 Good morning and welcome to the ninth meeting of 2017 of the Environment, Climate Change and Land Reform Committee. We have apologies from Finlay Carson. Before we move to the first item on the agenda, can I remind everyone present to ensure that their mobile phones are on silent for the duration of the meeting? The first item on the agenda is for the committee to consider whether to take item three in private. Are we all agreed? We are indeed. Ie, we move to the second item on the agenda this morning that is just to hear from an expert panel on the environmental implications for Scotland of the UK leaving the EU. We have been joined this morning by Professor Gamin Little from the University of Stirling, Professor Lisa Morguera from the University of Strathquad, Professor Colin Reid from the University of Dundee and Dr Annalisa Sivaresa of the University of Stirling. We are also joined this morning by Bob Ward, the Policy and Communications Director of the Grant and Research Institute on Climate Change and Environment. Good morning, Bob. If you wish to respond to any of the lines of questioning, could you just raise your hand to indicate to me that you want to come in and we'll come to you. Thank you very much for that. We move to questions, or we will when I find these. Can I ask all of the witnesses in turn how a great repeal bill will work for environmental legislation? Who wishes to go first? The great repeal bill, which is intended simply to carry over all EU law into domestic UK law, will work very nicely for a big chunk of environmental law because lots of the measures have already been implemented. A lot of EU environmental law has been done through directives that have required implementation within the UK legislation in any case, so the EU layer is an almost extra layer on top of the detailed rules that all exist in UK legislation already. The problem is that that won't cover everything. At the one extreme, there are areas where the law is wholly dependent on EU decision making, EU structures and EU processes, and in between there's a huge area where there's a lot of legislation that includes references to EU legislation. The boundaries of things in the UK domestic law are defined, are set by reference to EU directives, and entangling all that is going to be a fairly major exercise. If I remember rightly, there's about 650 individual pieces of legislation. How many of those would easily fall within the remit of the great repeal bill? I have absolutely no idea, and within each individual bit of legislation there are different bits that will have different consequences. So it's complicated? It's complicated. Anyone else wish to come in on that? I may add to the complication. I think one of the interesting features of EU environmental law is that there have been successive generations of pieces of legislation on different sectors, and increasingly those sectors speak to each other. There's been a lot of effort in making sure that nature protection considerations are included in water law, agriculture, and fisheries, or other examples. We have more or less different levels of success in how much EU environmental law is integrated, but the point is that even small amendments to the existing body of EU environmental law may have trickle-down effects and complications that may be difficult to assess prima fascia. I think the other perhaps element of complexity to consider is that in addition to areas where the role of the European Commission is very central and we are clear that there will be discussions to be had about how that power will be exercised once we are outside of the EU, there are also more subtle roles that the Commission and EU structure has played, including the issues of guidance in relation to the implementation of international obligations related to the environment to which also the UK is bound to. That may again fall through the cracks, may not be quite immediately apparent how changes in legislation may then be reflected or not in also the lack of guidance, and often it is in the little details of the guidance that decisions about environmental sustainability and sustainable development are made. Anyone else want to come in? Can I add to the point that Professor Reid has made? Obviously, in terms of the great repeal bill, the idea is that EU law, which is enforced in the UK at the time of Brexit, including environmental law, will become domestic law whenever practicable, but there is also the potential in the period that the bill is going through and coming into force for some areas not to be transposed for domestic policy reasons. As and why? Well, I suppose that the UK Government might take the view that it does not want some areas of EU environmental law to be transposed. Now, I do not know what those might be, but I suppose that it is potentially possible that that might happen. A very small addition to what Elisa already mentioned is that there is a very common assumption that international environmental law obligations will in many ways supplement what are those embedded in EU environmental law. This is not to be taken for granted, especially on the side of enforcement, but more generally there is the issue that many times EU environmental law are more ambitious than the corresponding international environmental law obligations. Therefore, a careful assessment will have to be made as to the level to which the UK slash Scotland want to commit moving on. Can I ask how much work outwith the scope of a great repeal bill may have to be done as a consequence of Brexit, just to get an idea of the scale? I think that that is very hard to determine. If all the great repeal bill says is that EU law, as it stands on a certain date, is deemed to be part of UK law, that makes the legislative process very easy. It makes actually working out what that means and in practice very hard for those coming along, especially because we have to work out, we have