 Good morning, everyone, and welcome to the 11th meeting of the Rural Affairs, Islands and Natural Environment Committee in session 6. Before we begin, I can remind those members using electronic devices to switch them to silent. Our first item of business is consideration of the legislative consent memorandum for the animal welfare kept animals bill, and I refer members to papers 1 and 2. I welcome Mary Gougeon, the Cabinet Secretary for Rural Affairs and Islands, and our Scottish Government officials, who are not with us virtually, but they are certainly remote in terms of being at the back of the committee room. We welcome Andrew Vos, the veterinary head of animal welfare and Keith White, a solicitor. I invite the cabinet secretary to make an opening statement. I am delighted to be before you today to discuss the legislative consent memorandum to give effect in Scotland to the clauses of the animal welfare kept animals bill. The bill will make provision about the welfare of certain kept animals that are imported or exported from Great Britain. The Scottish Government proposes legislative consent for the clauses related to prohibiting the export of animals for slaughter and fattening, animal welfare and retained direct EU legislation, the importation of dogs, cats and ferrets, and to make amendments to the licensing of zoos in Great Britain. The provisions of the bill, not extending to Scotland, relate to the keeping, selling and breeding of primates and the offence of livestock worrying. The Scottish Government has the devolved power to legislate for the welfare of primates by secondary legislation. Also, the Scottish Parliament, through its support of the Dogs Protection of Livestock Amendment Scotland Act 2021, which came into force on 5 November, has already legislated to improve the protection of livestock from incidents of worrying. The Scottish Government recently committed to work with the other administrations to seek to end the unnecessary long-distance transport of animals for fattening or slaughter outside of the UK. The bill provides an opportunity to have consistent control over such exports and to assist enforcement agencies to ensure that such unnecessary movements no longer take place. The kept animals bill also makes provision for prohibiting or regulating the movement of animals into Scotland for the purpose of protecting animal welfare or animal health. The committee of members will be all too aware that the importation of animals and puppies in particular involves widespread suffering and illegality. Puppies are frequently imported with fraudulent paperwork underage and unvaccinated before being transported and sold to unsuspecting buyers in GB by dealers illegally posing as home breeders. Reducing the number of pet animals that can be imported by individuals along with restrictions on the import of young animals or in late pregnancy will significantly help to address those issues. Those measures have been called for by many of the main animal welfare organisations and the Scottish Government supports their introduction. There are also concerns about the growing number of dogs imported with cropped ears and other unnecessary and cruel mutilations that are not legal within the UK and the bill seeks to address that. The licensing of zoos has been applied consistently across Great Britain for many years, more recently under the provisions of the Zoo Licensing Act 1981. That consistent approach has worked well to protect animals kept in zoos and I would like to see that approach continued. The proposed amendments to the 1981 act seek to introduce more meaningful conservation, education and research activities for all licensed zoos through improved standards for modern zoo practice that have been developed by the zoos expert committee. That will greatly improve the knowledge base around many animals and contribute to their future care. The Scottish Government fully recognises, however, for the measures in this bill to be successful. It must be introduced consistently across Great Britain. That is to avoid unscrupulous importers and exporters seeking to change their point of entry or exit in an attempt to exploit any inconsistencies between administrations, which they no doubt would seek to do considering the high value of puppies and certain breeds of dogs. Consistent legislative measures across GB will also greatly assist when it comes to the interpretation and enforcement of new controls. A co-ordinated GB-wide approach to tackling the issues covered by the kept animals bill is widely supported and welcomed by many key stakeholders. I am strongly of the view that allowing the UK Parliament to legislate for all GB administrations in these areas is the most timely, efficient and effective way to achieve these important changes. First, I would like to ask whether you have any intentions to make suggestions on how the bill might be strengthened. We received a briefing paper from the Dogs Trust that suggests that 97 per cent of owners have three or less dogs, while the legislation suggests that five dogs should be allowed to be imported under the pet owner scheme. Do you think that that is appropriate, and do you have any intention to strengthen that to ensure that we do not see the continuation of puppy trafficking that we see through the likes of Cairn Ryan? I do think that the measures that are being proposed through the bill will have a significant impact as they stand. As I said, it will mean that the maximum number of animals that can be imported will be five, and that is per vehicle, so that is already a significant change. However, we are in constant discussion with the animal welfare organisations, and I am actually due to be meeting with the Dogs Trust this morning, where I will no doubt be having that conversation with them. It is important that we have that discussion with them and then discuss that with other administrations as to whether further amendment would be needed. I am more than happy to have that discussion and to consider that fully. I had a question about the current provisions that seem to have exceptions for tail docking of working dogs and de-clawing of cats. Are you satisfied with the provision as it is? Do you feel that it goes far enough in light of those exceptions? It gives us the power to introduce regulations that will also help to prevent imports of dogs that have mutilations that are illegal across the UK at the moment. The work has been done on that through the Scottish Animal Welfare Commission as well. When those regulations are introduced, as well as some of the other measures that I have talked about there, the minimum age that animals can be imported, some of those measures were recently consulted on, and we are currently analysing and looking at the results of the consultation into that, which closed in October. Once we introduce those further regulations, again, I think that that will have a significant impact and stop, hopefully, the importation of dogs where we see those mutilations. In England, the UK Government will deliver on a ban of keeping of primates as pets, so that will ensure that primates are kept up to zoo-level standards and will phase out the ownership of primates. I was wondering if the Scottish Government will be following suit. Yes, in relation to that, that is something that we can already do in Scotland through secondary legislation, and, of course, it is an area that we continue to look at and consider. Again, the Scottish Animal Welfare Commission has been doing work on that in relation to the keeping of exotic pets, so we already have the power to look at and control that. I do not think that it is straightforward in the legislation that it is in at the moment and that it would be a complete ban on the keeping of primates. I think that what they are looking to introduce through the legislation are powers that already exist here in Scotland for us to give effect to that, but I will save officials of any further information that they want to add to that. As the cabinet secretary says, we do have the power to introduce licensing regulations in Scotland, as we have recently done for licensing of animal rescue centres and cat-dog and rabbit breeding. Potentially, we could introduce licensing for exotic pet keeping or primates, so that is something that is currently being considered by the Scottish Animal Welfare Commission. There is a working group specifically looking at exotic pet keeping, so we will be able to consider their recommendations in the future on legislation if we think that that is appropriate. Can I just clarify why it is not able to be delivered as a commitment within the animal welfare kit bill? We do not need the powers through the bill in order to give effect to that in Scotland, so it is not the fact that we are not going to do it, but we have the powers to enable us to do it. As Andrew was just saying, the SOC is already looking at that. It makes sense for us to look at the work that they will be producing and doing on that work before we take that forward. Jim Fairlie. It is more of a point rather than a question. You are talking about the number of dogs that are being restricted to be brought over. I would urge that, when you are having conversations with dog trust this afternoon, you are cognisant of the fact that people who have dogs are working companions and will quite often have at least five dogs, so a shepherd, a keeper and guys like that will quite often get a lot of travel between Ireland and Scotland of shepherds coming over to work, and it is just to make sure that there is a provision in there for them to be able to do that. In terms of the tail dock, it is absolutely essential that working dogs that are going to ground or under cover have a shorter tail for their own welfare, because you will have seen the evidence in the past of dogs that are working with big waggy tails going through undergrowth and coming out being shredded, so it is just something that you may be aware of, but I just want to point it out. We are not looking to stop legitimate movements of animals, but the fact is that we have a significant problem when it comes to the illegal trade of particularly puppies coming into the country, so it is important that we get the balance of those measures right, but that is where we are in constant discussion with various animal welfare organisations as well as the British Veterinary Association, as well as the Scottish Animal Welfare Commission to look at those proposals, and that is where I think that what is proposed will really significantly impact the illegal trade, which is really what we want to clamp down on. In relation to the ban on live animal exports for slaughter, I would like to ask whether the Scottish Government is considering further regulations on animal transport and whether that will be progressed at a Scottish or UK level. That is what the bill gives effect to, and it gives us the power to make further regulations in relation to whether we want to make changes to animal transport legislation, but given the nature of movements of livestock in particular throughout GB, it makes sense for us to discuss that with other administrations if we are to make changes. We did consult on that earlier in the year and recently published the response to that consultation, but of course, if we are making any changes to animal transport, we will consult on any proposals that come forward as well. Obviously, we also want to make sure that we do not disadvantage those that live in our remote and island communities when it comes to animal movements. We have already corresponded with the topic of border control, so can I ask with reference to the bill what are the implications for border controls in relation to both domestic and animal movements, and the prohibition of livestock exports, including enforcement requirements, in relation to movement between the UK and Ireland in the EU exit context? I think that there will always remain that concern. Even if, across a GB level, we implement those restrictions on imports of dogs, cats and ferrets, I hope that that will significantly impact the illegal trade that currently takes place. We have to obviously be cognisant of what tends to be criminal enterprises and organisations that can be behind these movements anyway, and they will obviously be looking for any avenue to get access, so of course there will always be that threat that they could then export or there could be movements into Northern Ireland from the EU that would then have access into and through Scotland. I think that that is something that we will have to pay close attention to. I hope that, with all the measures that are proposed in the bill, the powers that we are given and the regulations that will be coming in future will have a significant impact on that trade, but that element in particular is one that we will have to keep a close watch on. Just another one on zoos. There was some correspondence suggesting that the timescales for implementation of some of the new regulations, the conservation aspects, were all very welcome, but have you any concerns that the timescales may put some of our zoos and conservation parts in Scotland at risk because of the short timescales potentially they will have to implement any of the policies that come forward in the bill? Well, I believe that the draft standards that are being proposed are due to go out to consultation shortly. I'm not personally aware of those concerns, they haven't been raised directly with me, but I don't know if Andrew has more information on that or if those are concerns that have been raised with officials in that regard. Yes, I think that once the draft standards are available and are with the zoos for consultation, I think that that will help greatly because they will then have a better understanding of exactly what those draft standards are proposing, and they can consider how much work will be required to make any changes that are necessary to meet those standards. Okay, and finally, looking at secondary legislation, can you tell us how the Scottish Government will engage with the Scottish Parliament and Scottish stakeholders when it comes to any secondary legislation that is made under the powers in this bill? Well, in relation to part 3 of that, it requires that regulations are subject to the affirmative procedure. So whether if we are making those regulations in Scotland then of course that would be scrutinised by the committee and there would be the opportunity for that. But of course if we also give consent for the Secretary of State to legislate on our behalf then we would go through the usual processes for that as well. And again, it's subject to the affirmative procedure, so we'd fully intend to work with the committee and keep you informed and ensure that that scrutiny is able to take place. Returning to the first question, I'm interested to know how you think the legislation will help when you have many buses with more than one person and perhaps trying to bring in larger numbers of young pups or kittens? How you think this legislation will help? I think it will help with that in a number of ways. First of all, like what you talked about there, that example of having that many bus full of animals, depending on the number of individuals that are there, that wouldn't be possible anymore. So it would be a maximum of five animals per vehicle, regardless of the number of individuals that are in there. So I think that it would have a significant impact in that regard. But I do think that we'll also see those changes when the regulations are implemented. So I think that one of the biggest changes and most positive will be in relation to the movement of, well, when we have the age limit, are we able to introduce that? So that could be, say, we could prevent the import of dogs that are under six months old. So I think that that would significantly impact the trade, as well as the proposals that are subject to future regulations in relation to moving heavily pregnant dogs, as well. So I think that, with all these measures combined, all of that will really, hopefully, put a stop to that trade. But, like I say, there are certainly elements that will have to keep a close eye on. Okay, thanks. Okay, Beatrice. Yes, just following on from that question, I'm just intrigued about the figure of five for animals travelling in a car. But if they come in any other way by by air or by a foot passenger, that's limited to three. So I just wondered if I could get an understanding of the reasoning behind that figure. Well, I don't know if officials will have further information as to how we've arrived at these numbers. Yeah, I think there obviously needs to be a balance between allowing reasonable movements of families and family groups who may have, you know, a few animals between them and reducing the limit. Currently, the limit is five animals per person. And as we've heard, that could mean that in a minibus you could have six people bringing in 30 pups, so that will stop. I mean, that is the proposal at the moment. The five animals per vehicle has, we've said, the dogs trust have been lobbying to have that reduced, and that is a possibility. We obviously want to discuss that with the other QB administrations. But I think the number, the five animals per person comes from current EU legislation. So there has to be a reasonable level set that allows reasonable movements and legitimate movements, but does have an impact on the abuse of the pet travel scheme that is going on at the moment. Okay, no further questions. Thank you very much. Can I ask the committee whether they're satisfied to delegate authority to me to sign off the committee's report to the Parliament on the LCM? Thank you. Thank you, cabinet secretary. We'll now briefly suspend to allow a change over in witnesses. Our next item of business is consideration of the eggs amendment Scotland regulations 2021. These regulations are subject to the affirmative procedure and are referred members to paper 3. I once again welcome Mary Gougeon, cabinet secretary, for rural affairs in our islands and her government officials for this agenda item. We've got Judith Brown, solicitor, Joe Kirk, senior poetry officer and Kevin Matheson, livestock policy manager, and I invite the cabinet secretary to crack on with her opening statement. Thank you, convener, and thank you for having me to speak about the eggs amendment Scotland regulations 2021. Now, this draft instrument amends retained regulation EC number 589 slash 2008 on the marketing standards for eggs with regards to checks done on imported class A eggs. At the moment, checks for class A egg marketing standards take place at the point of destination such as egg packing centres and wholesale premises. However, for eggs imported from third countries, the retained EU regulation requires that these checks are carried out at the time of customs clearance. Given that the UK has left the EU, that means that a greater number of checks would need to be made at the border. The amendment therefore enables marketing standards checks to continue to be undertaken on imported class A eggs at the point of destination rather than at customs. The checks are and will continue to be undertaken by suitably qualified egg marketing inspectors prior to release for retail sale or for mass catering. The amendment also enables checks on imported class A eggs to take place where existing resources are already established and where there is already expertise and, thus, we believe, this approach