategy and really moving away, I think, from the current understanding in the draft around delivery partners. So we talk about local communities and Geo's researchers as delivery partners, whereas what we should be looking at is co-development of solutions. We're all partners in understanding what the solutions are and working out how we can bring them forward. So that's a different thinking around who's going to do the work, how we can do it together and putting the funding into that, which is research and practice at the same time, because the reality is that transformative change is a learning process. We don't know how that will work. We learn as we go, and so we need to put resources and support for all actors involved in that continuous learning and learning from each other. Thank you. I realise that question. I think that we could probably spend the whole committee talking about different examples of good practice, but it's important to hear sort of some of the things that you think are best going on internationally and at home. I'll pass back to the convener. Thank you. I'll come to Liam Kerr and then I'll come to Mark after that. Thank you. Good morning, panel. I'll direct my first question to Professor Morgera, and then Bruce Wilson. Bruce, you specifically referred to the limitations of previous strategies for governance and accountability in your submission. There is a section on conditions for success, and one of those conditions is to have an independent body to monitor and report on progress alongside an improved monitoring framework, but it doesn't then go on to say anything about what those look like. Do you have a view on what's currently in place and what these solutions as regards monitoring and reporting might look like for the best? Professor Morgera. It has been an ongoing question how we best monitor. I think there's a precondition to that which was mentioned by my colleagues earlier on, which is unless we have measurable targets, we can't monitor, and so that's the first question. At the moment, we have no measurable target proposed and no baseline. The second is that we already have a new environmental watchdog in Scotland. We have environmental standards, and I guess the first question would be can that body do this fork or do we need another one? I think it's important to look at what we have, but then I think that the other issue that's really important is that, again, monitoring shouldn't just be a tick box or a compliance exercise. It should really be a learning exercise because the reality is that transformative change is difficult and will make mistakes along the way, but as long as that is all an opportunity for learning and doing better and increasing understanding, then that is really what's worth investing in. Thinking around a process for monitoring and sharing the learning, which is something we discussed also in the context of Scotland's ambition as a human rights leader, which is very much linked to the environment and what we can do for climate change and biodiversity, I think is a key component of that. I'm very grateful. Bruce Wilson. I think that the targets that drive this are absolutely essential. We don't really have any real compulsion for public bodies or others to be contributing towards this at the moment other than just the goodwill to do so. We already have a requirement for public bodies to report on their biodiversity duty, but that's quite poorly worded. There's no real guidance that goes along with that to help people to understand what they need to report on. We often see people submitting carbon data or information about programmes that have to turn off lights, which is all laudable and nice but is not directly tackling the biodiversity crisis. We need a rapid upskilling of people across sectors to understand how their impacts and dependencies on biodiversity within organisations and as a country, as well as link to those strong targets that we've already mentioned. I'd probably add that you can't really manage effectively what you don't measure, and we don't measure adequately biodiversity in Scotland at the moment. Data is a massive issue, and we need to get on top of that data issue. It's more complex than climate in many ways, and we've got a lot of dedicated citizen science projects, but we also need to make sure that we are fully getting the best out of private sector information and making sure that pathways for that data to get to where it can be useful are properly maintained. At the moment, the comparison that I've heard from colleagues is that it's basically held together with sticky tape, and that needs to improve. There are recommendations from the Scottish Biodiversity Information Forum that we need to properly implement. Paul has probably got a little bit to say on data, I imagine, as well. I'll throw the next question to Dr Walton, so if you want to wrap that up in your answer there. My follow-up question is a bit about funding in the conditions for success, but there are no real thoughts on the sources of that funding, bar a reference to agricultural subsidies. Bruce Wilson, your submission says that funding is not on the scale that's required, and Dr Walton, in your opening remarks, you referred to the same thing. Dr Walton, first, and then Bruce Wilson, can you give the committee an idea of the scale of funding that you think is required? Is the consultation realistic around that, and what would you expect to see in a delivery plan as regards funding? First of all, to wrap up the previous question, which is targets. Absolutely, we are of one on this. The strategy needs to have these quantifiable, very specific targets, so there's no way of monitoring its success against it. Nobody, no matter who can do it, I do think that ESS might be potentially the route to be that independent assessment body, but I think that it needs a bit more than that. We need the legislation itself to actually help to drive the process that Alisa was talking about. For example, we have a biodiversity duty in Scotland, and arguably, it's stronger than the biodiversity duty in any other part of the UK in that the duty on public bodies is to progress the conservation of biodiversity, not just to have regard to, but there's also a clause in the end of it that says, in the ordinary conducting of its duties, which has always been used as a means to undermine the main thrust of that bit of legislation, which is to further the conservation of biodiversity, and it hasn't worked, obviously, because we're still losing biodiversity. We need these bits of legislation to be tightened up via the natural environment bill, and we then need ESS to give them something to work with, which will be that legislation to hold public bodies to account in that sense. On funding, and it is a massive challenge, as I said earlier, the Green Finance Institute's estimate of how much would it cost to restore nature in Scotland, £15 to £20 billion. It's an enormous sum. I'm part of a small group of environmental NGOs, including Woodland Trust Scotland, who have been trying to promote the conservation and restoration of Scotland's rainforest, and we took an estimate based on what's happened previously, work on the ground that's happened previously, and came up with an estimate of £500 million over a decade, at least a decade. I would say about these massive sums that I'm banding about. I'm not saying schools and hospitals aren't important, rather there aren't any other financial imperatives, of course. Nobody is saying that. What we are saying is that they are very considerable sums, but actually the time period over which they can be spent is the entire time period of the strategy to 2045, and hopefully beyond. I want to put that kind of marker down. There's a brilliant precedent that we have in terms of the peatland action that the Scottish Government has pioneered. That is an example of ecosystem restoration in practice. £250 million of public money across multiple years, but increasingly bringing in private finance in rather complex but very novel ways. I can't sit here and actually prescribe how that could work across Scotland, but what I do think the strategy needs to do is to identify ecosystems like that. We've got peatlands, but we also need Scotland's rainforests to be an identified ecosystem. We need the macher to be grasslands in the Western Isles to be identified as a priority ecosystem. As Elisa was saying, the definition of macher, which is the vastly species-rich grassland over in the Western Isles and the Hebrides, the definition is like that in the Habitatus Directive. The big central paragraph is about agriculture. It's about crofting agriculture. There's been a long history through the late 20th century and this century of really undersupporting our crofting communities who are delivering biodiversity already and could do much more to prevent losses and the need to restore ecosystems. I think that a programme of ecosystem restoration, which is what the EU is in the process of putting in place, needs to be in this. It's simply not mentioned in the consultation. There is no programme of ecosystem restoration in this programme. How it's financed, I can't be sure, but what we the NGOs are saying to government is around that £500 million, a huge ask for Scotland's rainforest, which incidentally the minister has committed that Scotland's rainforest will be restored and expanded. That commitment was made at COP26, the climate COP. What we're saying is that £250 million of that from government over a decade or more and the NGOs will work with external funders to raise the other £250 million. We can't make any promises but we believe that it's possible. Scotland's rainforest really has incredible resonance with the public. It has incredible resonance with funders and we believe that some of the novel finance mechanisms are beginning to come forward that the peatland codes are beginning to explore. If done in a way that's really guaranteed environmentally responsible could be the potential to actually open up the finance that will be required to scale things up as we need to. Very grateful. Bruce Wilson, would you like to talk about funding? Yeah, I was trying to add to what Paul said, which I agree with all of. That £50 to £20 billion is obviously a massive number, but there's two things I'd say about that. One is that saving the natural environment isn't really optional if we want to have a functioning planet, so that's not something that we can really decide not to do. It's absolutely essential. The economic strategies in Scotland have all identified that we were reliant on our natural world and the last two of them have. It's crucial for social, economic and environmental futures. Having said that, there is also massive opportunity. It doesn't just represent a spend that's written off. The return on investment on environmental green and blue infrastructure is known to be huge. NatureScot has put work into working out return on investment on specific schemes, but certain things that I've seen, one to eight return on investment up to one to 20, and an example of that might be investing in a woodland over a grey infrastructure culvert, something like that, so much cheaper to do. That natural asset is providing benefit not just for reducing the potential flood risk, it's providing biodiversity benefit, community benefit, an alternative outcome for the land manager, all sorts of different benefits that are not just a one-off spend on something like a culvert that would sit and only be used ideally once