to be more efficient and more practical. In reality, there are currently no imports of eggs direct into Scotland from the EU or elsewhere other than infrequent and small quantities from the Republic of Ireland, although some eggs do arrive into Scotland from the EU via English ports. For that reason, the UK and Welsh Governments are also taking forward corresponding amendments for their jurisdictions. I hope that those remarks are helpful in setting out the rationale for the draft instrument, and I am, of course, happy to take any questions that the committee may have. Given that it is now quite some time since we left the EU, why is it only now that this legislation is coming forward? Of course, there has been an awful lot of work that has had to be undertaken very quickly and at pace since we have left the EU. Like I said, this SSI really effectively puts into legislation what has been happening in practice in relation to the checks at points of destination. That is why it is coming forward at this time. On that, are we likely to see other SSIs and other products to allow inspections at place of destination rather than potentially at border crossings? Are we likely to see more incidents such as this? It is not possible for me to give you a definitive answer today in relation to that, but I would be happy to come back to you with further information. The policy note states that class A eggs are rarely imported, as you said, cabinet secretary. Do we know how many eggs are imported? Like I said, at the moment, it is just very infrequent movements that we have and very small quantities that currently come directly into Scotland from the Republic of Ireland. I do not know if officials have the information as to exactly what those numbers look like. No, just as cabinet secretary has said, there are very small amounts coming from the Republic of Ireland and into Scotland at the moment. The whole amendment is about future proofing in case we ever get an influx of imports in the future. That is the whole point. If we have a de minimis number of class A eggs coming in, at what stage is this monitored all along? Are there veterinary inspectors there? Are there other inspectors to ensure that we do not have fraud and keeping those measures in place? We have highly trained inspectors that currently undertake this work. That is also the point of the SSI, because what it means is that we can really focus the resource that we have. It means that more inspections will be able to take place rather than if they were to determine that they were to take place a customs checkpoint. That would actually split the resources that we have and take our inspectors away from the work that they are currently doing and the checks that they already undertake. It allows us to better utilise the resource that we have at the moment. I would say that the SSI does not change any of the checks that actually take place. All it does is change where they take place. I am assuming that this is eggs still in the shell, not liquid or powdered eggs? Yes. Can I ask what consultation do you have with egg packaging and wholesale organisations to look at the pros and cons of this instrument? Were there any cons, if you like? Was there any adverse impact of the wholesalers from wherever carrying out the inspections rather than a board of post? Yes. There was a consultation that was done on a GB basis. From what I understand from that, NFUS were the only Scottish stakeholders to take part in that consultation. Their comments on the proposals made sense. However, I think that there had been other opinions within that consultation as well, I believe, from the egg council. Deffred held a round table with them, but I will pass over to officials who can give more information as to their comments on the proposals. A round table was held to speak through any issues that were. We made the point, that we were far more likely to uphold the marketing standards that we could do at packing centres and wholesale premises, because that is where our resources are and that is where we are set up to do it. As the cabinet secretary has said, if we were to take away from routine inspections and put staff at those posts, that would result in a watered-down version of checks elsewhere. I think that that is fair to say. There was no dissent following the round table. Jim Fairlie. One very brief one is probably to yourself, Kevin. What would the potential threats be if we were importing eggs from another country to our industry? I think that there is a competition. I think that domestic, maybe Joe's got a better idea here, but I think that domestic eggs and one of the things that came up in the consultation was as long as we have the same checks applied to import as we were doing domestic, we will be happy. Again, we went back to the point that the best way we can guarantee that is to do it at the points of destination. Thank you. Any further questions? If not, we will move on to formal consideration of motion, which is agenda item 3. I would invite Ms Gougeon to move the motion for S6M-01816. Formally moved. Does any member wish to debate the motion? No. If the committee is content to recommend approval of this instrument, thank you. Finally, is the committee content to delegate authority to me to sign off a report on our deliberations on this affirmative instrument? Thank you. Excellent. That completes consideration of the affirmative instrument, and I thank the cabinet secretary and our officials for attending today. We will now suspend till agenda item 4. Thank you. Welcome back everyone. Our main item of business this morning is the first in a series of evidence sessions looking at the climate and nature emergencies. Today we will be focusing on the science behind the climate and nature emergencies, particularly as they relate to the rural economy. I welcome to the meeting our first panel, who will be discussing the marine environment. Welcome to Professor Bill Austin, the chair of Scotland's Blue Carbon Forum, Sir Ian Boyd, marine mammal specialist from the University of St Andrews, Susan Davis, head of the Scottish Seabird Centre, Professor Paul Farandes, chair of Fisheries Science from Aberdeen University and Dr Tara Marshall, senior lecturer in Fisheries Science and I apologize, it's University of Aberdeen. We will now kick off with some questions, and I would like to start. We see many reports from the likes of IPCC on global findings, but how applicable are those findings on biodiversity loss and climate change in Scotland's marine environment? Whether the levels of pressures differ in Scotland from the rest of the world and how the impacts are likely to be different? I would like to kick off with Professor Austin, please. Thank you for the question. My point would be in answering this question that this is a global challenge and that Scotland, as with many other countries, faces the same challenges. The biodiversity loss in our seas is growing. I think that one of the things that we need to be aware of is that nature and climate need to be thought of in the same round. My point would be and probably come back to this, that we have a wonderful natural capital in our seas in Scotland and opportunities, I think, for nature-based solutions. Thank you. Thank you. Ian Boyd? I think I would definitely agree with Bill Austin. This is Scotland in a global context. I think that Scotland needs to play its part. Scotland has particular assets, natural assets, and its marine system is a particular asset. It is very large, relative to its land area, and it is very rich in certain ways, particularly in terms of its renewables, but also, to some extent, its biological richness. If we are going to repair the global environment, Scotland is not an insignificant part of that and needs to play its part. Just in terms of the impact of climate change and the work of it that bests the platform on biodiversity and ecosystem function, Scotland is probably less affected than many other parts of the world. Most of the climate change impacts are really going to be felt in the global south and in the tropical regions of the world, but, nevertheless, there will be impacts. We do have sea-level rise. We have coastal communities that are vulnerable to sea-level rise. As Bill Austin said, we are seeing changes in biodiversity, some of which may not be related to things such as climate change, but they may be natural. Quite a lot of them probably are. Distinguishing that signal of climate change from the noise of natural variation is always a very difficult thing to do, but, nevertheless, we are becoming better and better at zeroing back to what signals are represented in biodiversity in particular from climate change. Scotland is not immune from those impacts, and we rely hugely on our marine area, particularly for food production. That is not just direct capture fisheries, but it is also an environmental footprint that extends well beyond Scotland. For those things to thrive, Scotland has to play its part. The other thing that we must be very careful of is that Scotland does not export its response to this to other parts of the world that are more vulnerable to it. All those things put together, Scotland cannot say that it is immune from this. It is probably going to be impacted slightly less, but it has got to play its part in a very substantial way to try and solve this problem at a global scale. I am going to move on to Susan Davidson a bit. Just on the back of those comments, I am surprised to hear that Scotland might not be affected just as much as some of the nations or the ecology in the global south. Obviously, we hear about coral reefs and whatever in our warmer seas being depleted and these make news headlines, but here in Scotland we are worried about our wild salmon populations. We hear about the reduction in the levels of food available to our puffins, our birds, with sanddeals moving further north and so on. We hear about our souls of fish or year on year moving further north into the colder waters. When we look at the impact in Scotland, it could be the rise in water temperature, global warming leading to the loss of oxygen and the increase in carbon dioxide. How does that affect us in Scotland? How do you see that effect in bird life, for example? Yes, absolutely. We see a wide range of effects on the wildlife in Scotland. Half of Scottish species have decreased in abundance over the past 20 years, and the unsustainable fisheries is one contributing factor to that. If we think about Scotland on the world stage, we obviously have internationally important populations of breeding seabirds. Globally, seabirds are considered to be the most vulnerable group of birds. Within the UK, 22 breeding species are now either on the red or the amber list of the birds of conservation concern. We see that, since 1986, the breeding numbers have declined significantly by 56 per cent. Making the connection through to climate change, many of those that are affected are the surface feeders, such as the black-legged kittywake, which is one of the classic examples. Other species, such as the Atlantic puffin, and a new report by BTO has modelled through that, perhaps within the next 30 years, 9 out of 10 puffins might have been lost in the UK. There is undoubtedly, if you use seabirds as an example, a wide-ranging effect. We have a responsibility to address that. However, as Ian Boyd has said, it is not just about climate change. We also have fisheries issues, invasive species issues, marine pollution and marine litter, which are affecting those environments. On the back of that, I sometimes feel that a lot of the species loss that we see in Scotland is not right in front of our noses. We do not notice that sand eel and feedstocks are moving further north, or that the general public is not aware of the cod getting closer to the Arctic Circle or whatever. Professor Fernandez, can you give us an idea of what is happening to our fisheries obviously below the sea? We cannot see right in front of us what is happening. Can you give us an indication of how we feel climate change is affecting our fisheries in Scotland? There are two points to make on that. The first is that it is a little complicated by the fact that fisheries management is affected a lot in the past 20 years. I will give you a good example. If you think about the north sea of the west of Scotland, we have much lower-quality cod, but we have a huge quantity of hate that has appeared, and that is largely because Professor Fernandez, can I stop you just a second? We are struggling to hear you. Could you possibly move closer to the microphone? I am sorry. Can you hear me now? Is that better? If you could just bear with us a second, we are going to try and improve the sound quality. Is that better? Not yet. Let me just bear with us. Okay, welcome back. Hopefully, our IT glitches are over. Professor Fernandez, can I go back to your gear about climate change and the impact on fishing stocks in Scotland? I was just making the point that climate change is undoubtedly having an effect on our stocks. As you mentioned, we are seeing species move either further north or into deeper waters, but it is hard to tease that apart from another big change that has happened that people are less aware of. That is the fisheries management changes over the last 20 years, which means that we are taking less out of the sea than we are used to. In the 90s, we were taking around 60% of our adult populations in fishing. Now, we are down to 20-30%. That is a huge reduction in exploitation, and that has had a positive effect on most of our fish stocks. If you look at the top 10 species of interest to Scotland, such as mackerel, prawns, haddock, cod anglifish, herring and hake, with the exception of cod, all of those stocks are doing well. They have reasonably high biomasis and they are being sustainably fished. The interesting one there in respect to climate change is cod, because that is probably suffering from the effects of the movements north. There is very little cod in the southern north sea. There is much more in the northern north sea, but there is more hake now in the northern north sea than there ever was, and hake is a competitor for cod in many respects. Whilst there is very little amounts of cod in both the west of Scotland and the north sea, there are huge amounts of hake, and hake are similar things to eat, but we just don't have the quota, and this will come back later perhaps to how we manage our fisheries going forward, because those changes will have to be reflected in how we manage our fisheries both from a sustainability point of view, but also from an allocation point of view. Thank you. Dr Tara Marsh, would you like to make any further comment? Paul's assessment is that fishing mortality has declined dramatically, so that is very important to keep in mind. However, climate change is impacting the basic biology of fish. We know that fish are what is called cold blooded. That means their metabolism scales with temperature, so it's going to impact how quickly their little internal combustion engine runs. That will impact their growth rates, how quickly they grow large, that impacts their reproductive rates, when they spawn in the seasonal cycle, and the overall fecundity of an individual fish, how quickly they mature. So, all of those impacts on the basic biology of the fish will impact the yields. There will be some winners, there will be some losers to come back to your biodiversity point. What we're seeing is incursions of warm water species in UK waters, and that's actually increasing the richness of the fish community. That's fascinating. I'm about to move on, because I'm at the risk of hogging this whole session. You talk about the changes in growth and whatever. Dr Marshall, do warmer waters increase growth rates or, because of their cold water metabolising fish, if you like the cod, does it slow it down? Does it have the adverse effect of what we would normally think that warm water increases growth? It's actually the exact opposite. Yes. You are thinking like a biologist, so my congratulations to you. Their engines run faster at higher temperatures, but that causes them to grow very quickly as juveniles. They'll grow fast when they're young, they'll reach sexual maturation, and the growth rates will slow to virtually nothing. In fact, they don't grow as large as adults as they used to. We're seeing that very much in the haddock fishery right at the moment. There's real problems in Scotland. They're not landing large haddock. Those are more in the Norwegian waters that they no longer have access to or have less access to. Those growth impacts in essence reduce yields, because smaller fish incidentally mean that you have to catch more, numerically more, to make up a ton. I learned something as a graduate, a science graduate of Aberdeen University many years ago, so thank you. I'm now going to move on to questions from Alasdair Allan. Thank you very much. I don't know if this is a question for Professor Austin, possibly others of an interest in it too, but the issue of rising sea levels obviously presents an existential threat to some parts of the world. I found myself speaking to a politician from Tuvalu a few days ago who made that very point, but it obviously has some impact, as was mentioned earlier on, on the Scottish coastline as well. I represent the Western Isles, so I have a particular interest in that issue. Could you say a bit more about what the trajectory is and what you would expect to see for instance on the west coast of Scotland over the next few decades ahead? Yes, that's a great question. I think the point about Tuvalu and some of the most vulnerable in the world speaks to that same point that we discussed earlier. Yes, sea level will continue to rise and this is one of the sobering facts that the IPCC have raised in their recent reporting just over a month or so ago now, this code red for humanity. One of the things that we all have to grasp is that our greenhouse gas emissions, collectively, globally, historically, are driving these changes and that sea level rise in particular will continue. That means that our coastal communities, our coastal habitats as well, are going to be vulnerable and we're going to need to think about adaptation strategies. We are increasingly thinking about natural systems as needing to respond, thinking about ways to realign our coastlines, to create the natural adaptation they give us, the protection they give us, but also some of the ecological benefits they give us. This is far more challenging for us as communities and I think your constituency, Western Isles, is facing some of those challenges. We will need to spend more where it's appropriate on coastal defence, but, in some other areas, marine planning needs to accept that we will need to realign our coastlines and probably work with our communities to support those changes ahead. That's all I can really say there. On the back of that point, an example that I've often quoted in my constituency is where a school has had to move because of the very phenomenon that you're talking about. If any attempt has been made to quantify the kind of costs ahead in the coming decades just to try and cope with the problems that infrastructure will face in Scotland as a result of rising sea levels. Yes, again, I think the economics of this, the economics of nature, the economics of our natural capital do need to change. I think there are some challenges ahead for us. Infrastructure costs are very high in the face of sea level rise and may be unsustainable. I think that one of the things that we will need to do and our dynamic coast colleagues funded by Scottish Government have been doing this. I've been doing some work with sports, with golf courses, so Montrose golf course in the north-east, eroding very significantly every winter. We need to look across the piece here, but I think the projections, we do have the science now to do this. There is uncertainty going forward and that's because the concentration pathways of greenhouse gases that go into the atmosphere, that drive global warming, that then drive sea level rise, carry some uncertainties. However, there is no reason for us not to be able to model the economic costs. I suspect that the insurance or rather the reinsurance industry is looking at this quite carefully and that there is the expertise out there to do this. However, as I say, I think that this has to be central to our marine planning systems going forward. COP has produced, I think and I hope, a much deeper and wider public interest in understanding of some of these very issues. However, I was certainly shocked to look at some of the statistics that suggest that half a degree warming between, if you go from 1.5 to 2, doubles some of the consequences that we are talking about, makes them dramatically twice as difficult. I just wonder, can others perhaps in the panel give some kind of illustration of the difference between 1.5 and 2 or the difference between these different scenarios that face us if we don't do something in the next 12 months between now and the next COP? Can you give some kind of illustration of what that means for the coastline in Scotland, the difference between those two scenarios? Yes. Very briefly, those scenarios would play out, as I have said, through what are called representative concentration pathways. Those are the model-based projections that drive our climate and then drive sea-level rise. As I said, there are uncertainties, so we need to accept that there are some uncertainties in those projections. However, half a degree is going to translate here in Scotland to the order of tens of centimetres potentially of sea-level change by the end of this century. Those are long-term changes that we cannot avoid. They are coming. The degree to which they come, I agree with you, depends on the international community. That is a global problem. Scotland can play its part. The net zero agenda, of course, is important there. Leveraging this message is really important because that is where we will experience global warming through sea-level rise in a very real way. Professor Sirian Boyd, on those points, please, before I bring in Ariana Burgess for the supplementary. Thank you. Bill has, to some extent, answered the question in the way that I would have done as well. We rely very much on the UK's climate projections that were updated in 2018 for information about sea-level rise. That suggests that the lower end is up to half a metre by the end of the century, and at the upper end, you are talking about a metre or more in terms of sea-level rise. To some extent, that does not sound a huge amount, but when you add that on top of extreme weather events, you are starting to get extreme scenarios that do cause problems in coastal areas. We are mainly talking about coastal communities here. One of the advantages of the UKCP-18 scenarios and projections is that, in the future, planners and engineers should be able to build that into the design scenarios for infrastructure. If they are not, they definitely should be. It should be an absolute requirement of planning and infrastructure development that it is required. The problem, of course, is our legacy. We have not always done that. We have built on coastal areas that may well be vulnerable in the future. Quantifying the cost of protecting those areas or moving people out of those areas is something that, as far as I know, has not been done yet. However, as Bill says, the costs will be very substantial. They will probably have more effect on the east coast than the west coast. That is just because sea-level rise on the east is rather greater and the probability of coastal flooding is rather greater on the east than the west coast. It is partly in the nature of the physical structure of the coastlines. However, that is just to give you an impression of where the vulnerability lies and the kind of science that underpins the projections that we can make into the future. Professor Imboyd, I would like to pick up on your talking about the need to look at changing infrastructure in our coastal communities. I wondered if you would have a chance to have a look at the national planning framework for yet, and maybe you haven't, because it came out recently and is quite a big tome. If you have, do you think that it reflects that need for the radical change for our coastal communities? Do the policies and the spatial planning really give us the right steer to the radical level that we need to be doing things? I'm sorry to say that I haven't looked at it, so I really can't comment, and I should look at it. It would be utterly amazing if it had not taken that into account, but as to its tone, I can't comment at this stage. My feeling is that the tone of any document like that would need to be expressing quite high levels of ambition. I'll open that question up to everybody else on the panel, just in case somebody has had a chance to have a quick look at it. Not yet. I hope that it's going to be all on your big reading list of things to read. MPF4 will be something that we come to in a committee sooner than we expected, and there will be a bit of work to do there. Can I now move on to questions on blue carbon from series Valalba? Thank you. I think it makes sense to start with Professor Bill Austin. My first question is how important is carbon capture and storage in marine and coastal environments in terms of climate change, and what do you see as the main pressures on these blue carbon stores in Scotland? Thank you. I think I would begin by recognising as COP26 has the growing significance of our oceans in our climate system. I think many of us were very pleased to see the ocean climate nexus conversation growing at COP26. As chair of the Scottish Blue Carbon Forum, I was very pleased to see blue carbon moving up at the agenda in terms of nature-based solutions that provide both climate mitigation and adaptation potential. I think I'm going to say that this is important. Nature-based solutions that we know are probably extremely important in the overall goals of net zero offer us up to 30 per cent of what we need to achieve in terms of emissions reductions. That creates really exciting opportunities to reimagine nature and to think about our wealth, as I said before, Scotland's wealth of natural capital. As Sir Ian said, our oceans are a very important part of that story. Blue carbon is important. The main pressures that we face are, in fact, going back to the previous question in terms of our coastal wetlands, the level rise. Historically, in parts of the UK, we've lost up to 80-85 per cent of these wetlands. Area for area, they're the most effective habitats on our planet for sequestering and storing carbon. They are extremely important. They give us a lot of benefit for relatively small areas. In the offshore, we're broadening our concepts of blue carbon. I think one of the pressures that we're realising is of avoided emissions, if I can put it that way. The idea that our shelf sea sediments, for example, are vast quantities of carbon and that pressures on the seabed are actually driving some losses and those losses are potentially avoided emissions. The science there is quite challenging. It's quite early days, but we are doing well, I would say, in Scotland in developing our understanding of this science. It's probably 1 to 3 per cent at best of net zero for us in terms of blue carbon, but the sooner we start to protect and repair these systems, the sooner they build the sinks. As we get closer to net zero, I think that the other point that I would make is that they become increasingly important. The analogy that I would give you is that I think that everybody would appreciate here in Scotland a point that Andrew Miller made for us recently. We had a conference on this theme during COP26. Our chief scientific advisor environment spoke. The analogy is our peatlands. The great success story of the peatlands has been to recognise the need for their restoration, both to avoid those emissions and to repair those globally important ecosystems. I think that we can do the same for marines. I am very optimistic, but we have an opportunity and some challenges here. It's to Professor Austin on that particular point. I just wondered if you believe that the Scottish Government should have its own strategy to restore and protect those blue carbon habitats that you talked about. A supplementary to what you said about measuring blue carbon, how do you do that? There are various groups out there that say that blue carbon doesn't actually go into the atmosphere. Can you tell the committee how that works? Well, it depends how much time you have, but I can try. First of all, in terms of Scottish Government strategy, I would like to commend the Government in terms of its support for this area, and I think that that is very positive. We have just heard recently from the UK Government that it will now follow suit and establish a UK-wide partnership, but we have had that work in Scotland for a number of years. I think that we are leading here by example. In terms of the avoided emissions question, you are probably focused on our shelf seas and some of the claims for emissions from particularly bottom trawling. Globally, it has been claimed that trawling disturbance of our seabed is equivalent to the global emission from aviation. I think that the evidence there is weak. In fact, we are doing some work within the forum that suggests that that is not the case. However, there are parts of our seabed that are more vulnerable to disturbance. We call these blue carbon hotspots. I was very pleased to see that Scottish Government announced in August a new commitment to marine protection that would, for the first time, develop highly protected marine area networks that would look at blue carbon and its vulnerability. The dialogue is changing. It is very exciting for us in a way that designation for marine protection could now move forward and encompass blue carbon thinking. That is the right way forward. It is putting climate and nature together and recognising the services that nature provides through blue carbon. These are natural ecosystem functions, and blue carbon does offer us that. Science is much stronger for our coastal wetlands. We need to understand a little bit more about the emissions of greenhouse gases, but we have a very good understanding of the stocks. We are certainly working with BASE and colleagues in depth for the moment to try to move the particular habitat that falls under the IPCC guidelines. It is in the framework. We could move the habitat into our national greenhouse gas inventory. In the same way as we did with our peatlands, I think that that will drive an important impetus for greater protection and restoration. Of course, opportunities for investment can be tied to coastal flood protection and to build in the blue carbon as something that investors are extremely interested in so that it does not have to be entirely something that we expect the Government to pay for. I have a quick question. You mentioned bottom trawling and whatever, and it is one of those very emotive points. You might regret mentioning it, but you suggested that there was some evidence out there that bottom trawling industry emitted as much carbon as aviation, but that was a weak argument. Science is absolutely crucial in ensuring that we address the big ticket numbers rather than the ones that have an emotive response. Can you tell me when it comes to blue carbon? There are the physical disturbances that we have discussed. There is climate change, land use and land management changes. How critical in that equation is physical disturbance compared to other climate change factors in terms of carbon dioxide in the ocean and its ability to sequestrate carbon dioxide and whether we are at the tipping point for that change. How important is physical disturbance in the big picture? I do not regret mentioning bottom trawling. There is scientific literature arguing that this is an important impact on our shelf seas. I would recognise that we have a fishing industry and that we have a range of stakeholders and that it is incumbent on us to have an evidence base, as you just pointed out, to make those sorts of decisions. As I said, I think that some of that science has been questioned and I would question it myself. Currently, I think that the science evidence base needs to be stronger in this area, but there is absolutely no doubt that Marine Scotland, colleagues, I am sure, would tell us that bottom trawling does damage at Benthic marine ecosystems and that we need to be thinking far more carefully about the natural capital on our seabed in terms of the management of our fisheries and just realising that this is a part of that story. It is not about stopping the activity. It is perhaps about thinking about how to more effectively manage the activity with the avoided emissions that I mentioned built into the prioritisation of perhaps the highly protected marine areas that the Government has committed to developing. Thank you very much. I have now got three people who would like to comment. First I go to Susan, Paul and finally Ian on blue carbon. We are going to move on to sustainable fisheries. Thank you. I would just like to echo much of what The Lost has outlined there. In particular, the illustration in relation to the carbon storage potential in our marine sediments and that in our peatland resource, there is much more potential for carbon storage in our marine sediments, so it is important that we protect those. We have the marine protected areas system, we have some knowledge about our blue stock and the distribution of that, but we need to ensure that in addition to that being built into the management measures for our marine protected areas, that it is also taken forward into marine spatial planning and into our regional plan system as well in the marine environment, so there is much to be done there. Whilst we have some of these protected areas and the commitment to strictly protect within 10 per cent of the marine protected areas, that has not yet translated into actual reality in our seas, so it is important that we make progress in those areas. I go ahead Professor. Yes, I just wanted to come back on the point about trawling. It is a contentious issue, but on the issue in relation to how much carbon is emitted by that activity, you need to be clear, although I alluded to this, that was based on one scientific article in one section of that scientific article, just one in 2021, and it made a lot of impact. However, the science associated with that estimate is very contentious. It is based on a model of carbon deposition in the sediments that is contentious, at the very least. There are estimates from the University of Strathclyde, which are in complete contrast to that. For example, that paper says that there is lots of carbon in the southern North Sea, whereas measurements made by the University of Strathclyde suggest that most of it is in the northern North Sea, in deeper sediments associated with mud. All in all, there is a suggestion that that particular paper overestimated the amount of carbon being released by at least an order of magnitude, and I think that it just needs to point out that the science associated with that particular activity is very much in its infancy and more needs to be done. However, in terms of the impact of trawling on biodiversity and our habitats, we also need to bear in mind that there have been a lot of marine protected areas, some of which have had management interventions to stop trawling in sensitive areas, for example, in the West of Scotland, in the Rockwell area, for 10 or 15 years now. We need to look at the marine protected areas that we have now and introduce the appropriate legislation to prevent trawling where it affects those habitats, because there is still a large part of North Sea in particular that may not have the sensitive habitats that would suffer as a result of trawling. I agree with all that has been said so far, but I emphasise the importance of blue carbon. Overall, we underestimate the importance, at least at a Scottish level. Our sea area is about five times our land area, and our ability to fix carbon from the atmosphere is probably roughly equivalent to surface area. The sea area is going to be very important. The question is how much of that fixed carbon gets sequestered. What has already been said by Paul Fernandez and Tara Marshall about the standing stocks of fish suggests that there is a higher standing stock of carbon sitting in there, or there may well be a higher standing stock of carbon. I do not know whether that is correct or not, but the more we maintain the biodiversity within that Scottish sea area, the higher that standing stock is likely to be, and the greater amount that it is likely to end up on the sea floor and being integrated into marine sediments. Once it gets there by a very circuitous route, the last thing that we should be doing is trying to disturb it again. Whether disturbing it actually makes a huge amount of difference is something that has still got to be properly researched, as Paul Fernandez has correctly said. However, we have to be very careful. That is about being precautionary rather than being cavalier about it. I am not making a specific mention here of bottom trolling, but just anything that disturbs our sediments, we have to be very careful, because actually the carbon that is there has taken a very long route to get there. It is really quite valuable, and we have got to be very careful about it. I have a very brief supplementary from Rachael. Can I ask Professor Fernandez from what he said that he believes that enforcement measures to ensure compliance are sufficient currently? You mentioned strengthening the legislation. I was referring to the management measures in many of our marine protected areas, and that has been brought into question in some recent scientific articles. Justin, for example, trolling in some of these areas is greater than it is, and it is out with those areas. I understand that, in addition to setting them up, we still need to decide what activities are allowed in them. For example, if you set up an area, you should check the harbour purposes, which live in the middle of the sea. You need not necessarily ban trolling if trolling does not affect those harbour purposes. That is an example where a management measure might include a trolling gear, but it might stop for gilnets, for example, which are harmful to harbour purposes. It is a bit of a horses for courses, but those negotiations are still going on with the various stakeholders, but that needs to be accelerated. It has caused the international community to ask for these highly marine protected areas where all activity is banned for the most sensitive environments. For example, we have the deep water corals, which have been protected now for almost 20 years. I suggest that the management measures in some of the more recent marine