every 10 years for dealing with a one-off problem. We can't see that as just a only a challenge and there are no opportunities. We need to think of those opportunities, and that does create opportunities for new business, new green-collar economies with different jobs and things that can be associated with upskilling engineers, financiers, people within local authorities to think differently about how we interact with our natural environment. I think one of the other things that we need to do there as well is look at what was highlighted by Professor Sardas Gupta into his economics of biodiversity review that was conducted recently, and he identified perverse subsidies as being something that we really need to tackle. So on one hand we have a sticking plaster of biodiversity funding going against subsidy, for example, on unsustainable agricultural practices. We need to get our policy aligned so that it's delivering for the climate and nature crisis, and not one policy going one way and one policy the other. That will help reduce costs because we won't be having as big an impact. There's also the kind of scale element Paul talked about bringing in private sector investment that absolutely needs to be done with a lot of scrutiny, and we're starting to see private sector investment. There tend to be called natural capital investments, but I mainly see that at the moment as more of a carbon offsetting investment. We need to get on top of that properly. The Scottish Government has got some good guidance out at the moment, but that area is going to grow and grow and grow. In order for that to be a sort of just transition approach, we really need proper community involvement. Regional land use partnerships come from the Climate Act, and they're designed to help get community involvement in what land use change is going to look like. I don't think those are funded well enough to properly engage local communities, and we need that engagement because the scale of investment that's needed for private sector is much bigger than the usual biodiversity projects that we're used to working on in Scotland. Five million is a big biodiversity project in Scotland generally. We're talking about investors and you can see projects have a billion plus, so we need to be able to scale up those projects. Nature networks are mentioned in this document. We think that there is huge potential for that approach to use an opportunity mapping-based system to identify the best areas for investment, so we're going to improve ecosystem health and not just have a scattergun approach. Sorry, that was a long response. A long but very useful response, and I think that if NatureScot are watching this session and they have data on a return on investment, I'm sure that the committee would be pleased to see it. Before I hand back to the convener, Susie, did you want to just add briefly to what Dr Walton was saying? Yeah, definitely, sir. I will make it very brief, and I just sort of have three points in particular to make. So the first thing would be completely supporting what Bruce said. Public funding can't do all of this. We do need private investment, but it does need to be really regulated and carefully regulated. I think that we also need to focus on the upcoming subsidy reviews that we are having. There are a lot of great opportunities for biodiversity within that, so in particular agroforestry is a really good investment for biodiversity, so integrating trees on to farms. It's great for regulating soil temperatures, for sheltering livestock, for doing all of those things, but at this moment in time, the current schemes are either oversubscribed or they're too prescriptive, so we need to make changes to those to encourage people to do things like agroforestry and integrate trees on to their farms. The last point that I wanted to raise is that there are, at times, opportunities for better use of current funding, so I know I've mentioned deer before and how we really need to address deer and manage deer across Scotland because it has an impact on native woodlands, but it also has an impact on peatland, on agricultural land. It's a huge, huge issue, so one of the things that we potentially could do would be to phase out funding for day ffencing and put that into day management because we put a lot, a lot of money into day ffencing, but if we better direct that funding, perhaps it would have a bigger impact for biodiversity. Just briefly to support what's been said and just to reiterate the point that I think biodiversity finance should not be seen in an isolated pot, no money that we need to find somewhere, but it's really about using the existing amount of funding, public funding that we have, including climate funding and other, to also address biodiversity or to use as biodiversity as a way to achieve multiple public policy objectives and I think the example of ecosystem restoration and how that supports public health, how it supports the realization of other social goals is really essential and so the idea of like how can we join that thinking of public spending and thinking about public saving, what is that going to save us in the long run once we identify all these co-benefits arising from an investment in biodiversity, so it's not so much about finding new money but it's about rethinking about how we use the existing pots we have and so that's the real biodiversity mainstreaming that needs to happen and I think the other two points I want to share particularly in terms of the importance of legislating on budgeting is that there's a lot that we can learn from human rights budgeting and again there's a big opportunity with the work on human rights leadership and the human rights bill to have that joined up thinking on the budget that's needed and all the benefits to public service to human rights realization in the protection of biodiversity. I'm thinking particularly health equity issues in Scotland and we have the case studies that were discussed about ecosystem restoration in Scotland have very clear quantifiable benefits in terms of health but also I think support to persons with disabilities etc so we have cases and there's experience I think to address this from the human rights expertise in government and the final point is that we should consider research funding not as something that happens before we make these interventions but in fact another pot of money that can support and make these interventions itself so that that suggestion about partnership between researchers, crofters, NGOs, local communities that can be funded through research funding itself is research that supports that learning and creates these new transformative ways to either support existing good practices upscale them on identifying new ways to to better care for our biodiversity. Very grateful to all the panel back to you. I'll come to Mark Ruskell first followed by Monica Lennon but conscious of time if you can maybe direct your questions to the specific individual. I mean we already had some comment about alignment and policy coherence. What more do you think the biodiversity strategy should be doing to direct that or is that perhaps not even for the strategy it's for another another approach within government? Can I start with Professor Morgera please? I think this is actually the crux of the matter. I mean biodiversity is one of the most fundamental keys for achieving policy coherence across so many areas of public policy and so I think the strategy should be explicit about how and in all the ways in which biodiversity supports policy coherence and that I think that's again that kind of homework that has to come from the biodiversity pieces of policies to show other sectors how investing and supporting biodiversity helps achieving those other co-benefits. So specific examples I think maybe I mean to my mind kind of ecosystem restoration and human health is a really crucial one but there may be many others and I think maybe more explicit examples on biodiversity and climate mitigation or climate adaptation would be essential to really make that message clear but I think it should come from this strategy and then you you already kind of open up the way more for that mainstreaming to happen in other sectors. Do others have brief comments that build on their previous comments Susie? Yeah just a very brief one and I suppose this is completely agree with everything you said but maybe just more of a specific example so of why we should have coherence between biodiversity and maybe things like planning policy so one of the biggest things that we deal with as the woodland trust is inappropriate development and it impacts on ancient woodlands, on native woodlands and these are some of our most biodiversity habitats. So we need to ensure that we have policy coherence so for example in the new draft national planning framework we need to make sure that that has provisions in there that protect the biodiversity that we have but yeah that's all I'll say. Yes policy coherence you could call that mainstreaming as well is absolutely critical hasn't been achieved but again I want to focus on examples of where it has been achieved in Scotland I think in terms of climate policy we're really getting places in terms of it actually climate policy influencing other policy areas and other sectors and really I can't stop saying a single stroke of a pen that's how you achieve this policy coherence so one thing we could do is call this strategy Scotland's nature emergency strategy I mean biodiversity is too easily silenced too easily specialist interest a bunch of anoraks with beards you know catching butterflies that's biodiversity over there let's get on with the real business the world is in a nature crisis Scotland is absolutely part of it the biodiversity intactness index shows that this country is 28th from the bottom of world countries and territories in terms of our biodiversity intactness we're relatively good in terms of the UK and it just makes you wonder what potential is for restoration because we still have incredible biodiversity in this country despite what I've just said so what we need is for people to understand there's a nature emergency that affects everybody that is linked through to health it is linked through to to finance and in terms of this you know actually avoiding spend further on if you invest in invasive non-native species biosecurity it is hundreds of times cheaper than dealing with the issues when you have to do large-scale eradications and take all the action we have to do for roaded evidence example you can save that money by having appropriate legislation appropriate public policy and appropriate funding for biosecurity measures like what we have at the moment for the saving scotland's red squirrel work which is stopping gray squirrels invading the highlands that's not just about red squirrels this is a species initiative which actually potentially has huge implications for the finance of woodland expansion across the highlands okay because gray squirrels will affect woodland expansion so yeah a bit of a long answer but why don't we actually just call it scotland's nature emergency strategy we've suggested it that suggestion has not been accepted but is there something more fundamental here though in the way that government and agencies actually work within that permanent architecture of civil servants and agencies like nature scot is there something a bit more fundamental here about it's you know is it prepared enough to tackle something like a nature emergency because it's this is still a biodiversity strategy it's not a central it doesn't come as the entire of government what i'm referring to if i may is is for example you know so not saying that a bit of the agriculture budget might might be geared towards specific biodiversity work but the rest of it is really about supporting farmers to be to be farmers what it's about is working with the agricultural communities across scotland and saying that maybe three quarters of that budget really needs to be targeted at climate and nature restoration to achieve the kind of things that we want and how can that work in agricultural reality and the RSPB has a long history for example corncrate work that we've done in actually making biodiversity prescriptions work for farms and crofters within the restrictions that they have financial and practical and in terms of their working year and so these things can be done we have examples it is about having the will to expand them i think and the basic structure of having a public agency with responsibility for nature conservation i think is probably in net terms you know a very good thing but we do need to see more ambition and we need to see recognition that there is a nature emergency okay i'll come to bruce but if i could roll in my final question you know we've spoken a lot about the strategy and the high level objectives there are of course delivery plans that will come on the back of that and understand the first one will be coming in december can can you just give us it briefly um your understanding of what delivery plan should be covering and what are the what are the essentials that should be coming out of that pruce do you want to do you want to go first and wrap up my previous question yeah sure so um i think just that your previous question just to reiterate that the vital importance of targets and actually starting work on getting those targets right now and getting um getting the relevant knowledgeable stakeholders around the table to try and work out how that's that's going to work in a scotish context will be important um i'll cover the delivery strategies in a second but the knowledge and evidence part that i spoke to last time biodiversity is not well understood out with nature scot and other parts of scotish government at all we often see things just described as green and that's everything from renewable technologies to insulating homes all the way through to species programs we need to get better at about understanding the the wildlife and nature elements of that and that is going to require upskilling across industry and through government as well and that's a big need there's opportunity there around job creation but there's certainly a need to for us to work on that um in terms of delivery strategies themselves um they need to be smart and we've you know we've covered that so i'll i'll keep that quite a brief point but they really need to be smart and they need to really address that quote that i gave at the beginning as well around how that is going to be properly mainstreamed particularly through the relevant parts of government that are having the biggest influence over those different policy areas okay at least yeah thanks and i think this may speak also to the question you posed just before around you know what's the fundamental question for government and i think it's that having that understanding of what biodiversity is and what it does for us and that that's our basic infrastructure for everything that we want to deliver across government so so there is a fundamental element maybe of knowledge that that we need to share across it and if some of that could come from the strategy i think that might be as important as very you know specific targets so i'm thinking there's nothing mentioned on genetic genetic diversity in the strategy and that is what makes our food security for instance something very real um there's nothing about the importance of bio innovation and how we learn from nature and become you know really advanced economies based on innovation there's nothing there about microbes and how our very health our psychological development our mental our capacity to bounce back from surgical operations depends on having access not to just green spaces but to biodiverse spaces where our microbiome is in contact with microbes out there so maybe there is an element there i think of teasing out some key aspects of what how biodiversity is fundamental and we often don't know about and then how that should speak to several parts of government that we might not think have anything to do with biodiversity but in fact they're very the very existence of their policy objectives depends on that viability of diversity of life here in scotland yeah yeah susie um it just a very quick point to finish off um i think we understand as you've said that the scotland government is proposing these five-year delivery plans but i think it's important to note that robust delivery plans are not a substitute for clearer outcomes and high level targets in the strategy itself um so in terms of what we're proposing we're proposing targets which match the key 2030 and 2045 milestones um so i think there's also a really useful way of monitoring progress um of our halting and reversing biodiversity loss um yeah thanks um poll briefly yeah as susie said these delivery plans what are they delivering they're delivering the strategy at the moment the strategy does not specify a programme of species recovery it does not specify a programme of ecosystem restoration biodiversity comprises species and ecosystems without some explicit mention of those programmes to expect this to work across future administrations up to 2045 i think is whistling in the wind frankly the strategy must specify what the delivery plans are expected to deliver against and it must have some broad but specific targets in so that the progress can be monitored without those in the strategy itself the thing is in my view almost destined to fail unfortunately okay thanks thank you um Monica Lennon and then finally Jack in the bar thank you convener and good morning to our panel thank you for your very clear evidence and your written submissions as well um on a positive note i think rspp scotland and your written submission you say that the strategy or the document does a really good job of defining the problem so i think that's a good place to start so no one's in denial and the Scottish government's been very clear about the challenges so it seems to me we have a very high level vision document um that is aspirational and that is really good but we're here in today a lot of um concerns about lack of clarity around targets and outcomes and and delivery can just return back to to dr paul walton because you made the point um a moment ago about reframing this is scotland's nature emergency strategy rather than a biodiversity strategy and i was going to ask about that so i'm glad that you did bring it up um i just want to quickly go round the other witnesses to find out if they agree with that because is it just about a name or does that have much more meaning um being in mind at the some of the risks that we've just heard if we don't change the approach so maybe start with Bruce and go along the table should we rename it the definitely 100 agree with what paul said there this really needs a paradigm shift in the way that we view this as a fringe issue into completely mainstreaming it i think we also need more context in the strategy about where this sits amongst other bits of government policy as well um and how important it is so yep i very much agree with that suggestion i'm going to come to susie but i wonder if you could add to it by saying do you think that could help reduce the risk of a siloed approach if we think about it as nature emergency it could slightly reduce the risk of the siloed approach um i can't remember the exact wording of the first question this consultation but it was along the lines of do you agree that there is a nature emergency and um i think that was the designed to try and surface any people that might disagree with that but we wouldn't see that in the context of the economic crisis of the climate crisis of lots of other things that we're dealing with the scottish government the united nations and everyone in between agrees that there is a nature crisis so so i start this off by you know or do we actually think there's a problem here it's it's really disheartening for organizations here and we really need to get that up the agenda and that sort of paradigm shift things maybe a bit overused but it does need that and the the title maybe can't do that much to affect it but it's a start it also needs all the other mainstreaming things that we've outlined as well thank you brish susie yeah completely agree i think naming it as the nature emergency strategy would would be great i think at the beginning of the scottish by diversity strategy they give definitions of biodiversity and definitions of nature and i think calling it the nature emergency probably shows how interconnected biodiversity is with all the components of our natural environment and that maybe gives a graph a sort of gravity to the to the impact that this crisis will have on us so yeah i would completely agree with that definitely professor marghero yeah i also think it's a good suggestion and it would also help to bring biodiversity in line with climate change here in scotland where we have already declared a climate emergency maybe in addition to that not not leaving it just as the biodiversity emergency again of its own but really thinking about the the repercussion that this has for sustainable development so the ipbs indicated that 80 percent of the sdg targets can't be realized because of biodiversity loss and equally it's a human rights emergency as well so i think calling it biodiversity emergency a nature emergency is a good idea as long as we also show that it is part of that understanding of the interconnections with climate change and the implications that go well beyond what people may immediately think as biodiversity and if i may just say briefly something you mentioned the point about how the evidence is used in the strategy i mean the initial section is helpful to show how much evidence has been gathered but then the evidence is not used in the rest of the document and this is where there's a big gap between what we know and how we then can shape those targets and make those connections on the basis that the of the evidence we have and i think that that's one of the biggest opportunity here to be you know to have a really informed strategy but given that sense of urgency and how crucial this is um is really important as a highlight that's really helpful thank you um i've got one final question but briefly dr walton yeah i was just going to say that um that the evidence chapter okay is is progress because for decades frankly there has been a sort of dominant narrative from successive administrations in scotland that nature's great in scotland look out your window look at the lovely hills and the heathen moorland and it's great nature's fantastic there isn't really a problem so we have seen that shift and that's a very very welcome shift and indeed we now share things like the state of nature report which is an NGO led effort to get the best understanding of where we are with nature that is now um becoming increasing i a shared evidence space across Government so we're beginning to see some some some progress there the really frankly