protected areas be considered more quickly. I just wanted to come back again on the work of the Scottish Blue Carbon Forum. We have led UK-wide spatial mapping of our shelf seas. We have published the first-ever UKEEZ map of sedimentary carbon. We understand those spatial patterns. I would like to emphasise that we can prioritise areas for protection. We can help in this process with the narrative around blue carbon as a component of highly protected marine areas. We have to see that in the balance of the full range of activities across our seas, not simply as something that is blanket or misconstrued in that way. We now move on to the theme of sustainable fisheries management, and I will ask Beatrice for her first question. We have heard a little about the effect of climate change on the movement of fish species, and Professor Fernandez indicated that stocks are moving and some stocks are doing well, with the exception of cod, which are more abundant in the Northern North Sea. I am told by fishermen that there is abundant cod on the fishing grounds. You will be aware of the concern in the fishing industry about the quality of scientific advice, both at sea data gathering that feeds into the annual ISIS assessments and ultimately to the total allowable catches. ISIS says that it is willing to engage with the fishing industry to improve data collection and the way that data is interpreted, and that is good, but that takes time and possibly years. In the meantime, North Sea dimersal fisheries or remixed fisheries, with cod being caught at the same time as several other species during typical fishing operations, have a situation of acute shortage of cod quota in a situation of cod abundance, which restricts the fleet's capacity to catch species for which it does have quota. Could you say a bit more on how climate change is changing the distribution and abundance of stocks and how that impacts on the scientific evidence that impacts on the total allowable catches? Can we start with Dr Marshall, please? Much for that very detailed question that encompasses a lot of things. Your answer is to how the climate change is impacting our stock assessments and the data that is going in. I think that there are questions in the Scottish fishing industry about whether the information generated by standard research vessel surveys, for example, are adequately capturing the distribution. There are also open questions about the population structure, for example whether or not the west coast cod and the north sea cod should be considered as a single stock, like Haddock recently was combined. I would say that there is progress ongoing on that. There are benchmarking exercises that are going on with Marine Scotland, with the industry and with the available scientists. They are discussing these aspects of the cod stock in Scotland right at the moment. You can appreciate that fish stocks are a very dynamic system. They are going to change by climate change or other factors all the time. You are continuously updating your understanding. As you rightly point out, that requires accurate data. The industry has a role to play in contributing to the data acquisition on fisheries. We have got a good example in Scotland of the pelagic fishing industry where a self-sampling program has been run by the pelagic industry. That information they gather on board fishing vessels enters directly into the assessment process. It sharpens our real-time understanding of what is going on in the stock. The demersal sector that includes species like cod and Haddock and monkfish are a little behind the curve. There are more complicated fisheries. There are more vessels. There are more gear types. I think that some coordination of industry interests and efforts in feeding data in so that scientists and industry can jointly get the benefit of their own data. We have a project on the west coast of Scotland for bycatch avoidance, where the industry is doing exactly that in real time for their own benefit in avoiding bycatch of unwanted species like cod. It is possible. It requires greater trust between industry and government to build bridges and conversations, but I think that that is a very positive solution going forward. That is an important point about the bycatch and industry and scientists working together. Is there anybody else who wants to come in on that point? Professor Philanders? I will make the point about cod in particular. I alluded to this earlier. Cod is a very similar animal to hake. They both feed on fish. In the northern North Sea and the west of Scotland, we have seen a massive increase in hake populations. Now, there is as much hake and cod combined as there was 30 years ago of cod and hake combined. In 30 years ago, cod was dominant. That might be a climate signal, but if we look back to the 1940s and 1950s, we had similar amounts of hake. It has just come back. That is a result of the management changes that I mentioned earlier. It is difficult to tease out the effects of climate and the big changes that we have had in management over the past 20 years, which have improved the situation. It is on a supplementary to Beatrice's question about Dr Marshall. Do you agree with the Scottish White Fish and Produces Association who would like to see an independent panel to assess the international council for exploration for sea numbers? The Scottish White Fish and Produces Association has long been involved in the delivery of sustainable management in Scottish fisheries. They have been at the table and have been to the scientific working groups. They have a very strong insight. That said, the levels of scientific scrutiny applied to ICI's advice is extraordinarily high. It goes through various layers of committees, the very upper layer of committee to include international scientists who work in the field of stock assessment. Scientists are a very critical lot. We subject our own work to a high level of scrutiny. I have also the highest regards, but you bump up against the limits of knowledge given the limited data availability that we have. I think we work towards solutions over time, but I'm not sure that another step is necessarily the most optimal solution to the current existing problem. There's actually a global shortage of expertise in this area. It's hard to get people with the exact quantitative understanding of the models that underpin the assessment and the biology that's impacting the stock. It's hard work, very hard work. A lot of hard work goes into our current system. I'm going to ask Susan to make a comment then. Ian Boyd, then I'm going to move on to a question from Karen. Yes, thank you. I just want to broaden if I made the bycatch issue. In terms of our seabird species, there's many of our ox species, our razorbills, common gillim ox, Atlantic puffins, which are also impacted by surface bycatch and also by pelagic bycatch. I think that it's just really important in terms of looking at the threats and the mitigation of those threats in the round from climate change to actual activities that are taking place in the sea, that we do take approaches that monitor those impacts. We look at the mitigation, the different techniques that can be used. We trial those and we learn from those and use that to feed into that marine spatial planning and the decision making there. I'm going to be slightly critical here of the scientific system. You may find that difficult coming from a scientist, but we work within quite a narrow paradigm, a scientific paradigm, where we do single species stock assessments. They are married into a multi-species process, but we do fundamentally single species stock assessments for multi-species fisheries. The two things don't fit, really. The single species stock assessment works quite well for things like mackerel because it is fundamentally a single species type fishery. Where you get multi-species fisheries, there is probably a different way of working. ICS has worked very much under the single species stock assessment paradigm for a very, very long time. It has trouble thinking outside that box. What I would like to see is new science in this area. There is new science. There are new ways of looking at stock assessments, which are much more multi-species and which look at the whole of the community system, so that fishing and rallon going out and sampling from particular stocks—because they have quota in those stocks—would have a community quota, which would perhaps solve some of the problems. Although, to be frank, the fishing industry just wants to take more fish, I don't think that it would necessarily provide them with more fish. It would just make it rather easier for them to exploit the stocks as they are presented to them by the ecology of the system. Thank you, convener, and good morning to the panel. I am sure that I don't need to stress how much coastal communities depend on fish for their food and livelihoods and how imperative it is that we get local fishing industry on board when it comes to protecting the marine environment for future fisheries to ensure high catches and healthy populations, among other objectives. I would like to ask whether there is a greater level of engagement with scientists, managers and stakeholders to steer the process. Is this essential to the successful development of, say, harvest strategies? If they agree, how do the panel see this being implemented, particularly in developing relationships and trust? What sustainable incentives could there be for the industry? I couldn't agree with you more in the need for engaging with communities. I could answer this question in a multiple number of ways, but I will try to be brief. Over the past years, there has been a real shift to engaging stakeholders in the conversations about fisheries management. When we were a part of the European Union, for example, Aberdeen was home to the regional advisory council that provided a sort of council whereby stakeholders came together to discuss fishing management. Learning the skills to do that type of conversation, to develop consensus, was really important. Now that we have left the EU, I think we can build on that perspective of having a variety of people at the table, including our communities, and develop mechanisms for that. I think the industry very much wants to step up to the plate as do the other stakeholder groups, for example, environmental NGOs. We just need a mechanism and a forum to evolve for our post-common fisheries policy lifetime, so I think that's a great suggestion. I would also say that you also framed it in the way of joining up policy agendas. For example, delivering sustainable fisheries, as well as healthy communities, as well as a nutritious food that has positive impacts for health, and I think that joining up policy objectives in that area would be very fruitful, because I think we can define win-wins by having those types of multi-stakeholder conversations. Professor Fernandez. I think one of the ways to engage stakeholders more in the process is to give them opportunities to contribute to some of the science, and a perfect example of that is the anglerfish stock, which is one of our most valuable resources. For the last 15 years, the industry has been directly involved with surveying anglerfish, and the advice is based on the results of those surveys. As a result, that component of the industry doesn't question the science coming out of that exercise, and when the quotas went down for anglerfish, they were quite happy. In contrast to the cod situation where they have less influence, and the science is suggesting that there is less cod, particularly in the southern North Sea, and the whole picture is a bit more complicated, they have questioning that advice, but that is the only one where they have major concerns. If you think about all the other species that I mentioned, mackerel, nephrops, which is Scottish landustine, haddock, herring, pike, whiting, saith, megrim, ling, place, these are our highest, most valuable resources, and they are all doing rather well. Cod is the only exception, and cod is the only one they are questioning. The questions are possibly valid, but they are complicated because of the issues that we mentioned earlier in relation to competition with hake and movements of the population to the north, et cetera. However, if they could get involved, as was the case with the anglerfish, that would help. I have a very brief supplementary clarification from Jim Fairlie. This is directly to yourself, Professor Van Andes. It is a nerdy question, because I know absolutely nothing about fisheries. You are saying that there has been a large increase in hake, while there has been a huge decrease in cod, from the debates that I am listening to that that is disputed. Are the hake swimming in the same waters as the cod? If that is the case, why are their numbers going up and why are cod numbers, according to the scientists, going down? It is a good question, but one of the main reasons that hake numbers are going up is because, like many stocks for years, they were overexploited and we have reduced the fishing pressure on hake and it is rebounded. The hake population has exploded. It is five times now greater than it was 20 years ago. When a population expands like that, as we saw, for example, where mackerel was the same, but 10 years ago it expanded, it expands its range, it moves into bigger areas and it is returned to the North Sea. In the 1950s, as I say, we do not have assessments from that time, but in the 1950s there were large captures of hake in the North Sea and it has just come back to that situation. It could be the case that it is outcomputing cod. We do not know that for sure, but it is interesting to note that combined quantities of hake and cod in the North Sea and the West of Scotland are pretty similar to what they were 30 or 40 years ago, but they have just switched. Are the hake pushing the cod out? It is hard to say that, but they are in places where the cod are no longer there, yes. We are now going to move on to the theme of marine protection and enhancement, and we will kick off with Arianna Rennie. Thank you, panel, for this brilliant and interesting session this morning. My understanding is that, while the Scottish Government states that 37 per cent of our seas are protected under MPAs, only 1 per cent are fully protected as no-take zones and a further 5 per cent is bound to trawl and dredge. I would like to ask your thoughts, I have a couple of questions here. I would like to ask your thoughts on what extent Scotland's network of marine protected areas is fully developed enough to effectively support the functioning of marine ecosystems and, if not, what might need to happen to complete this network? I will come back with another question. Is there any particular you would like to address the question today? Yes, I will start with Professor Bill Austin. Thank you. I would like to answer the question in the context of our coastal seas in particular. Just reflect on the notions of connected land-to-sea systems. I think that this is an area that we do need to develop in terms of our thinking about marine protection. I think that that joined up thinking is necessary for some of these coastal MPAs. In terms of enhanced MPA networks, I think that the connectivity between these protected areas is an area that I understand would benefit from more thoughts in terms of how we make these systems work. We have heard about climate change and driving range changes, so we need these protected areas to be connected so that they can accommodate some of these long-term drivers. I also hear from Professor Sir Ian Boyd. I think that the question is about how many marine protection areas we need and what the total area is and how they should be connected is an extraordinarily difficult one to answer. It is not very well evidenced, but roughly a third is thought of as being the amount that you need to protect. However, in the context of the marine system, we tend to take a very weird terrestrial animal. We take a terrestrial view of the marine environment, and we think that by putting lines on maps, we can create protected areas in the same way as we might do with nature reserves or wherever it might be on land. It is not quite the same. The marine system is highly dynamic. In other words, the water flows around and things move over much greater distances. Pollutants get sloshed around, noise moves at extreme speeds. Protecting areas in the marine system is quite different from the terrestrial system. In that sense, and I have a particular view about that, we need to have overall protections within the marine environment. They are much more important than area-based protections. Area-based protections are important, but overall protections, in other words, are reducing fisheries' impacts. For example, which has been described earlier on, has been probably the biggest step forward that I have heard in my lifetime in terms of progress with protecting the marine environment. There is a danger that we focus in on area-based protection as the solution when, in fact, in a marine context, it would be much better to look at a whole regional-wide protection rather than area-based protection, because I think that you will get more bang for the buck for that. Thank you for that. Would you say that something like reintroducing the inshore limit, the three-mile inshore limit, would be a good way forward to protect our fisheries and marine biodiversity? I would not specifically want to comment on that, because I do not know what the evidence would be, but certainly our coastal areas are our most pressurised areas. There is no doubt about that at all. If we were to protect that immediate area, and particularly the east coast estuary areas, we would be doing ourselves a fantastic favour. Stay with you, Professor Boyd. The Marine Scotland Act 2010 seeks to promote the enhancement of marine protected areas in addition to their protection. I would like to ask you to what extent enhancement has been achieved under this framework and what additional policies we might need to have in place? Are there things that are missing from that? I will probably go back to what I said before. My view is that enhancement should be general region-wide enhancement rather than enhancement of marine protected areas. However, the marine protected areas are a slight misnomer. They are semi-protected areas a lot of the time. They are protected from some things and not other things. There has been progress. We have already heard of evidence that there has been progress. Whether that is fast enough is another question, and that is a value judgment that needs to be made. I am not sufficiently well up on what NatureScot has been doing, for example, with respect to monitoring and measuring the progress that has been made, but they would be able to answer that. The reality is that we need to be able to measure the progress that we are making. In general, in the marine environment, we struggle to do that. We struggle to evidence the fact that we are making a difference. I just want to see if anybody else would like to come in on that question about enhancement. I think that Bill indicated that he wants to come in. Just on enhancement, I think that one of the exciting areas that we have covered already is towards climate mitigation. There are emerging opportunities that we need to keep an eye on. The focus has often been on biodiversity, so I would make that point. I saw two other colleagues raise their hands there as well, chair. Susan, would