strange thing about this consultation document is that as elissa said the rest of it simply does not reflect the serious of the issue that's laid out in the first chapter and does not point towards any sort of meaningful solutions and that is that is going to be a big problem and it's a really big problem particularly in terms of government agencies and NGOs need to show a shared collective endeavour when we approach external funders the nlhf for example have told us you guys really need to get together and decide what your shared priorities are i don't see the strategies deciding it so it might actually have implications well beyond just arguments between government NGOs it might be implications in terms of how much money comes into biodiversity conservation in the future from external sources again that's really helpful um have a final question i'll come back to you paul um on this one and maybe others can indicate if they want to contribute to the answer i've wanted to raise the recent outbreak of avian flu while we we have you here and the impact on scotland's wild bird population um i'm just wondering if you believe it has any implications for scotland's biodiversity strategies or anything that you would want to bring to our attention absolutely avian influenza is a massive wake-up call it is completely unprecedented in global terms the impacts we have seen over the past 18 months it's never happened before it was entirely unexpected it would find its way into seabirds the great skewer or bonxie is they call it in shetland scotland has 60 of the world population breeds breeds here our main colonies are down we think we can't tell you exactly by 70 to 80 percent there is potential potential that that species will go globally extinct on our watch we have most of them in our country now in discussions with with the minister i have heard on several occasions i well we're interested in ecosystems we're not really interested in single species conservation scotland's seabirds are internationally important before avian influenza hit they declined by 49 percent since 1986 so they're already have because of pressures like competition with fisheries for sanduils climate change invasive species on islands and get being tangled up in fishing gear these are major pressures on internationally important species for which we have a global responsibility this is why we're calling for a programme of species recovery in the scots by diversity strategy and avian influenza's impact is massive impact that it seems to have had on our species some of which are internationally important needs to be a wake-up call it needs to be we need a step change in ambition and we need to build resilience in our populations to coming pressures and bird flu is an anthropogenic pressure not in this country but it originated in poultry in eastern asia and spread across eurasia largely because of the movement of poultry and poultry products and then passed secondarily into wild birds and is now moving around and spreading in wild birds so it's a huge wake-up call for us and we can expect unfortunately new novel anthropogenic pressures to impact on the natural world and that's why this biodiversity strategy is critical and why it has to be ambitious to make sure that we maximise resilience to that change and in the vision section for example in initial draft it talked about reversing biodiversity loss and halting extinctions those were removed from the current dress they're no longer in the vision so it's quite strange for us who've been involved in the process how we've ended up with something that really lacks the sufficient ambition to really be meaningful thank you and we're quickly running out of time so i'll hand back to convener but thank you very much and thank you very much for bringing that to so forcefully to our attention and jackadon bar and good morning panel i'm really am conscious of time so i'll just get straight to it if you don't mind the UK leveling up and regeneration bill includes powers to amend environmental assessments with potential to affect assessments under the habitats regulations what implications does this have for scotland's biodiversity policy and dr paul you've caught my eye sorry dr paul you've caught my eye so i'll go to you first and if anyone would like to come in please do okay i'm i'm not a specialist in this area but essentially what what they're trying to do is to reform planning legislation in england okay and as part of that there's this kind of curve curve ball seems to have come where the the UK secretary of state i believe the deaf secretary of state would be given the power to override in secondary legislation at UK level primary legislation that's been put in place by this parliament in terms of um environmental impact assessments strategic environmental assessments and habitat regulation assessments under the habitats regulations we think that this is um quite a risky move quite aside for many issues of democratic legitimacy it sort of brings the basic environmental protection legislation straight into a constitutional debate which might not be entirely helpful but it also um if you like so creates a sort of um a difficulty in terms of the Scottish government's commitments to maintain those EU standards to to to to keep track of EU standards or or exceed them i mean it may be if the UK isn't actually adopting similar environmental protection standards that the will of the scottish parliament is undermining in that sort of way as well and we we are beginning to see environmental impacts what we would say to the scottish government is if this does go go forward we'd ask the scottish government to make sure that planning matters in scotland and planning decisions are mean the standards are maintained as a matter of policy so quite often planning decisions are made as a matter of policy rather than a matter of legislation so we would urge that that to happen but um i think it's fair to say that scottish environment lick is quite concerned about this and we have indeed written to the UK secretary of state and copied in um the relevant ministers in scotland as well okay thank you as in tales would like to add anything or no i think we can we can we have a briefing on the subject that we can circulate to the committee again if that's helpful okay that would be grand do i have time for my second question okay in regards we all the natural environment bill is due to be introduced in the third year of this parliament and so can i ask what legislative changes if any and do you think are required to deliver changes needed for our terrestrial environment can i go to Susie Saunders first please sorry just get my notes together um so in terms of the yeah so um we we do also need an environment bill as you've said to put in statutory nature targets um and legislative requirements are really great because they focus action like the statutory climate change emissions reductions targets and it helps direct things like fundings um but i think yeah the most important thing that i would want to get across through this although the legislation is really important and i know we've mentioned this so many times today but um having smart targets actually within this strategy and that would be my message that i would drive home so um in particular for native woodlands we need to make sure that we have targets for their expansion for protecting them for restoring them um and we need to make sure that we're having targets that help drive um or help tackle the drivers of biodiversity loss so yeah my key message smart targets in the strategy okay would anybody else like to add anything yeah please i agree with that entirely and maybe just a sort of slightly answer the last question as well that um we've got the Scottish EU continuity bill and elements of that are referenced within the Scottish biodiversity strategy that we're discussing as well um to to sort of properly realise that ambition we do need to get these targets um quickly and that alignment there's the EU nature restoration law that's already mentioned as well it'll be very important that we that we strive to to match or or exceed that so that's important that we also look at the issues raised by your previous question as well in relation to that okay thank you and professor morgera thank you well i think that there's three things that have emerged from the discussion today that will be important to reflecting legislation the first is making sure there's full coverage of all the elements of international obligations on biodiversity so conservation of ecosystems species and action on the genetic level and then including conservation restoration and also action on invasive alien species so it has to be comprehensive in scope and making sure there's no gaps in the current legal system the second is really building the conditions for for applying an ecosystem approach and so that means that policy coherence joined up work across government but also a participatory process so that can bottom up discussion and integration of local knowledge and that needs to be legislated because in fact we're looking at procedures for participation and you know relying on on human rights standards for that because the protection of biodiversity is what everyone's basic human rights rely on thank you Dr Walton yeah absolutely targets is the key message that you're getting from us but i want this committee to be fully conscious that it's actually going to be quite a risky thing because if we end up with targets that are very weak and perhaps too split that say oh well we'll we'll kind of focus on 10 species a year or something like that when we have tens of thousands of species out there a high proportion of which are in conservation need these exactly what these targets are these legally binding targets in law you know is going to be critical in terms of how successful we are delivering against biodiversity it's going to be politically really challenging because the gravity is always going to be towards let's make them as vague and let's make them as light touch as possible and i suspect we may have seen something like that happening at the UK level if Scotland wants to lead we're going to have to somehow in this parliament develop a shared ambition to have really meaningful really ambitious and very specific targets that are going to be challenging and that politically i think is a tough one but that is what is required if we end up with weak targets it could be worse than if there weren't targets at all so we have failed repeatedly globally and nationally to meet our biodiversity requirements because we haven't had legally binding targets it seems to be the only way forward but it is a politically challenging thing to make it work okay thank you um i'm afraid i'm gonna have to to bring this to a close that has been an extremely helpful session thank you for your clarity and for your challenge and i will now briefly suspend this meeting for the setup of our next panel and i intend to move right into that thank you we now resume with our second panel in relation to scottish biodiversity strategy and we're now focused on the marine environment so i welcome our panelists they are Callum Duncan head of conservation scotland marine conservation society and Craig McAdam convener at the scottish environment environment link fresh water group and i also welcome susan davis chief executive scottish seabird centre who is joining us remotely very welcome i hope susan you can hear us out in clear thank you and thanks for joining us today i will go through the panel members with their questions but i just want to kick off with that question about why scotland has struggled to make progress in slowing and reversing biodiversity declines in your view what are the key challenges for scotland and what are the reason that some targets have been missed to date and i could maybe come to um come to Craig mcaddon first and then move to Callum Duncan after that and then to susan davis so Craig please yeah thanks thanks for inviting us to give evidence to the committee um the the previous strategies have uh i suppose lacked ambition um we've we've seen um progressive sort of like uh programmes of restoration that just haven't come to fruition um we've we've seen a lack of joined up um thinking across across government and across across social society um you know the previous strategy was all about mainstreaming and we we've just not seen that um and yeah if we want to uh if we want to to see biodiversity restored we really need to mainstream we need to look at everybody doing their bit to actually help biodiversity um my i noticed you mentioned it was a marine section and i'm actually a freshwater specialist and and from the freshwater group so um my my take is from the the watery bits on land um and you know we've the the current draft um of the biodiversity strategy doesn't actually mention a lot about freshwater it doesn't mention that we've got a river basin management plan um in scotland you know which is a key way of of delivering action for fresh waters that said the river basin management plan isn't particularly ambitious either and you know for one particular you know aspect you could look at the impoundments on rivers and barriers on rivers that stop natural flow processes and at the rate that the uh that is in the uh river basin management plan it's going to take us maybe 100 years to actually rid our rivers of derelict and and disused barriers so yeah we need a lot more ambition we need a lot more um leadership and direction to our restoration um and we need more action thank you so for was title you but we really want to hear from your advice obviously in the freshwater side in particular i can move to calm please thank you for uh convener and for inviting me here i mean having been involved with the drafting of previous strategies um i've a recollection of a lot of onus being put on legislation that was needed and we were glad that we helped secure that in terms of the marine scotland act for example so the the experience of the biodiversity strategies before was very much about documents that were you know we're driving some welcome awareness raising in local activity but they weren't really driving systemic change or looking at the sort of transformative change that was needed and and they were i think they were right pre 2010 to recognise that we needed new legislation to drive the enhancement of the sea set up a planning system set up a network of mpa's um so we were obviously very pleased when that was secured um so in terms of um uh you know why we are where we are now the the roll out of that hasn't been uh quick enough or robust enough um at the same time there hasn't been that mainstreaming in other parts of civic civic society so there's maybe been a bit of a sort of silo mentality there uh and and as the international reports that have been cited earlier have said from the UN and so on we need transformative change across all sectors we you know we we we all rely on biodiversity for our very survival so every single part of society has to be thinking about and every single sectoral and economic activity has to be thinking about what it does for for nature um and unfortunately because there hasn't been that um and i should be clear very much welcome the progress that has been made although it's been slow and uh there has been some good good progress in isolated areas in some rain protected areas uh and getting the management measures in place for some of the most vulnerable sites in shore in 2016 for example but it's it's um it's not been fast enough and ambitious enough and then we haven't we haven't then uh looked at what uh what the other pillars of the marine nature conservation strategy are doing so we have to be looking at wider seas measures like fisheries management like marine planning as well to deliver for nature and there's been delays in all of those things um and that uh that pace uh and and that um you know lack of achievement was was clear with good environmental status that so rngos and others concluded that the the aim to have our seas and good environmental status by 2020 was a spectacular failure and that's what we said two years ago um and and that that required biodiversity to be maintained never mind recovered so we failed to maintain it um it required populations of commercial fish species to be healthy um it required elements of food webs uh to ensure long-term abundance and reproduction and ensure it required that sea floor integrity that is the health and the status of the seabed so that the seabed can keep doing what it does ensures functioning of the ecosystem so really fundamental um aspects uh of of what we were supposed to have achieved have failed so um it's absolutely I would echo everything that I heard in the earlier session all that applies at sea and in terms of the biodiversity strategy it's a tailor to halves the first half it's a great setup of the um the evidence of decline and concern but the second half you come to the marine section and it's it's it's very vague it's not smart enough it's not targeted enough it's not acknowledging the the the sectoral actions across fisheries aquaculture offshore offshore energy that need to be done you know we've got eight years to turn this around so it needs to be it needs to be visionary it needs to be smart Susan Davis can I come to you please thank you very much and apologies for not being able to be with you in person today and I think that one of the key things that we need to address as we move forward with this biodiversity strategy is about the leadership and the privacy of the strategy um it absolutely has been shown in terms of climate change and the prominence of that that when it is recognised as being a fundamental issue and a crisis that uh you know progress is made and similarly the nature strategy the biodiversity strategy needs to be given some primacy and needs to be the lead strategy that other sexual policies are required to demonstrate how they will contribute to it thank you I think we're we're fine with you on sound our visual is is not as secure we can see you but broadcasting can indicate if you want to do anything on that but we've definitely heard what you said there Susan and I also just want to put the same question I asked the last panel looking at the international picture with COP 15 coming forward in terms of the expectations that you have of that and what do you see as the interaction between the current consultation and scotland strategy and COP 15 I'll maybe come to Callum and then Craig and then to Susan and broadcast can help us with any issues around Susan thank you and I think we'd very much welcome this sort of ambition that's been shown by the European Union ahead of COP 15 as Dr Walton said this morning talking about you know the importance of the nature restoration law and my understanding is the European Union showed leadership got ahead of global thinking by actually looking to enshrine in law nature restoration targets it's maybe not helpful to get into big discussions about percentages but having some welcome things in that law include at least 20 percent of all habitats under active restoration and that's you know one example of the sorts of the sort of targets and the sort of ambition that we'd like to be seen like to see coming through in the biodiversity strategy actively looking at every component of the ecosystem so not just looking at because of the strategy as marine and coastal but how does that break down so we go from coastal through through the marine system we're talking about sand dunes we're talking about salt marshes we're talking about reed beds and we go into the intertidal seagrass beds and blue mussel beds we go deeper into mud's living reefs flame shell beds horse muscle beds through cold water corals deeper a sponge community so from the marine perspective we need a lot more we'd like to see a lot more you know recognition at a sort of habitat by habitat basis and have ambition for those habitats to be restored and recovered in order to meet some of the things I mentioned under the good environmental status requirements but under you know building on those and looking at how to take those forward and and enshrine them in law so that ecosystem scale approach that breaks it down into the different component habitats and actually really thinks about well what what proportion of these habitats do we need to recover how do we recover them and how do we go about recovering them and it's not just about mpa's it's about we need to get them right we need to properly protect them but we need the wider seas work as well what can fishing do outside mpa's as well to further biodiversity how can we have a planning system that drives ecosystem restoration how can our aquaculture industry reverse the impacts that it has on wild biodiversity etc and could come to Craig McAdam on COP 15 and how that can impact on how Scotland delivers on international applications sure yeah and like calm I'd like to see you know strong leadership from from leaders at COP and and good targets coming out of that that can be then taken down into into regions and then into into countries I mean the the as calm said the EU um biodiversity strategy now that the restoration law has some good targets in there come ambitious targets in there in the freshwater in the freshwater sort of section they've got 25 000 kilometres of free flowing rivers will be restored across Europe you know which is a fantastic ambitious target um it would be good to see that then get transferred down into countries so you know so that Scotland takes on a target like that so what we see in uh decided at COP comes through and is delivered by us here okay and uh I'm going to come to to Susan Susan and we're going to put you on audio only so we can hear you loud and clear so Susan what's your view particularly around COP 15 and the interaction with our own consultation and subsequent strategy is i think a COP 15 again it's got to be recognised that there is a need for pace that this is an emergency that we're dealing with and I think if Scotland really wishes to show leadership and to help drive some of that conversation and the targets which might come from COP 15 then we need to take the steps to articulate very clearly at a Scottish level what our restoration and recovery goals are going to be for both ecosystems and for species I think it's also very important to recognise the importance of the public engagement and the education process as part of this exercise as well and the current strategy that we have before us the draft strategy is particularly weak in terms of what that expectation would be what the outcomes would be in the targets for public engagements and education but we do need that whole society buy-in for the change that is going to be required thank you Susan and I move to Natalie Dawn to be followed by Liam Kerr thank you convener and good morning panel it's nice to have to see you I will stick with the same theme as I did for the