you like to come in briefly? Yes, just to emphasise, marine protected areas are good for biodiversity, but also good in terms of food supply and carbon storage. They are one part of the system for managing the marine environment, and it is important that they are set in the context of the wider marine spatial plans and regional plans. The other point is just on the restoration point. We are seeing more moves now towards practical restoration projects in the marine environment, whether that is oyster beds, mussel beds or seagrass meadows. Those are important steps that require public and private financing now, and we need to learn from doing that restoration to build the science from doing the restoration. Obviously, regional marine planning areas can play a big part in that. We see some great examples up in Shetland, but part of that is ensuring that we get the stake out to hold us round the table to ensure sustainable fisheries and so on. Dr Marshall thinks that inshore fishery groups are well enough resource to ensure that we get the best outcomes when we look at marine protection but also sustainable fisheries. Yes, inshore fisheries groups have become increasingly active both in England as well as Scotland, and I think there is a really important role they can play because those inshore fisheries tend to have a lot of vessels, so there are a lot of people that partake in those fisheries, unlike the offshore fisheries. They are really important, but they are also complex because there are so many people, and there are issues that they need to tackle. They are also extremely data limited. Scotland has one project run out of St Andrewsgull, the Scottish Inshore Fisheries data collection cifids. It is well supported. It is supporting the inshore shellfish industry, and they are trying to get skippers to report data that can be used to monitor the status of the inshore stocks. I think that those groups are going to play an increasingly important role. They have been funded by Marine Scotland, and they should continue to get funding. That takes us very easily on to our next theme, which is data collection, data gaps and research needs. I can ask Jenny to kick off the question. Thank you, convener, and thank you, panelist. It has been really interesting. I represent a west coast constituency. As Finlay started questions without asking about Scotland and the rest of the world, I am quite interested to delve in a bit to the west coast differences in Scotland. Last week, I visited Sams just north of Obann and learned about the research that they are doing and got introduced to a robotic that was about to head off from there all the way up to Iceland to learn about the changes in water. It was sending back data real-time. I am interested in the differences between east and west to find out about the data that is currently being collected to contribute to assessments on the health of the marine environment and where there might be some gaps in that collection and where more research is required. I think that Dr Marshall talked about the limited amount of scientists, how we are growing the scientist population through the various universities that are represented here, but also Sams itself. Professor Bill Austin, I think. Thank you. I should let you know that I am a visiting professor at Sams, so I am delighted that you visited and seen those amazing things that they are doing there. I think I would pick up on the point that was made about restoration and learning as we go along with the science. I think that these two things can go hand in hand. My interest, as you have realised, is in blue carbon, this emerging area for climate mitigation and adaptation. I think that there is a great opportunity to understand how management of our seas, I am not sure how well we manage our seas if we do even manage our seas at the moment, and certainly protection can deliver these sorts of benefits. I think that this is where the really exciting research lies. Of course, that is something that I would want to encourage, but also the evidence base that we have discussed. What is the evidence that can underpin the policies that we need in this area? For climate mitigation and global challenges, I think that protection, restoration and the benefits that really flow from that, are the things that we really need to improve our understanding of those. I think that we are always very challenged by monitoring progress in the marine system. It is data poor relative to what we have to deal with in the terrestrial system, for example. Not only is it very big, it is very remote and it is expensive to get there. What you witness in terms of the robotics from SAMS, which is wonderful but is becoming actually standard practice now in the marine system, is the way that science is going. It is moving towards relatively low-cost robotic systems to collect very large amounts of data relatively quickly. However, there are still areas of the marine system that require people to get on ships and to go out there and do the sampling. We have not really got robotic technologies suitable for that. Whatever happens, we are going to be pretty challenged. There are some pretty large data gaps. We have talked quite a lot in this session about fisheries. The fisheries scientists do a fantastic job, but the reality is that they are dealing with what we call, we call, quite sparse datasets a lot of the time. They are making a lot of inferences based on those datasets. It is the same with sampling the benthic system. It is a massive area. Just getting to the benthic system—in other words, the sediments at the bottom of the sea—is a major logistics job in itself. I think that what I would try to get over from this is that we need to continue in Scotland to invest in the kind of science and infrastructure that you saw at SAMS. My view is that, given the importance of the marine system in Scotland and the economic importance and also the cultural welfare and environmental importance of the marine system, we do not invest nearly enough in our marine science capabilities. I am going back to some of the earlier discussions about involving communities in that. I think that our coastal communities could be much, much more involved in that. I think that our fishing industry could be much more involved in it because they have ships that are going out there that are doing one thing—they are fishing—but they could be doing multiple things. We are nowhere near as intelligent as we need to be in order to be able to become much, much more informed about our marine environment to the same extent as we might be informed about our terrestrial system. Our mountains are in whirlwinds and things like that. We have relative little knowledge compared with our terrestrial system. Dr Tara Marshall? I think there are data gaps, but there is also accessibility of data that is an issue. There is a lot of data being collected that we simply cannot get at for scientific purposes. I could give you several examples, but I will give you one that is a bugbearer of mine. It is environmental impact assessments that people who are doing things like decommissioning oil rigs and things, they all run out and do sediment surveys, they do taxonomic work for the benthic invertebrates, and those data are regarded as a commercial property and are inaccessible. It is the type of data that we cannot fund research vessels to go out and collect. I think it would be fantastic if the industries and users of the marine environment are required to supply data. There is the concept of the internet of marine things, and that is this great vision of a future where we have data of all different types coming in to paint a picture of the health of our marine ecosystems. Everybody needs to step up and contribute their data. I am just making a point that accessibility and transparency would be a great result going forward. Thank you, Dr Marshall. I think that due to time constraints, I will pass that to the chair. Thank you very much. We are really up against the clock here, so I am going to move finally to Rachael Hamilton on COP, and I would appreciate if you could keep your responses as brief as possible. I would like to ask the panel what their takeaways are from Ocean Action Day and COP26. I would also like to ask how the World Bank Fund, the pro-blue fund of £6 million, will help Scotland and what projects it would like to see put forward. Finally, on the 30x30 commitment to protect 30 per cent of global seas and drive an increase in biodiversity, what kind of marine environment policies would you like to see run parallel to that 30x30 commitment? I will start with Paul Fernandez, please. Gosh, that is a big question. Some of the existing problems in the area of fisheries, for example, relate to some of your questions, so we still do not know how to deal with the problem of by-catch and discards. That is something that I would look to. Can you repeat that? Yes. Some of the problems of by-catch and discarding at sea from the fishing industry, there are no solutions to that. We need to deal with that. Tara has a good project on the west of Scotland looking at stakeholder involvement for detecting hot spots, and there are some technical solutions that we are also working on. I would look to the MASTs organisation, which in Boyd set up, to help with the analysis of a lot of these data, and to Marine Scotland Science to provide more resources for their increasing needs to not only look at fisheries, agriculture, but also licensing and marine strategy framework directed to the related issues of the whole marine environment. That is for the 30x30, just to make the point that, in terms of fisheries management, that probably won't help. It will be very specific to particular conservation needs for biodiversity, which is very relevant. There are other tools that we can use to enhance our fisheries that are more effective than just area management. I can't see who is coming in and who has the hand up. Maybe we will stick in the fisheries. We will bring in Dr Marshall. I am going to limit it to fisheries science going forward in Scotland. Finlay Carson will know that I am a big advocate of a concept called co-management, so that is referring to a system where, in particular, the fishing industry is given greater responsibility, for example, for contributing, collecting and analysing their own data, and they step up to the plate. The version of co-management, as it was expressed in the future fisheries management document, was very preliminary, very partial. It was cast as people sitting around a table, but real actual co-management is co-management, that you have responsibility and that there is some power sharing arrangements. I think that creates flexibility for the industry, but it also requires greater transparency of the industry. So I think that is a really positive thing to imagine what it would be like in future for us to use co-management approaches in a very real, not just lip service way going forward. Thank you. Can we go to Susan, Ian and then Bill? Yes, thank you for that. A range of issues in there. I think that if we look at some of the commitments and the policies that need to be in place, we have a lot of the right policies, we have a lot of the right frameworks for the management of the marine environment, and I think that the real challenge for us is the lack of pace that we have in terms of taking those into implementation. We need to pull the data together more quickly to help inform the translation of those strategies into plans, and I think that we need to start seeing some of those measures implemented, whether it is measures for protection within our marine protected areas or wider marine spatial planning. The other thing is that some of the financial investments that we are seeing from World Bank and other private investors, there is a huge opportunity for that investment to go into the restoration of blue carbon habitats. That is a shift that we need to see a kind of upscaling in terms of the amount of financial investment there. I think that the emphasis on the oceans is obviously to be welcomed. I think that the only final point that I would make, and that refers to 2030 and all sorts of other things that we have talked about, is that the oceans are highly dynamic. They have always been changing through time, and they will continue to change. The really important thing is that we try to understand better how they are going to change in future and what our role is in that. Trying to preserve the oceans and the marine system in one particular state is doomed to failure. It will not happen because nature will not allow it to happen. What we need to do is be adaptable, and I think that people have mentioned that. We need to put things in place, we need to try them, we need to see how the system responds to them. The whole fisheries management process is part of that story, and we need to learn from that and move on. That is about an attitude of mind and it is about philosophy as much as anything else, which is slightly different to what we experience in the terrestrial environment, where we expect more long-term consistency than we would in most parts of the marine environment. I spoke earlier about the optimism to see the ocean climate nexus growing at COP26, and I think that that will continue. I am really encouraged to see the oceans as part of a new framework for nature-based solutions, where there are outcomes for climate, for people and for biodiversity. I think that that challenges us to rethink our oceans. I think that the key here will be developing the appropriate pipelines, so what we wish for requires pipelines to look at investment opportunities. I think that the point about potential stakeholder engagement is critical, and some of those areas are challenging and require that. That would be my final observation. Thank you very much. Unfortunately, we have come to the end of this session, but I very much appreciate the fascinating evidence that you provided this morning. I will now briefly suspend for a change of our witnesses. Welcome back, everyone. I welcome to our meeting our second panel, who will be discussing the terrestrial environment. This morning, we have Dr Helena Black, honorary associate, and Professor Rob Brooker, head of ecological science at the James Hutton Institute. Professor Mark Metzger, I hope that I pronounced that properly, chair in environment and society at the University of Edinburgh. Professor Pete Smith, chair in plant and soil science from the University of Aberdeen. I will kick off with a statement. For terrestrial and freshwater ecosystems, land use changes have had the largest relative negative impact on nature since 1970, followed by direct exploitation, in particular over exploitation of animals, plants and other organisms, mainly via harvesting, logging, hunting and fishing. I ask whether that level of pressure is the same in Scotland as globally, and whether the impacts are likely to affect Scotland in different ways than globally. I start by asking Professor Brooker to come in and kick us off, please. Thank you, chair. Are the key drivers of change in Scotland as well as globally? I think that the answer to that question is yes. We see, at Scottish level, continuing declines in biodiversity as a result of land use change. The effects of, for example, climate change are fitting in around the patterns that those land use change impacts are having. We are seeing continuing declines, in particular in some of the more intensively managed land that we have in Scotland, in the number and distribution of species. However, we are also in the particularly temperature sensitive environments such as mountain systems. That is where we are seeing the large and most immediate impacts of climate change, so where the land use pressure is perhaps lower and those organisms are more heavily regulated by temperature, that is where it is easier and clearer to see the land use change impact. A really nice example is snow beds in Scottish mountain systems. There was mentioned in the papers recently of the Sphinx snow bed in Brerich, and that has disappeared again. Those organisms that are associated with those very cold systems are dropping away. Are they affecting Scotland in different ways? In terms of the mechanisms and processes, no. I think that what might be different in Scotland is the balance of those effects, so that in some countries, obviously, where there has been less land use change historically, there is a larger immediate impact of species loss because of land use change, whereas in Scotland the issues are on-going, declined, fragmentation of habitat, and other factors were perhaps more obvious in different environments such as mountain systems, which are more susceptible to climate change or freshwater systems, which are more susceptible to pollution. Helena Black Hi. A couple of things that I would like to draw on following on from Rob. In the context, and I will focus on soils because I am a soil scientist, in relation to soils and in our environment, I would be fair to say that the biggest changes really happened before the 1970s. They have gone on for centuries as we have changed our land use. Really what we are looking on in terms of post 1970s is a focus on management and management intensity. For soils, it is not just about management, it is about the combination of a number of stressors, management intensity, management type, atmospheric pollution. The combination of things that have actually led to soils degradation and effects on biodiversity in the environments and the habitats where you have soils. Another thing that I would like to point out is that soil habitats and degradation from the 1970s is the losses from development, which is a significant loss to the actual land area of soils under development, which has implications for the resource that we have going forward. I would say and reflect to that, that globally, what we see happening in Scotland is no different than what is happening elsewhere in the world. There is recognition that globally soils are degraded from all those different pressures. The State of Scotland soils report that was published in 2011, if I remember rightly, is a really good illustration of those different threats and risks and what they mean for Scotland, but that is translated globally as well. Mark Ruskell I think that the previous two responses are really appropriate. Maybe one thing to add is that there are differences in different parts of Scotland, so the more extensively managed systems versus the intensive systems and the more towards the east coast. The other thing to reflect on is the role of land ownership in Scotland, which is quite different from many parts of the world or many parts of the north-western world. That reflects how land is used and how quickly changes in land use can be implemented. In some ways, concentrated land ownership has meant that large changes could happen very quickly. We have seen that in the past. We are also seeing that right now and potentially into the future thinking of forestry and things like rewilding. I do not think that I have too much else to add at this point. Peter Smith One of the biggest legacy effects from the 1970s and 1980s is the peatland planting with production forestry, which was a tax brace given for planted production forestry on peatlands. That was disastrous. We are just coming to terms with that now. It has increased its emissions greatly from peatlands and increased the degradation of those