last panel and ask how you feel Scotland's efforts to tackle the biodiversity crisis in marine and freshwater environments compared with other countries and are there any instances of best practice anything that we can learn from I'll go to Craig first please yeah thanks for the question the in in freshwater we've we've had some good successes we've done some good work on freshwater pearl mussels through the pearls and pearl project we've started to introduce schemes like riverwoods and riparian woodland creation which is going to help to tackle both the biodiversity crisis and the climate crisis you know keeping keeping rivers cool so there's good stuff happening it's happening in a very piecemeal sort of a approach it's very much funding dependent it's not really mainstreamed so the pearls and pearl project finished what four or five years ago and there's not really been a concerted programme to keep going these are animals that live for over a hundred years so a five-year project isn't really going to be enough to to see them through their life cycle so we need we need to we need to have more secure funding I guess and or targeted funding more more targeted funding we can see what's happened with peatland action where we've got a programme of peatland restoration across Scotland and the nature restoration fund is now doing bits across Scotland what we really need is for each ecosystem having a dedicated fund that can actually do that and the and you know looking looking across the border there's announcement yesterday yesterday I think it was of of you know big landscape scale programmes of work for for biodiversity and for nature and for climate and that's a I think that's a sort of ambition that we need to have who we're looking across a whole landscape not just this river here or that hill there let's try and get it across Scotland thank you so yeah you mentioned some instances of things that are happening in Scotland that are positive and that we could maybe expand on or sort of roll out nationally I'll I'll come to Callum next if you could maybe expand on that in terms of things that other countries are doing but also anything positive that's happening within Scotland that could be expanded on yeah certainly thank you the marine scotland act I mentioned is world leading legislation in terms of requiring the planning system the mp network and the enhancement duty in there the sustainable development enhancement duty and duty to mitigate the impacts of climate change so it's very visionary legislation world class but then there's the delivery side of it the the mpa net the mpa process in Scotland was was was very good scientifically founded stood up to scrutiny an independent challenge engaged all the stakeholders and delivered the the bulk of a network of sites which has since been very much welcome welcomely added to through other sites that have come along since such as the the west of scotland mpa the emergency mpa for Loch Carran the the new emergency mpa for red rock and longa for skate eggs so but without management in place there are paper parks so there was good management that came in in 2016 to to protect the most vulnerable inshore sites from the most damaging forms of fishing for those features in the sites the the habitats that are particularly vulnerable to to bottom toad fishing gear so you know that that was a welcome suite of fisheries management measures protecting over 2000 kilometers squared of inshore sites protecting vital ecosystem engineers like moral beds flame shell beds and other habitats the the enforcement of those is another matter so there's still concerns about how these measures are actually enforced and there's you know several instances of concern about conservation orders being breached so again it's a bit of a mixed picture and that's why we're calling for remote electronic monitoring on all vessels and we welcome that commitment for for the scallop fleet to start with again it's not happening quick enough so you know it's a mix bag better on paper and it's important about getting on with the delivery and that includes the new and very welcome commitments in the bute house agreement as well on highly protected marine areas and so on so i'm jumping to the future there but in terms of other good examples in scotland i would never tired of citing the the inspiring work of the community of irene seabed trust that pioneered this very small no take zone in north lamblash bay which has then become the core of a wider npa in south arin and that is a real beacon of hope and recovery where you're seeing richer seabed habitats you're seeing more and larger scallops and lobsters and so on so there's there's signs of what is possible if we can get it right in terms of going internationally on the policy side canada has always led the way in terms of having holistic ocean policies and having okay ecosystem marine ecosystem objectives so they've been talking about that for decades looking at what it is what it is that they want their seas to look like and setting up networks and having a commission to actually look at whether their network is working so canada is is somewhere i would look to. New Zealand there are some some good examples there of actual pioneering of simple protection measures the world's first no take zone was Cape Rodney to Ocacari point marine reserve university of Auckland on the north island and and that showed what can be done if you just leave a bit of seabed alone and you have these spiny lobsters spilling out from this reserve and local fishermen went from opponents and critics to supporters of it and then last my last example i'd probably give is the United States of America who are actually globally very progressive on fisheries management including spatial management of fishing and i believe the the management of the scallop fishery on the east coast is one that's very worth looking at in terms of actually spatially managing fishing which is which is something that i think is really important and really important in Scotland and and New Zealand and USA are also countries that are pioneering the remote electronic monitoring with cameras as well um biodiversity recovery ocean recovery isn't just about fisheries management but it's such a widespread pressure as scotland's main assessment recognises that um that you know a good examples of fisheries management are also good for biodiversity thanks very much Calum yeah we we discussed New Zealand quite a length in the last panel so there's definitely things to learn there but it's very useful to have those other examples as well um i'll just turn lastly to Susan so it's just if you've anything to add in terms of the question proposed sorry which is how Scotland's efforts tackle the biodiversity crisis in marine and freshwater environments and how that compares with other countries i'll bring Susan in thank you yes i think i mean i'll echo much of what Calum has outlined there in terms of we do have some more leading legislation and policies and it's the translation of those into implementation and the resources do that that probably lets us down um and that's really where we need to kind of sort of focus the effort and why it's important with this new biodiversity strategy that we're clear on what the delivery mechanisms and the resources required going to be um i think just again you know it's been highlighted the um the new zealand biodiversity strategy the whole biosecurity approach in terms of New Zealand is an exceptional example to look at but there are other examples which we can you know get access to through IUCN things like the QE initiative which really helped build capacity at the community level to respond to climate resilience and nature loss through taking forward nature based solutions but i don't think in international terms and global terms that there is any one country that has got the totally right solution but we can find examples to address particular issues in a range of different countries and try to draw on those to make sure that the approach that we are taking both you know brings people together um is community led as well in terms of that restoration um but also helps build build capacity for the future thanks Susan thank you all for your answers thank you to come to Liam Kerr and then to Mark Ruskell please very grateful good morning panel Craig McAdam a question for you first please one of the conditions for success is this independent monitoring and reporting body alongside an improved framework you heard me ask about it earlier i'm sure but the consultation doesn't say what either of these should really look like it do you take a view um i think that the consultation also doesn't say what success should look like either i think that's where we we really lack targets in this this consultation we don't know where we're actually aiming for how how ambitious it is going to be um so i think you know it's almost like a chicken and egg thing there that we need we need to know what the targets are to know what the the body that's going to be policing them will look like um yeah that's very helpful thank you uh Susan Davis i'll move on to a slightly different topic i asked earlier about funding obviously if you want to pick up on the conditions for successor and monitoring then by all means do so but you heard me ask earlier about funding and sources and we got some pretty big numbers from the earlier panel do you have any views when it comes to funding on whether the consultation deals with this question realistically and in any event where we get that level of funding from what the sources are please yes i think i mean we really do have funding challenges and i think they're in a number of different ways we've largely been reliant on public funds and or charitable fundraising to take forward some of the the response to biodiversity and the loss of biodiversity but quite often those funding mechanisms are annual and when in fact we need commitments over the long term and we need to know what resources available over the long term for different ecosystems and quite often those funding streams are capital as an infrastructure capital rather than natural capital building and so we either need to look at the definition of what can be funded and we also need to look at having revenue funding because whilst there are some capital works which are required for nature restoration and recovery a lot of it is about on-going management and revenue funding and i think that in the earlier session figures of 15 to 20 billion have been highlighted by the Green Finance Institute as the requirement and it's quite clear that we need to think very carefully about how things like the Scotland Legacy Fund, the infrastructure levy and whether opportunities exist around nature climate bonds in order to bring in private finance as well and we've got examples that are starting to develop you know the the Scottish Marine Environmental Enhancement Fund is a welcome step for the marine environment but again it suffers from some of that annuality and some of the issues around capital spending and when it has to or when spend has to take place so we really do need to look at the mechanisms and the longevity of those funding instruments going forward just in terms of the sorry just in terms of the the conditions of success i would just you know echo the point that we absolutely need clear targets but i do think environmental standard scotland has you know the remit to actually you know be looking at monitoring the progress and it has some of the statutory powers in order to take forward some of the the regulation and the enforcement in terms of you know compliance notes, improvement notes and also judicial review so i think environmental standard scotland as a monitoring body should certainly be one body that should be looked at with adequate resources to monitor progress but first off we need very clear targets that we're going to be aiming for it's very interesting thank you very much for the answer callum Duncan i'll move to you finally on on a slightly different matter again if you have anything to contribute to that then by all means do so the national marine plan was reviewed excuse me in spring 2021 as it's required to be and ministers are now required to decide whether to amend or replace the current plan which understand has not been updated or amended since 2015 do you take a view on what should be done particularly in relation to your submission that there needs to be alignment between the biodiversity strategy and other policies such as this thank you we think the national marine plan should be amended we welcomed the first plan with with concerns at the time that it wasn't properly addressing or recognising what became the climate emergency in the oil and gas chapter so there was there was a climate change objective for that sector in the plan that was talking about the emissions extracting oil and gas and wasn't actually looking at the impacts of the burning of the oil and gas that's extracted so that was a big contradiction in that part of the national marine plan and the other area that we raised concerns about I'll come on to a positive in a minute but the other one we raised concerns about was in relation to the aquaculture sector we were concerned that it it just lifted what we viewed as an unsustainable aquaculture industry aquaculture growth target and put it into planning policy which we didn't think was good was good policy I mean to be clear like with any sector we support sustainable activities it's not about saying you know we need to just transition for oil and gas but we also need you know transitions for the aquaculture sector to one that's more sustainable and likewise the fishing sector so we think the the national marine plan should be amended and should be looking at how the different sectors deliver for for climate targets that are required but also for nature as well which is why we would like targets in law for nature also a positive element of the national marine plan was general policy 9b which was required that there should be no significant impact on the national status of priority marine features which is a whole range of important species and habitats at sea and it's that policy that triggered the main meaningful application of the plan from our perspective which was to following scullop dredger damaging flame shell beds in outer lock haran there was a policy commitment now five or more years ago to improve protection of priority marine features outside the the mp network to forgive me I just segued into another sort of policy ask that we have that's delayed thanks I'd like to go back to a point that we discussed with the first panel and that's about delivery plans and and I think the message I was kind of getting from the first panel was that they'd like to see the delivery plans effectively embedded in the strategy is that is that your position you're looking for more specificity in the strategy craig do you want to yeah I would I would like to see more more detail in there if you look at the fresh water section you know it picks out beavers it picks out salmon and it picks out riparian woodland what about the all the other stuff that lives in fresh water you know to just pick out three three species is that all that they're going to cover is there is there a wider programme of species restoration in fresh water um there's just not the detail there it says about significant or i can't remember what the actual term is they use but about significant improvements of significant restoration what does significant mean you know is that we'll have another couple of salmon or is it you know salmon across their their their their expected range in scotland so yeah I think I think for me we we need more detail in there we need a little a little less vague there's a lot of vague words in there that need a bit of definition and and yet just just so we can see what the level of ambition is I mean are you arguing then for the setting of a delivery plan first say for fresh water or for marine and then that to be built up into a strategy or I think we feel it feels quite chicken and egg so it does what would you like to see in a fresh water strategy then a sorry fresh water delivery plan what's missing is the targets from this document if we knew what the target was we'd know that it was you know the delivery plan would have to meet that target at the moment it's it's really quite vague it's it's saying that uh uh helping species to naturally return to rivers it's like well not all species can naturally return it is is that all we're going to do or are we going to do the extra bits that are needed to help the species that can't naturally return it doesn't you know cover some of our really important wildlife it doesn't cover fresh water power muscles at all aren't mentioned we've got half the world's population in scotland and and they're in decline what are we going to do about it you know it's just the the details not there we don't have a without the targets we don't know where this is aiming for okay so we don't know what the key thing is you would wish to see for fresh water in a delivery plan and i'll ask the same question to callum i'd like to see i'd like to see a target a plan for delivering natural flow processes in rivers so removing the barriers to gravel movement and upstream movement of fish allowing rivers to use their floodplain you know i'd like to see some targets for tackling non-native species there's a huge number of non-native species and many of them are in fresh water or along the banks of rivers you know there's a real thing that we can tackle there and i'd like to see the phasing out of peat use in horticulture you know it talks about restoring peat bogs it doesn't actually talk about sorting the problem which is that we're destroying peat bogs and so so those are the sort of things that i'd like to see i'd like to see action for species in there as well yeah callum thank you again it's the it's breaking it down into a bit more detail in terms of targets is like what does what does healthy mean for for populations of whales dolphin sharks but as i said in my submission you should also be looking at other parts of the ecosystem as well including some invertebrates we need those and then in terms of just to reiterate what i said earlier in terms of targets for the the seabed and the pelagic habitat we need to be looking at what you know what does it mean to be healthy what what what proportion of extant habitat does there need to be and to have an understanding of that we need to have a you know a collective recognition of the very diminished condition of these habitats already and that you know that's accepted evidence that's in scotland's mean assessment it's an you know equivalent UK assessment so just from my experience that's been a big part of the you know this rather contested space over the last few years it's it's having an acceptance of that already diminished evidence and then collectively looking at that and thinking well where where do we want to get to that tells us the seafloor is in a condition that can support other animals and plants but also all the things that we enjoy from the from the sea in terms of food and and blue carbon of course i haven't mentioned that carbon sequestration storage and that's the other side of the nature emergency so we we need we need a bit more specificity on that to then have have to then have more meaningful discussions about percentages because 37 percent of our sea is currently designated but it's not necessarily protected from everything it needs to be within the mpa network but we also need protection outside the mpa network so it's it's having if we don't have meaningful targets about where we want to go to you can't have a discussion because then it becomes you know forgive me it's a it's a motherhood and apple pie thing you know nobody can disagree all the all the challenging discussions come about when you actually have a proposal in front of you and and we've seen that in bits of the sea in terms of mpa management measures for example and we need to have that when we need to have these discussions at a regional seascale with an understanding of where we want to get to and then the action plan has to be clear about how all the sectors have a role to play in wider society to to to get there across the sort of sectors that i mentioned and i should quickly say that includes for pollution as well i've sort of focused on extractive activities or activities on growing species but pollution is a huge concern plankton numbers are plummeting and plankton is the absolute fundamental base of the food web and and plant plankton provides half the air we breathe yeah so there's a lot to do indeed and it is a concern here again just thinking back to what the first pound was saying that previously we had a biodiversity strategy that was established but there wasn't the delivery plans flowing from that to then to then actually act is that has that been the issue up to now so there's a concern that strategy we set up looks great it's got it's got some specifics in there but the actual meat of the delivery can then just drift yeah i mean that that i kind of touched on that in my first answer that was my experience certainly at sea with with earlier strategies and to be fair that's because they were happening in parallel or the drafting of them was happening in parallel with neat recognition of need for new legislation um so there was there was a like well we can deliver our aims for it through this new legislation and it being enacted but we're now post-climate emergency i would agree it's a nature emergency which at sea is an ocean emergency so we need um we can't have that drift you know we uh and it's important to emphasise the win-wins with this as well this isn't about this isn't about saying this to kind of um you know point the finger it's about saying if we you know if we all want the services that nature provides you know we can we can get our you know our clean air clean water we can get our food sustainable local resilient jobs and economies but that foundation has to be has to the state of the foundation has to be recognised has been diminished and then we have to build on it yeah um final question um do you think there's policy coherence within say a government organisation like marine scotland i think it's getting i think it's getting a lot better so i think a lot i think the blue economy vision the um you know future fisheries management strategy the future catching policy um the the it's not quite joined up enough for us i would say at the minute um but it's a lot less siloed than it was but now now it needs to be a case of getting on and delivering so we look forward to that in terms of likely insure cap and that'll be a you know a challenging process but we you know we need to be looking at how we use our sea space and if we're using it sustainably so it's you know it's getting better um i think my my viewing it would have to wait until seeing the outcome