peatlands. We are now working out what to do, whether we remove the trees, whether we leave the trees, what we do with that forestry, but that was a dumb decision that was made a few decades ago, which has legacy effects that we are seeing today. Thank you. I will move to a question from Alasdor Allan. Thank you, convener. I will answer Professor Smith on that very point. I am keen to know, looking to the future, whether some of those mistakes are reversible. Other questions briefly I will touch on that in terms of what we mean by biodiversity and tactness. Just helpfully, you raised the very point that I was going to ask about, which is are some of those decisions—I will not mention prominent broadcasters that invested in those trees in the 1980s—are some of those decisions reversible? In a word, yes. The main issue is that 80 per cent of our peatlands are degraded. A natural resource for Scotland, which is very important, is 80 per cent degraded, and it can be restored. It is largely a matter of raising the water table, and in some cases helping the vegetation, the peat-forming species, the slope and the mosses to come back. It can be dealt with, and the peatland action programme is embarking upon that sort of peatland restoration. More specifically, on the Aforested peatlands, there are debates about whether it is better to remove the trees or to just rewet the peatlands and allow the trees to remain. There is still some open debate about that, whether you cause more damage going on in harvesting or whether you just leave them, abandon the timber and just let it rewet by raising the water table. In a word, it can be restored, and we have to do more. The Committee on Climate Change recommends that we should restore at least 80 per cent of our peatlands. I think that target should be 100 per cent by 2050, and that will require setting up a peatland action programme, a peatland restoration programme, and we will require much more resource. We should regard this at the same level of resource that is required for large infrastructure projects, such as rail and road infrastructure projects. That is the sort of resource that we should be throwing at the issue, because it is critical for us meeting our zero targets and also for restoring biodiversity. I think that it is briefly perhaps for Professor Smith again. In the debate around the environment, we now factor in questions around biodiversity and tactness. Scotland seems to be doing a bit better than some places in the UK on that score, but not as well as other places perhaps in Europe. What do you and others might want to chip in? What do you understand by biodiversity and tactness? Obviously, in parts of Scotland, such as the Highlands and Islands, for very good historical reasons, there is a slight recoil from the word wilderness. What is biodiversity and tactness, and how do you reconcile that with attempts to repopulate fragile areas? I use the biodiversity and tactness index in my work, but there are others on the call, particularly Rob Brooker, who knows far more about this than I do, so I would defer to him for an answer on that one. The biodiversity and tactness index is something that is specifically set out as the proportion of biodiversity that remains after human impact. I think that the point that is made in the work that was done by the Natural History Museum is that it incorporates these big historical changes away from what the natural systems would look like. For highly developed countries that have had large populations for a long period, such as the nations in the UK, our biodiversity and tactness is substantially impacted by the long history of land management that we have. Other countries that have not had that intensive and spread land management have a lower level of impact and score higher in the biodiversity and tactness index. We have a substantially reduced biodiversity relative to what we could have, but we have pockets of biodiversity that are very high and very important. We could increase the biodiversity throughout the landscape. One of the major challenges is integrating conservation with the other land use needs that we have at the moment. That is highlighted by a lot of the discussion that copper around nature-based solutions, but that may be something that we come on to in a bit. The biodiversity and tactness index is a very worrying statistic when you look at it, but we are very much focused on carbon at the moment and reducing our carbon dioxide and whatever we hear about net zero all the time. Are we addressing the biodiversity crisis and the way we should? Should we attack the biodiversity crisis first and the climate will look after itself or the other way around? Are we got the emphasis in Scotland right? Our ability to change the amount of carbon dioxide and atmosphere is limited by the size of our country, whereas the biodiversity loss in Scotland is pretty dramatic. Are we focusing on the right area? Can you maybe ask Dr Black to kick off? Hi. Can you hear me okay? Yes. Thank you. To be honest, personally, from my point of view, I don't think that we should look at them as separate issues. We have an opportunity here to really have a win-win with both. One of the things that is quite clear from the evidence is that most of our habitats and land uses in Scotland could gain more carbon and help in terms of mitigating climate change and also in terms of adapting to climate change. Fundamentally, carbon is the food source for most of our habitats. If you work to restore carbon in habitats, you work to restore them for biodiversity as well. I think that we need to move away from looking at the two separate items. It is fundamental to looking at nature-based solutions as well. You are not looking at an ecosystem for one thing that it might deliver, which is carbon or biodiversity, but you are saying that we want healthy ecosystems that are going to sustain biodiversity and contribute to climate. I am happy to move on, or if there is anything else that you would like to ask me. Thank you very much. I think that that takes us smoothly on to our second theme, which is on peatlands and soils. I can ask Ariane to ask the first question, please. Thank you, convener, and good morning, panel. Thanks for joining us. We have already started to get into peatland. Obviously, it is clearly a very important part of our terrestrial response to climate and nature emergencies. I would like to hear from Professor Smith about the role of peatlands in relationship to biodiversity and climate change and the current state and the tools available to support healthy peatlands. I am particularly interested in, because you were talking about this massive scale, what is in place for us to really take it to that level of scale? If you have had a chance to look at the national planning framework, do you think that that might be the place that we need to place this work on peatland? Yes. As I said before, 80 per cent of our peatlands are in somewhat or very degraded state, but we have a lot of work to do to restore them. We have a peatland action programme to restore those, but it is limited in scope and with resources. It is also limited by practical constraints, such as the availability of contractors to go and do the work. We need to upskill the contractors and the people that can actually do the on-the-ground work. It just requires more resource and more as part of a green recovery. We could upskill rural workers to provide those jobs to work in that sector. Coming back to the Protecting Biodiversity and Heian Net Zero, it came up in the first panel and it is the same issue again. We employ nature-based solutions wherever we can, which co-deliver to climate change mitigation and adaptation and biodiversity and support people. That means protecting our existing high-carbon ecosystems and high biodiversity ecosystems, our pristine peatlands, restoring those 80 per cent of the arm in pristine conditions and on other parts of the land, better managing them and creating novel ecosystems, particularly in urban environments, which can provide those benefits to biodiversity, nature and climate change. The focus should be on co-delivering to biodiversity and climate change and developing the support in sustainable rural or livelihoods by creating jobs in rural sectors that can support the expansion of things such as woodland expansion and peatland restoration. I would like to ask Dr Helena Black a similar question, but I will focus on non-peat soils. What are the tools available to support healthy soils and what do we need to be doing with non-peat soils in response to the biodiversity and climate emergencies? I will start with what we need to be doing. It is not really that similar to what we need to be doing for peatlands and the native systems. There is huge potential to store carbon in agricultural soils, and there is an opportunity to improve the health of the soils by taking that joint action in terms of managing for the climate, but also managing for biodiversity and for productivity. I will come back to that explicitly. At the moment, there are a lot of tools out there in terms of agricultural soils, in terms of advising farmers on what to do for productivity, so managing the fertiliser inputs or managing for water quality, etc. However, where there still remains a gap is what are the tools that really provide information on a healthy soil. There are companies out there that are now offering analyses of soil health, for example, but the challenge with those at the moment is what does that mean to an individual farmer in an individual location with distinct soil types and distinct management practices? The gap is in translating what we know from research in terms of what makes a healthy soil and providing that in a way that farmers can understand so that they can alter their management to improve healthy soil. It is a transfer of knowledge between research and practice that we need to develop. We are very lucky in Scotland that our agricultural soils are very healthy, but because they are agricultural soils, they have a huge potential to increase carbon stores and reduce greenhouse gas emissions. The challenge going forward is again tools about information to farmers about how they reduce their inorganic inputs into soils, which are a major contribution to the greenhouse gas emissions and are derived from fossil fuels, so that they are getting more and more expensive. How do they move away from reliance on things such as inorganic fertiliser and start to work more with the biodiversity that they have in their soils that provide the carbon storage and the nutrient dynamics? It is that fundamental shift that we are going to have to enable. There is a lot of research out there, and a lot of what we need to do is plug that information gap to make it applicable in farmers' field. I have got a supplementary, and Rachael has on this topic. We have seen organic farms from 25 years ago. It has taken 25 years to get to a point where they have removed nearly all non-organic fertilisers or nitrogen or whatever, and the soil has regenerated to such a point where the yields are now delivering a sustainable economically in terms of biodiversity. It has taken 25 years. Has any work been done to look at and assess the condition of Scotland's soils to give a timescale of where the soils can have a just transition from artificial fertilisers to organic fertilisers? We have targets, so we have a target to become net zero by 2045. Agriculture has a big role to play in that. What scientific work has been done to assess how long it will take from the soils in the condition that they are today to start delivering in the future? That might be for Dr Black again. I will kick it off, but I will probably like to hand over to Pete once I have said a few of my things. We are very lucky in Scotland that we have a wealth of what I call modelling capacity that allows us to look at how our systems might change over time. If we are going to look to how long it might take for our farming systems to move to another status, i.e., move away from reliance and inorganic, we have the capacity to do that. You have hit an interesting gap. We know a lot about transition to organic farming and how long that might take and what it means in terms of productivity. However, where there is a gap there is in the intermediary, because the expectation is that we are still going to have to retain a relatively high level of productivity to maintain society. The reliance and organic is going to have to have something in-between where we are now and fully organic. That is definitely a modelling gap, but we have the capacity to do that. I wonder if I could hand over to Pete, because he has much more experience in the modelling side of this that could underpin that. I think that perfection may be the enemy of progress. If we are aiming for a fully organic system, then it takes a wild transition. We could imagine a more steady transition towards more organic production through things like agroecology. Agroecology is a bit like organic production, but it does not have the full certification that you cannot use any external inputs. Going somewhere like a halfway house before we go to full organic by promoting and supporting more agroecological approaches will probably be the way to go, because then we could transition without that loss in productivity. That would help farmers to learn as they go along during the transition how to cope with less inputs or agrochemicals rather than just going organic overnight. Rachael Hamilton has a supplement on that. Is there any site of any policies that might help us to achieve that, Dr Black? Are there any policies in the pipeline? I must admit that I am not entirely familiar with policies, but I would say that there is increasing interest in farmers and a growing body of farmers moving towards implementing what they call regenerative practices, which are very much to reflect agroecological principles. Regenerative farming might seem like a new term. Again, back down to what Pete said, it is underlined by a knowledge of agroecological evidence. For interesting principles that farmers can use and adopt quite easily, such as minimising soil disturbance and the addition of cover crops, there are certain management practices that farmers can start to play around and adopt, but in terms of policy, I might refer to Robert Pete, because he is probably more aware of the actual policies that are in place, but one that I might bring up now that will have implications for that is where we go in terms of managing soil carbon, because it has quite a lot of significance in terms of those practices that will regenerate soil carbon. A lot of farmers are now looking to see whether or not they can be incentivised to do that. The next step is what is going to happen with agricultural subsidies or agricultural government policy under the new schemes and how that will encourage people to adapt to those new management practices. In terms of the policies, what Helene has said about the payment mechanisms at the moment, that is key for encouraging whether or not farmers move down that route. My understanding is that we are currently still in the sort of stability phase where the plan is put in place for Scotland following the movement away from the EU. It is critical what the payment structures look like there, but there is a clear need within that if we are going to shift towards more sustainable farming, both for a shift towards payment for outcomes and there is work on that at the moment. We look to see whether or not the management practices that we put in place deliver what we went. With respect to the indicators of soil health, we need to have those good indicators so that we can assess whether or not we are getting outcomes that we want in terms of improvements in soil health. We know that, from recent work, there is a potential suite of indicators. There is work under the next Scottish Government's strategic research programme to look at how those indicators respond to different management regimes, to see how they can be used as part of the process for seeing how farms move from standard management practice to a more sustainable practice moving forward, which could be linked to the payment mechanisms. The post-cap subsidy system has a great potential to incentivise more sustainable management practices. We can use the public money to pay for the public goods, which are provided by farming. If you change your farming in a way that provides more natural capital, that requires more information and more calculation of the natural capital that are provided by different farming systems, for example, enhancing biodiversity, carbon storage, as you know, meaning value, air quality and improving water quality, all of these public goods that are potentially provided by farming could be valued, and an incentive system could be designed around the delivery of those public goods rather than the production that was subsidised, often un-economic production that was subsidised under the cap. I think that this is a real opportunity for us to redesign our subsidy system to support what we want to get out of farming and how it can contribute to our net zero ambitions, as well as to our biodiversity targets. Listening to this evidence and listening to farmers as well, farmers have been demonised and they are looking to be part of the solution to net zero. They are already doing such work as regenerative practice and putting in buffer zones and lots of rotational grazing and minimum tillage and all the rest of it. If you look at the wider picture here, sustainable agricultural management does not have a definition. Therefore, it is very difficult for farmers who are already doing such things to articulate how they can do more. I am listening to Dr Black. It seems as though there is a gap. There is a gap in what farmers are meant to be doing or their expectations or your expectations, our expectations and expectations of the world. Considering that 95 per cent of agriculture relies on soil, agroecological or organic practices are not going to give us the food that we need to live healthily. I think that we are in a very difficult situation here. I would like to bring in Mark Misker on some comments on my statement. You are absolutely right. One of the challenges is that we have a farming sector waiting to do more, but they need clarity. They need to have multi-annual support to change what they are doing to make the investments or to get outside investment in. We have been waiting for a number of years now for that transition from post-cap. My understanding is that clarity has been postponed again for a number of years. I do not think that we really have those years to despair. I would encourage any signals from Government that would give clarity to the sector on what is expected and how they will be supported. Without those signals, it would be very difficult to expect them to make more changes. Of course, they can always make more changes, but to commit substantial, large changes to their business practices without more clarity on how they will be supported. We will come back to sustainable agriculture in just a second. Can I move on to some final questions on peatland? Professor Smith indicated that 80 per cent of Scotland's peatlands are degraded but can be restored. There is some concern about being dug up for the construction of wind farms and the installation of wind turbines for green energy. I am also aware of peatland restoration work occurring around such wind farm projects. I wonder if you could say what the impact of wind farm building is on the biodiversity of peatlands. I was involved in the wind farm carbon calculator, the development of that. We know that if you site a wind farm on peats, the impact on the peat, the carbon that you lose from the peat by draining it to put the base in, can outweigh the carbon benefits of the turbine. Siting wind farms on pristine peatlands does not seem to make much sense in terms of the carbon payback time or net zero targets. The impact on biodiversity may be different, but the extent of the drainage around the turbine base determines how much carbon is lost and how much you lose those peat-forming organisms. Generally speaking, if wind farms can be sited away from peatlands, for example on mineral soils, that gives you wind benefits in terms of providing renewable energy and also not losing the carbon. We should favour that. CEPA uses and in more planning developments, the wind farm carbon calculator tool is used, but it allows either for other areas to be restored to compensate for installing the peatlands. It also allows for the minimisation of the area that is actually drained. Whether that happens in real life is another question, so I think it deserves more attention on where we site the wind farms. I think we should give precedence to those that are sited on mineral soils rather than on pristine peatlands. Is there any calculation of how much peat has been displaced by the wind farms that we currently have and what the carbon impact has been? Is there any obligation on local authorities when they grant planning permission to assess the wind farm carbon calculator to assess the suitability of new wind farms? Undoubtably, through the new national planning framework, there will be a push for evermore new wind farms. Do we need to play a bigger role in the planning process? I do not think that anybody has done the calculation, but it could easily be done on the amount of carbon that has been lost on siting the peatlands. We know the carbon content of the soils or the piece where they have been placed, so we could do those numbers, but to my knowledge, nobody has. There is already a requirement to use the wind farm carbon calculator in the planning applications. It is often used by the wind developers and also by people opposing the developments. They come up with different answers depending upon the extent of drainage that is put into the calculator. Also, the carbon payback time is only one of the considerations that local authorities will consider. They have to consider other issues, such as the creation of local jobs and generating sustainable energy, for example, within the locality. It is only one component. Given the importance of peats for carbon and for biodiversity, we should look at that again. Is there a suggestion that there might be, at the moment, the term that is often used, greenwashing by the renewable sector to say that we might be displacing peat here, but we are going to restore it somewhere else? They could genuinely be doing that. For the area of peatland that is affected by a wind farm, they might be investing in restoring peatlands elsewhere. However, we have a finite peatland stock. Obviously, if we did not destroy the peatlands by putting wind farms on them, we would not need to restore that amount. We need to restore it anyway. We need to restore 100 per cent of our peatlands. Given that we have 100 per cent of the resource that we need to restore, that is not additional. That is going to happen anyway. We will now move on to the next theme, which is sustainable agricultural management questions from Jim Fairlie. As a former farmer, I find some of those discussions pretty frustrating when I hear panels talking about what farmers have to do. First, I would like to understand what you understand that farmers already do. That is possibly the point that Rachel has picked up. Dr Helena Black talked about reducing the amount of fertilis that is used. I recently went to a farm visit where they are now doing precision drilling. What that means is that a computer tells them how much it used to have was 300 weight of NPK splattered across the whole field. Now what they do is they go into the field and it is all done by GPS. You will get 400 weight there, 100 weight there, nothing there, 500 weight there. The field is fertilised to exactly what it needs. That gives you the maximum yield with the minimum amount of inputs. First of all, fertilisers are very expensive. There is over £600 a tonne right now. Farmers do not want to be wasting it. There is also the use—I know that it is a controversial thing—glyphosphate. You spray off old grass, you eat it to the board, you spray off old grass and then you direct drill it with a crop after it has been fertilised by livestock over a number of years. We call that regenerative farming. I just call it farming because it has been getting done for generations. I would like to understand where the dichotomy has come from demonising farmers for producing good quality food in a sustainable way to what they have always done. I would like to get a better understanding of that. That is what you are saying, Lenny Black. I think that you have highlighted something that is very important in the context of all of this, that farmers are always innovating. Sometimes we can be a bit behind the curve in terms of providing farmers with the right information, but I have come back to the statement that you made. You said that farmers are sustainable. In the context of producing crops, yes, but in the context of a broader term of sustainability, you have to question whether we can enable farming to carry on in the way that it is going, given that we have water quality issues, given that we are looking at climate change mitigation and adaptation, and given that we have losses in biodiversity. Farming a field does not happen in isolation of the wider landscape of which that field sits. That is at the heart of what we have to deal with going forward if we have to ensure that we bring farmers with us in this conversation about how do we address our biodiversity losses, improve our environment, have the social gains, address climate mitigation? That is where the conflict or confusion or discussion has to sit and revolve around that. For me, a starting point is looking at how we define sustainable management. What does that mean in Scotland as a society at all and not sustainable management for product production, not sustainable management for biodiversity and not sustainable management for climate change mitigation? What does that mean by sustainable land use in Scotland to deliver the multiple benefits that we want and we desire? If we have a common view of that, I think that those will help a lot in the conversations going forward. On the other side of that, we need to reflect on the fact that you said that prices of inorganic fertilisers are going up and up. Farmers are looking to adapt their farming systems so that they can maintain a farm into the future that can support incomes and support the farming society. I do not see that there is a conflict between that and people talking about regenerative farming and so on. That goes back to what Pete said. Every farmer is going to have to look at a transition to adapt to climate change. In that context, the tools that are out there will also help carbon mitigation and biodiversity. Personally, I am not saying that we have to expect every farmer in Scotland to become agroecological or regenerative, but there is a toolbox there that would allow every farmer in Scotland to work towards that transition. The issue here is allowing them the flexibility to do that in their own environment and coming back to what is the other things that we want those farmers to do. I agree that we have had this demonisation, but now we need to move forward and think about how we integrate the stories of climate, biodiversity and whatever. I will reflect on something that I was involved with a workshop yesterday to do with farm soil carbon credits. One of the things that we were doing was asking the 200-nod people on that workshop their views about what they want those credits to achieve. I do not want to get into the credit thing, but what was fascinating to me was that, out of those questionnaires, they were asking people about what they wanted to achieve in their farming. The very highest point that came out of all the surveys was adapting farming to a future under climate change. Every farmer wants to achieve that, and we need to provide the tools to do that. What we are saying here is that reflecting on agroecological principles can help farmers to move in that transition. I am going to bring Rob in, because we are lucky to have two experts from the James Hutton Institute. From my knowledge, and again gained from Aberdeen University many years ago in the soil science department there, microbiology plays a huge role in that. The more artificial nitrogen we put in, the less we rely on the microbes in the soil to fix that nitrogen. Another microbiology and another matter in the soil is very good at allowing plants to uptake nutrients and whatever. The more artificial fertilizer put on, the less we rely on those microbes. When we reduce artificial fertilisers, the regenerative side of the soil is that those microbes start doing their job again. There is a tipping point where the return on investment in terms of yield by putting artificial fertilizer on is reduced. You do not get as big a bang for your buck, so to speak. If that is correct, do we need the science to absolutely help farmers make that decision to reduce nitrogen and artificial fertilisers? There will be, after a period, some of that reduction in productivity will increase because the microbes in the soil will start to do their job again. We are back to that transition. However, as part of the solution knowledge transfer from the scientists, from you guys down to the grass-roots farmers to persuade them that doing things will not, in the long term, affect their bottom line and their economic sustainability. I am looking to see who is nodding again. Pete, would you like to come in on that? Or, beggar party, it was Rob. Rob was going to respond. I am very happy to respond to that. I can give you a nice example of that, which brings many of these things together. We have an Esmi-Ferben funded project on looking at crop mixtures, which is basically just growing two species together rather than growing them in monoculture. There is lots going on as part of that. Some of that is about the biology. The relationship between biodiversity in the system and the way that it functions, on average, tends to be positive. On average, the gain from adding biodiversity is most when you are in species poor systems. If you are in the crop system, if you go from one to two to three crops growing together, then the soil functions and the other functions that you are talking about do, on average, increase. One of the things that we find with crop mixtures, for example, is that it enables us to reduce the inputs, the nitrogen inputs that go into the system, maintain and, in fact, even in some cases increase yield with reduced inputs. There is a saving there, a financial saving and an environmental saving. We have a more sustainable system because, for example, there you can have pea barley mixes that can go for animal feed. We have reduced our global footprint. We can transition to a more sustainable farming practice that has both economic and environmental benefits. One of the key parts about that work is that we are working with farmers as scientists. We are having on-farm trials and the farmers are providing us with data, and they are part of the solution. They are telling us what the real problems are. Many of them would like to grow crop mixtures, but the solutions are partly about what to grow where and what is the best stuff to put in. It is simple technical things like having a separator for the mixed crop. You cannot sell it if, in many cases, it is combined. You need to separate, not many people have separators. It is not just the biology, it is the practical challenges, but it reflects on a point that was made about marine research. You have to have the farmers, you have to have the fishermen as part of the research, and we can enable that through the online technologies that we have. That is something that we need to look at moving forward. To roll those things out more widely, we need to take this online, work with farmers and have these online systems for gathering data so that we can work with farmers to tailor the solutions. Crop mixtures is a really nice example of the potential, but it is something that is still relatively small scale. Thank you. Pete, do you have a comment? Rob's answer was great. The other thing that could be considered, if there is a short-term yield penalty in transforming to a farming system that gives you a slightly reduced yield, we could consider the farming subsidy system, which the new system is going to provide more public goods. We could provide a proportion of that funding for providing those public goods, which make up for the drop in the private goods, as in the reduced yield to the farmer. It does not have to be a big subsidy, because there would probably only be a small yield production, but that public funding could be considered for those sorts of farms to enable that transition, which gives more public goods from the farming system. Thank you, Pete. I'll move to Jim for a final question on sustainable agricultural management. I'm just going to come back on one or two of the points that have been made there. In terms of doing mixed combinable crops, that again has been getting done for years. You can sow grass with barley. There are various things that are happening in agriculture, and I'm going to re-emphasise the point that you are all making, but I think that it needs to be absolutely clarified that the farmers are ahead of the game already. They are doing stuff because they want to do it. They want to have their farms to hand on to the next generation, and I think that there needs to be far more cognisance of that publicly and in the scientific community. However, I will move on. The role of livestock in global sustainable food systems, considering climate change and biodiversity and what the conversations around eating less meat and dairy mean for livestock farming in Scotland. However, I would also like to come back to what we talked about in the sustainable and the marine section earlier on. How is Scotland's system different from the global system? That's another misnomer that I think we really need to get through. Mark, can we come to you first, please? It's a very sensitive issue, but it is important to recognise the difference between UK and especially Scottish livestock farming and the global systems. In various studies that distinction has been made also at high-level terms of grass-fed systems versus intensive systems, even within grass-fed systems, Scottish agriculture is probably on the more sustainable side of the scale. I don't know whether my colleagues have that or backed that up. The other thing that we should realise is that, and this is for quite a few points, the environment of Scotland lends itself historically to a number of agricultural activities. We should recognise that we should also, in the future, make the most of our natural conditions. Growing grass and having livestock is one of the things that we are naturally good at. We should emphasise that point to the general public and to the sector. The sector knows it, but that should be emphasised from a scientific perspective. Within that, there is an element that I have been wondering for a while, but it is to what extent should we take responsibility for the fact that we can grow certain things. That also includes trees. We can grow them well in Scotland with the environmental conditions that we have. Should we not emphasise the fact that we should make the most of that instead of importing or exporting our goods to other parts of the world, rather than having livestock in other parts of the world or growing trees in other parts of the world? We are good at it here, and we should take the responsibility that at least a significant amount of the land that we use should be used for the things that we are environmentally good at. Pete, do you want to come in in the back of that? I will differ slightly from Mark on that, in that we need a transformational change in our agriculture. We know that livestock per unit of mass or per unit of protein or calorie is 10 to 100 times more damaging in terms of climate change than plant-based products. We know that it uses 10 to 100 times more land. We know that livestock agriculture uses 70% of global freshwater. We know that it is a major driver of biodiversity loss. We absolutely should consume less meat and dairy. That would also be better for the health of our citizens, but how do we manage that? It will have impacts, of course, on our farming sector, but we have to manage that by moving—it has to be a just transition. We have demand side changes. We request our citizens or we try and promote health-eating among our citizens, so we consume less meat and dairy, but we can consider less and better—I have heard this mentioned in the livestock industry before—less and better meat, so that we consume less meat, less rumen and products, less dairy, but we make it better. We focus less on those intensive systems, which are more environmentally damaging, and we focus more on the systems that produce our livestock in a relatively more sustainable way. The last thing that goes along with that is that it does mean that probably some farmers who are receiving subsidies at the moment to produce livestock that would not be economic without their subsidies, we have to provide them with means of diversification, we have to retrain them, we have to up-seal them so that they can be part of the just transition so that they do not lose their livelihoods in rural societies. However, we cannot reach net zero, we cannot tackle our biodiversity targets by just fiddling around at the edges of our system. We have to think big, and it is going to mean some fundamental changes in what we produce and what we consume in our country if we are to meet net zero by 2045. Thank you, and Mark, before we move on to supplementary from Rachel. I disagree with what Pete says. I absolutely agree that we do need change. I think that a lot of the or some of the polarized debate that we are having in certainly out in the general public is not helpful and that there is a place for livestock, probably more extensive but livestock in Scotland. It does not help to polarise the debate to the extent that we have a huge argument against people who meet or people who I meet or people who produce meat. Thank you, Mark. I am very conscious of time now. We have got 20 minutes left, so I will move for a quick supplementary from Rachel. I completely agree that we should not be making a polarised discussion on whether importing avocados, cutting down rainforests to grow soya, in an argument that is against a carbon footprint of a farmer producing homegrown foods in Scotland. Moving on, there seems to be uncertainty about the contribution of greenhouse gas from agriculture, specifically the calculation of methane emissions. I wonder if the panel had a view on that. Mark again, please. Oh, and Pete after. If we go to Mark and