of the future catching policy consultation because as part of that we said um you know we should we should look at review all fishing effort in the round and see see what's the sustainable fit and that that principle should also apply for aquaculture um offshore renewables any sector craig any any reflections on policy coherence in in fresh water um for our hand back to the convener i it's interesting that the river basin management plan isn't mentioned in the in the biodiversity strategy you know and that should be one of the mechanisms for delivering um some change to fresh waters um the that that is uh for the that's just been published that's for another five years you know so within the time period of this first up to 2030 we're going to have to do another river basin management plan that really needs to be tied in it really needs to to um look at what we need to do for rivers to uh for the nature emergency the climate crisis you know for everything um i think the other thing to to perhaps say is that on the marine side is that that some of the problems from the in the marine environment start at the top of the hill you know and and you know what happens in that river on its way to the sea can influence uh conditions in in the marine environment in the coastal environment so i think there needs to be that that better link up between what's happening on land with what's happening in sea yeah thanks okay thank you very much monica linan and then jack into bar thank you computer um my questions were about marine planning but i think it's mostly being covered in in the last session there um but if anyone's got anything i want to add um maybe come to to susan who i can't see but i believe is still with us susan in the last session i don't know if you heard that panel discussion i asked about the recent outbreak of avian flu and the significant impact that's had on scotland's wild bird population um in view in your view what implications does this have for scotland's biodiversity strategy uh i'll come to to susan first and come to callum and craig if you have anything to add thank you yes i mean avian flu has sent an absolute shock wave through the conservation movement i mean globally seabirds were already considered to be the most vulnerable group of birds that we have and avian flu has shown just how successful they are through disease or to other pressures and i think what it demonstrates to us is the importance of putting in place actions and measures at the regional level as well as nationally which help build resilience of our internationally important breeding seabirds um if we build some of that resilience then they will be better able to stand some of the things which we are less able to directly control um and so again i think uh actually in terms of you know turning the improving the sort of strategy making it more visible what the targets are that we're trying to achieve giving a clear sense of the measures which might be required and levers required to implement those will be actually critical in taking us on on the journey to you know get changed and to get changed quickly thank you susan would you like to give any examples of the actions or measures that you that you have in mind so i think one of the the critical things and again the the draft seabird conservation strategy and the stakeholder engagement which they can place on that although the document hasn't come out to consultation yet it really goes through a very thorough process of identifying the individual pressures on the breeding seabirds that we have um and then sets out some of the measures that will need to be addressed when there are kind of a range of things but you know one of the the critical pressures is around uh unsustainable fishery practices um and uh also uh the need for um biosecurity responses as well so making sure that we've got some of those mechanisms in place that they're properly funded when it comes to things like biosecurity responses um for control of invasive species i think will be critical that's helpful thank you susan um Callum Craig that you want to add to that yeah Callum yeah quickly um just on the planning we've got even more delayed regional marine planning um shetland's probably ahead of the curve on that but um and we responded to the um committee inquiry on that so we're we look forward to the the result of that um but regional marine planning again needs resource to deliver integration and and recovery um on the on the avian uh uh flu crisis um you know about to susan and other seabird experts but actually you know fully support the uh the importance of delivering the seabird strategy and recognition in that strategy about i mean basically we've got a vicious circle of climate change over exploitation pollution and and you know there's this antagonistic effect you know unless we break that cycle it's you know it's going down the plug hole you know so we need to uh we need to have sustainable fishing practices we need to stop the the microplastics getting from the land we need to stop the um damaging forever chemicals so that's something that might be in front of the committee there's these chemicals non-stick chemicals as well that are they don't go away and they can affect um the entire food chain um and and obviously the the wider driver of climate change so you know the the best we can do is give um give these populations that you know as much um as much safe ground to nest on and as much as much food to to go and feed uh which means doing things like phasing out forage fisheries for sand eel and sprat uh which the scottish government have made a welcome commitment to for example so yeah there's there's a lot to do thank you kelvin just briefly you mentioned resourcing in the context of marine planning um when you say that do you also have in mind in terms of skills and workforce is there more that needs to be done in that area to make sure that we have you know the right people the right training the right skills to to do these important jobs absolutely the needs i mean i think you know i don't have the figures here but there there are some you know excellent um marine and and governance and planning courses in scotland that are various universities and and masts marine alliance for science and technology scotland does a great job of sort of coordinating that um but uh there might be a gap between these courses and and getting enough um skilled marine planners and people within understanding um uh you know within within the the the regional marine planning systems and the local authorities and so on so we we um yeah that's definitely an issue we do need um okay well that's that's helpful and i'll just come to take if you get anything you want to add just to echo what um callum and susan have said about resilience um you know it's about building resilience i i remember um when i was younger you know disease and salmon um salmon coming into rivers that were disease um you know thankfully that's not a case now but you know it could be around the corner um we've got non-native species that are coming into rivers um like pink salmon in some of the rivers in the north and and you know we need to make sure that our biodiversity is as resilient as possible to all these things that are getting chucked out thank you okay jack into bar thank you uh convener and thank you panel for coming along today i think most of what i was wanting to ask you've probably um already covered so i'm going to go back to what i asked the original panel if if you're not there the first panel i beg your pardon not getting my words out probably today it's in regard to the national environment bill which is due to be introduced in your three in the parliament um what legislative changes do you think are required to deliver the changes needed for our marine environment um this time if i can start maybe with callum craig and then seara yeah so susan i beg your pardon um as i said in my my written submission you know you've been hearing from all of us this new legislation needs to have nature recovery targets across land and sea so we'd be looking closely at the the sea element of that as i was saying earlier in terms of you know how much of these habitats do we need how much should we have you know um then the other thing that that that bill can deliver is the powers to establish the committed to highly protected marine areas so this is the welcome commitment in the bute house agreement for at least 10 of scotland sees to be um highly protected so protected from all extractive and damaging activity so that would require a new i understand it would require a new primary legislation so that's a key thing that the national environment bill should have in it i think i said in my written submission that you know there's other primary legislation sorry there's other secondary legislation that we would we would need to address some of the things i'm raising in terms of fisheries instruments for the mps and so on but they're not requirement of the natural environment bill okay thank you and i'll just echo again the the need for legally binding targets um in in the legislation so that we can you know make sure that we're actually doing this um the other thing uh we should probably have a look at our non-native species um legislation and see if there's there's more to be added to that um particularly um you know there's a there's a EU regulation on invasive alien species and just making sure that we're keeping pace with that you were saying about the legally binding targets do you have one in mind that you think if you don't do anything else then please do you know legally binding this one or is that maybe a bit of an unfair question to you um i mean i mentioned it right at the very start you know that the EU biodiversity strategy has a has a target for restoring free flowing rivers i mean i think that's something that we could look at putting into legislation you know that we've got to we've got to do that in the same way that you know we we have um climate targets you have something for rivers in there as well okay thank you and finally susan and my apologies for getting your name wrong earlier susan can you hear us if you want to target yes thank you i think um i i would just echo the points about having a very clear target that uh we have a clear sense of when we will report against those targets and milestones towards them there's also a clear sense of what activities and mechanisms need to be in place and the progress towards those as well and callum has already highlighted the lack of progress in relation to the development of marine regional plans and i think you know when we look at the targets we should also set in clear expectations around progress around the mechanisms that will help us actually make the change that's required and hold hold organisations accountable for those as well okay i think we're gonna have to bring this session to a close can i thank you very much for your expertise and knowledge and sharing that with us in what is obviously a very complex but challenging area and i'm particularly thank you to to susan for persevering with us and we heard you loud and clear once the committee has considered how it best approached the biodiversity and nature emergency issue in relation to what we've heard and we will make a decision about what we do that we do in terms of relaying that to the Scottish Government in our considerations and planning so that concludes our public meeting and we now move into private session and thank you all