then Pete. I am happy to hand over to Pete. I guess we are referring to the GWP star metric, which is a different way of calculating the climate footprint of methane, because it is a short live greenhouse gas. It has a big effect early in the life of methane, but it has a less effect long term. The upside of that is that by keeping the livestock industry a constant number of animals, you are not having any net contribution to climate change because that is going to be gone from the system quickly. On the downside of that from the livestock production system is that it makes methane a very attractive target for methane for addressing climate change in the short term. That is why out of COP we had this global methane pledge, which was to reduce methane emissions by 30% relative to 2020 by a number of parties assigned up to that. That is mainly going to be by reducing emissions in the oil and gas sector, but it also applies to reducing methane from the livestock sector. On the one hand, it could benefit the livestock sector in that you could say we are overestimating the climate impact of methane, but reducing methane would have a large impact. The global methane pledge could reduce global temperatures by about 0.2 degrees going out to 2030, so that is a real big impact. It could be that by using this metric, by looking at the short-term impacts of methane, it puts methane in the focus for rapidly reducing emissions in the short term, which would mean either fewer emissions per animal or could mean a reduction in the total population of livestock, the total number that we raise. I will go back to my earlier point. I do not disagree with Mark. We are not trying to say—I do not think anybody is trying to say we want to demonise livestock and that we all have to become vegan. It is going to take a balanced approach with reduced consumption of meat and dairy, which we over-consume at the moment in this country. It will mean a balancing of that also on farm, but this lesson better way of looking at meat and dairy could be the way to go in which could provide sustainable likelihoods for farmers that produce their beef and dairy and sheep less intensively in the bioclimatic conditions that we have, which is ideal for raising cattle, as opposed to producing an output level, so less and better is probably where we could coalesce. I am interested in hearing your views on the importance of forestry for climate change mitigation and growing the right tree in the right place. As Professor Metzger said, there is a balance to be got. I think that every answer we have always indicated there is a balance. The UK is a mass importer of forestry of timber, so that is on one side, but on the other side we want to also protect our existing trees and their associated biodiversity. I would just like to get the panel's thoughts on getting that balance right. I start with Professor Brooker. Yes, thank you very much. This is clearly a very topical issue at the moment. I think that the theme of the right trees in the right place for the right reason is probably the thing to consider. Some of the challenges that we have at the moment are that the mechanisms for increasing our forestry do not take them into effect with the localised conditions. If you put trees on organo mineral soils, which are halfway between the load of mineral soils and the deep peats, if you have the wrong tree and the wrong soil, you will get a net loss of carbon. It does not make any sense in terms of planting trees there. Having an area metric is not the way to do it. You need localised solutions. I think that the other challenge with respect to the benefits of biodiversity is that some things win from planting trees, and it certainly depends on what you plant. If you plant a nice native woodlands, that is really good for biodiversity compared to a sort of monoculture stand, but some of our biodiversity habitats are treeless and we would not really want to plant them up. So species rich grassland, for example, is a nice example of actually where we need livestock to help manage that grassland. It is part of our biodiversity conservation, so it is a good argument in favour of keeping some grazing systems going. It has got to be about having the capacity in the system to do the right tailored management, and that has to be backed up by improving scientific knowledge about what the carbon balances and the other balances will be if you put woodlands on a particular area. We have some of that evidence and we know some of that data, but to provide good information and good support to land managers, there is more that we need to do around that to help to tailor those local solutions. I can't see the rest of the panel. Does anybody else like to come in? Yes, so just to say that whilst we require our woodlands, they have to be in the right place, the right tree and the right soil, as has been said. For biodiversity and for carbon storage in the long run, native forests are the best option, but we also have to remember that 80 per cent of our timber is currently imported and we need, as part of the climate solution, to replace coal and steel in the construction industry, we need more timber, so whilst we rely on 80 per cent of that timber being imported, that also suggests that we should be increasing our production timber capacity within Scotland as well. Focusing on just native species, which co-delivered biodiversity, would be a mistake in that we also need production forestry to produce timber to replace concrete and steel in the construction industry. We are going to need a mixed approach of production forestry and native plantings for biodiversity and for carbon sequestration, and that will probably require even more area to be planted up with trees of some sort, but it has to be a mixed portfolio of forestry, I think. Yes, just on that. We talk about the right tree in the right place, but also balance with the need for timber. Surely that also applies to food, so we need the right cow or the right sheep in the right place to fulfil our food security needs. I suppose that it is all down to regional land use and that sort of thing, but is there an argument that we are looking at 25,000 hectares of Sitka potentially being planted, which is a short-term product, so it captures carbon for a limited amount of time while it is growing and then it gets cut down. Generally, in this country at the moment, it is used for short-term timber products, so that carbon goes back up into the atmosphere. Is there an argument that we need to do a lot more work to look at native species that potentially capture carbon more rapidly and for longer and stay in the ground for a lot longer before they are harvested? Is that work being done rather than seeing 25,000 hectares of Sitka? We maybe need 10,000 hectares of Sitka and 15,000 hectares of traditional native broadleaf. Peter, do you want to come back in on that, or Dr Black? Shall I kick off, Peter, and then hand off to you? What I would like to do is reflect on what we consider when we are expanding our woodlands. We have a lot of research out there to look at the right tree in the right place and what the opportunities are for different woodland types. One of the things that I am not sure we reflect on when it comes to woodland expansion is going back to the definition of sustainable management and sustainable production. Do we reflect on whether it is fair, or are the short-term economic gains actually reflecting wider societal benefits in the future? Is it balanced, though is it only about productivity or are they wider, weaker system goods and services that need to be reflected from that woodland? Will it meet the needs from now and into the future? I do not know that we are really reflecting on that when it comes to woodland expansion. If we had a good definition for Scotland of what we want sustainable land use and land management to be, it would help us in making decisions about what we want our woodlands to do for us and deciding that we are comfortable with single-stand Sitka in those locations but in other locations for other things that would be better if we diversified. One other comment that I would like to make on that context is in relation to the fact that we separate forestry and agriculture quite distinctly at the moment. We need to reflect on the fact that there are opportunities there with agroforestry and current agricultural systems, and we need to enable farmers to have the flexibility to contribute to woodland expansion in a more flexible manner. I might hand over to my colleagues a couple of the other things that they want to see in this. We are short of time, so I will hand over to Mark, who would like to respond to that. It has come up a couple of times now that the land use and the integrated nature of it and, of course, we have the land use strategy in Scotland that was launched in 2011, and it has fallen flat a bit in recent times. If we think about integrating climate and biodiversity, then it is important that we do have a land use strategy and we have that definition of sustainable land use and that our different sort of early siloed policy efforts are more integrated. We now have the regional land use pilots, which are very noble in what they are trying to achieve, but they are severely under resourced. A single pilot covering all of Highlands has a policy officer that gets £30,000 towards that. How can you think about integrated land use and all the issues that we have been talking about if there is so little resource? I miss from the great energy that started off the land use strategy to now have that greater co-ordination between the different policy silos and to think of some of those integration issues that we have been discussing here. That takes us nicely on to one of the issues that covers everything—that is data. Can I ask Karen for her questions on data? Good afternoon to the panel. I will caveat this with an example. Within my constituency, we have an issue that is having a severe impact on people and their lives that live there, and that is the issue of urban gulls. Although those are in decline in numbers, they are increasing significantly in certain areas. That being just one example of the change in environment and one of the climate impacts on local communities, where is more research needed to understand the drivers and impacts of change in the terrestrial environment? What do we need in regards to the data to most importantly find solutions to those issues? Who would like to kick off on that one? Rob? Yes. We have a big challenge with our data in Scotland. We have a lot of data that is collected, but it is not done in a strategic and integrated way. That makes it very challenging to do the kind of cross-sectional analysis that we need. For example, linking the biodiversity data to the farming data to look at the benefits that we are getting from some of the greening measures within the CAP funding is a real challenge. A lot of the data on biodiversity is collected by the word is amateurs, but they are highly skilled people, but they are doing it for free. There is not a strong funding structure there to help to bring that data together. That was highlighted in the Scottish Biodiversity Information Forum's report on this, which was several years back. Other challenges that we have seen recently, for example, in my understanding, is that SEWeb is currently just on pause because of the cyberattack at SEPA. SEPA hosted that. There is no access to SEWeb as I understand it at the moment. The call that Mark and Helena made for thinking about integrated sustainable management, we need an integrated supporting framework of data gathering so that we can look at the effects of the management that we would like to implement on the various metrics of sustainability that we think are important. At the moment, we have a lot of very useful data, but it is very fragmented. I think that that is a really key thing. The other thing that we need is new metrics for some of those aspects of sustainability. We have talked a lot about soil health. There is work that is bringing that new understanding on board, but that needs to be integrated with this wider monitoring framework. Professor Black, I just like to build on that, and I will focus on soils for an obvious reason. In 2009, the Scottish Government published the Scottish soils framework. In that, there was a proposal to implement a national soil monitoring network. Here we are, we are considerably further down the line. We really need to see action on the ground. We are at the point now that, as people have said, we have ideas of what soil health metrics could be. We know certain things that we need to measure to support the modelling to predict how land use and land use management might change in the future, but what we critically lack at the moment is a really good understanding of where we are at now, i.e. the baselines of our Scottish soils. If we can implement a national soil monitoring network, we can really innovate on how we capture existing data, and I will come back to that, and I will look to fill the gaps through techniques. I will give a good example. The peatland code is that it requires people to gather data from peatland restoration. Those data are feeding back into research and development that are helping to improve how we manage our peatlands and how we predict they are going to change. We need the interaction between land managers on the ground and the research community. The one example that I would really like to draw on that frustrates me a bit and I would really like to see something move on is the wealth of data that is collected by farmers or commercial organisations for the agricultural sector. There is a lot of data being generated on a day-to-day basis by people that manage our land, but at the moment it is not clear how we access that for the national and public good. It is also less clear how research communities can access that to help to generate where we go in the future. I would like to see two things happen in terms of the data gaps. It is implementing a network, actually getting it on the ground and working to see how we capture data that is being gathered now at the moment. A really good example of that is a large campaign going on in the south-west of Scotland by a new company called AgriCarbon, which is working with First Milk and Nestle based on lining the dairy farms in Dumfries and Galloway and Ayrshire and collecting very new and very innovative data on salt carbon stocks. At the moment, those data are probably the most extensive data set on salt carbon stocks. I would dare to say anywhere in the world, but it is certainly for the UK and Scotland. Those are vital in terms of the work that Pete does in modelling how our systems will react to climate change and how we can mitigate our systems. To me, it is actually being able to get the benefit of what is being generated already. Thank you very much. I am moving on to our very last question. I just want to, yes or no answer. I know that they are very difficult, but do the regional land use partnerships, we know that they are underfunded, but could they be the body that looks at pulling all this data together and pulling the groups together to make sure that we get that national data gathering and soil gathering? Could they be the organisation that could pull all that data together? Just a yes or no or a nod of the head would be good. One out of three. We will move on to our final question. That is from Rachel and it is on. It is a wide question, but you can answer it with a couple of sentences for the sake of time. What are your takeaways from COP26 with regard to land use and the rural economy? What are your hopes for COP15, the next stage of COP15 with regard to biodiversity on land? I will keep my answer very short because I will have more to say two things. I really want to see action on the ground in restoration of our soils and habitats. The second one is what is going to happen in terms of implementing article 6 on carbon markets, because that could have a significant impact on management. I will leave it at that. A major message from me from COP26 is the importance of nature-based solutions, which we have heard a lot about. However, there is potential for them to deliver 30 per cent of the actions that we need. That is such a clear message that it comes through and directly links to Cunming and CBD COP15. A critical thing about that is that it must involve local stakeholders for equitability, so we have heard the importance of involving farmers and other land managers in Scotland. What I hope for COP15 is that the importance of biodiversity conservation for solving the climate change crisis is actually going to drive more in the way of tangible action for biodiversity conservation because what we have seen is commitments and continued decline in global biodiversity and some fairly weak targets, which is to stop or lower the rate of decline. We need to go on that upward curve with biodiversity. Those are my hopes for Cunming that COP26 drives some action and strong commitment on the ground. For me, the greatest message from COP is the societal expectations for action. That is outside the formal COP, but the media exposure and what we have seen also in Scotland is how society wants change and wants action. That is the main message for Cunming. I think that it is the stronger commitments, just like Rob was saying, that we need those and then to implement that for those. Thank you very much. Finally, Pete. Yes, so I think that the three big outcomes from COP that will affect the rural communities and rural land use in Scotland are the pledge to halt deforestation and begin restoring forests by 2030, so that ties in with our woodland expansion targets. The global methane pledge, which I mentioned earlier, to limit CO2 to 30 per cent of 2020 levels, sorry, by 30 per cent compared to 2020 levels, will have implications potentially in trying to tackle greenhouse gas emissions from the agriculture sector, particularly from the livestock sector and manure management, which are the biggest sources of methane emissions. Finally, echoing what Rob said, the emphasis on nature-based solutions that went throughout COP26, I think the increased potential target of protection of 30 per cent of the land by 2030 means that we need to expand the amount of land that we put in a site of biodiversity, and that can only happen if we have some systematic changes in the way we support agriculture. So, again, it's just coming back to this emphasis on tickling around at the edges of our current system is not going to deliver what we need in terms of biodiversity or climate change. We need a fundamental transformation in the way that we produce our food and the way that we protect nature. Can I follow that up with a question about the baseline? Professor Smith, on the 2020 baseline, should agriculture be taken out of that and recalculated in a different way considering the conversation that we had earlier? No, I don't think it should. If you did calculate it according to a different metric, such as GWP star, it makes the impact of reducing methane emissions now even more important in the coming decade. Rather than decreasing the reliance on reducing methane, it shoves it further up the agenda. So, I don't think that it would be beneficial. Okay, thank you very much. I thank you all for your really fascinating and useful evidence that you provided this morning. Thank you very much. That concludes our committee meeting for today.