to freeze the state of EU law and work out what state it was on a particular day. That becomes particularly difficult where legislation makes reference to EU law. For example, there is no definition of waste in UK waste law. It simply uses the EU definition, the scope of projects that require environmental impact assessment. A lot of those are not defined, it simply says, by reference to EU law. Environmental liability is all-phrased. The scope of that is all-phrased in terms of things that are covered by other bits of EU law. That process, thinking through particularly looking into the future, what exactly was the state of EU law on the particular date, which may be changed by subsequent amendment of EU law, subsequent reinterpretation of EU environmental law by the European Court. There is a huge challenge there, even if a shortcut is taken in terms of the legislation itself. Professor MacGyverna. If I may add, it is not just the amount of time, but it is also the range of expertise that will be needed to really understand what we are facing. We are here as experts, but I am sure that we all feel that our expertise only covers so much. Within environmental law, we have specialised expertise in climate change and nature protection, but also I think the challenges of Brexit, and we have all been involved in thinking about this, are about thinking about very new interactions between international law, what the whole that is left by EU law, and matters of national, constitutional and scots law. That means that it is not just a matter for environmental lawyers, but it is really a matter for all different legal experts that do not usually work together and have never really addressed these questions before. I think that some people suggest that it will take ten years to complete the disentanglement process from the EU. Is that the kind of timeframe that we might be talking about in relation to environmental legislation to clarify everything? It is a huge challenge to do it in two years. What time limit you have set, I am not sure. I was told recently that the Republic of Ireland has only just got rid of its last pre-separation pieces of legislation, the last bits of legislation inherited when it was part of the United Kingdom. There are probably some things that do not necessarily need to be changed, but it can be a long process. We can leave that in our legacy paper for successor committees to deal with. Thank you for that. I am not a legal expert, and I think on climate change it might be one of the easier areas because there is a UK domestic legislation governing emissions reductions and action on climate change adaptation, but I would assume that the great repeal bill will also cover things such as energy efficiency standards and fuel emissions standards that we are currently subject to in the European Union. However, as to the details of that, I do not know. Thank you. Let us move on. Dave Thompson. Stuart, I apologise. Can I move on to international obligations? Clearly, we are in uncharted territory here in that no member has ever left the EU. Can I ask you first of all about your assessment of the issues around whether it is going to be hard Brexit or soft Brexit? It was very much hard political questions. What is often quoted is whether we could go under the umbrella of the European economic area, which clearly still follows some climate change targets. What is your assessment of going down that route, as far as there is some understandable background to the EU? Obviously, countries such as Norway, Liechtenstein and Iceland, along with the EU, would like to kick off. The EU member states are not subjected to the same rules that apply to all EU member states. If you have seen the brief I submitted, the issue with the EU membership is that it allows Scotland or the UK to maintain certain standards without being engaged in their development. Nevertheless, it is a sure advantage in terms of continuity for us Brexit, at least in the sectors of products and services, because this is what the bulk of environmental regulations will address in the context of EU membership. This will not, for example, help in the context of protected areas. This is not one of the areas that is covered by EU member states obligations. In other words, EU membership will help on some issues, but not on others. In that connection, EU membership could be desirable from a business perspective, because it would allow businesses to continue operating on the same basis in which they are operating now with applicability of EU standards on products and services, which are nevertheless going to be applicable if we want to continue exporting these services and goods to the EU post Brexit. Thank you, Bob Ward. Thank you, Ardyn. Yeah, I agree with that. The EEA may make the trade of low-carbon goods and services easier than if the UK was outside the EEA, but it wouldn't solve problems like the future of the European Union emissions trading system, where the objection appears to be that the rules governing the system are covered by the European Court of Justice, and Ian Duncan, the Conservative Member of the European Parliament, suggested recently that because of that connection it's likely that the UK will need to extract itself from the emissions trading system. The other relationships that relate to European climate change, again, it's not quite clear that the EEA membership would make a difference. If you think about the European Union's joint commitment to the Paris Agreement, the UK has already individually ratified the agreement and could operate outside of the membership of the European Union. Whether EEA would allow a greater cooperation between the UK and the other member states in the international negotiations, for instance, around the future implementation of Paris, I don't know. I understand that that is one of the areas that is being examined at the moment by the Department of Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy. My colleague, Mark Ruskell, will be asking more detailed questions at emissions trading, so I may hold fire until his questions. Would other witnesses like to come on in the back with my question? To emphasise that the fact that the EEA will not include nature protection legislation or the common agriculture and fisheries policy is also a matter that shouldn't just be looked from an environmental perspective. Very recently, the UN's special rapporteur on human rights and the environment has clarified the important relevance of nature protection vis-à-vis key human rights, right to life, right to health, food and water. I think the evidence is that so far the role of the EU has been very positive in raising standards in the UK related to the protection of nature. Of course, those were controversial because that's again an area which is very close to national sovereignty, where decisions have to be made about the type of development that we pursue. So I think in that relation there is a risk, and I remember reading three weeks ago on the Financial Times cover story that perhaps the Great Repeal Bill will have to do with diminishing protection of nature with a view to speeding up development. So I think once again these are questions, the areas that were not covered from being part of the EEA are critical, not just from an environmental perspective, but also in terms of the vision for development and sustainable development that one pursues and have human rights implications. Any of the other witnesses like to add anything at the stage? Just very briefly on the EUTS and climate policy, even though I know we are going back to it, it's important to note that EEA member states presently implement their commitments under the climate treaties jointly with the EU. So this is a route that would be available in principle to either Scotland or the UK if there were EEA members as well, one would expect. Can I move to the other side of the equation now? I talked about probably a softer Brexit. Let's assume, for argument's sake, that there's a hard Brexit agreement and that we effectively have a no deal or a revert to world trade organisation rules. What's the panel's assessment then going down that route as far as the effect that would have on the environment? I think when we're talking about hard Brexit as a scenario, there will be a number of issues to be taken into account. First of all, as I said already, Britain will remain under great pressure to continue to comply with some EU laws and regulations even outside the EU. This is very much the case, for example, in relation to chemicals. As you may well know already, there is a vast amount of literature to how the US shaped the world trade in chemicals by adopting regulations that have to be complied with in order to export to EU. So this will apply to Britain like everyone else if they want to trade with EU. So in this connection, hard Brexit would not make much of a difference if we want to continue exporting to that market. The issue is, of course, now the UK has a voice in making of these regulations in the future. It will not. It will just be on the receiving end. As far as everything else is concerned, one has to distinguish between areas. This could be quite a long conversation to be had. In general, I think the fact that the UK will be on its own would enable it to make whatever decisions it decides to make on a host of issues from protected areas to climate change, regardless of EU law and the politics. For example, to answer my own question, which I'm good at, I mean state aid rules would no longer apply, which may give a bit more freedom in terms of some negotiation. Absolutely, and if you think of energy sector, this may be a welcome novelty. At the same time, still in the same energy sector, you think of the effect that renewable energy obligations has had. For example, for the development of the renewable sector in Scotland, taking away that element in future may mean that there will no longer be such emphasis on this specific sector moving on after Brexit. Another aspect of a hard Brexit would be the very definite loss of the European Union system for the enforcement of international obligations, apart from anything else. That would be a pretty significant issue for us. You've just predicted my next question, which is around that. I think that the issue that concerned me was the statement by the UK Government that the European Court of Justice would be a knocked out of that. My question, which she partly covered, is who guards the guards. If we leave Europe, who's going to be responsible for infraction procedures, if there's breaches of environmental law, I don't know if Professor Lewis would like to say a little bit more about that. I suppose that that would depend, to a considerable extent, on the UK's position in terms of the trading relationships and the trading agreements that it had. I think that, inevitably, what it would mean would be a greater focus on domestic enforcement and ensuring that we had a more robust system of domestic enforcement. In that scenario, there would be a gap for a new Scottish regulatory body? I think that that's possible. I think that there's a range of different ways in which the issue of enforcement could be approached. It might be possible, for example, to think in terms of an ombudsman of some description. There could be an environmental court. Again, those are all issues that would have to be explored. There's different regulatory models and enforcement models that could be adopted, but I do think that enforcement is going to be one of the key issues for us to have to consider. I think that this may probably be the biggest threat deriving from Brexit and particularly a hard Brexit. On the other hand, existing international obligations on the UK have bearing and also provide opportunities to address this threat. So international obligations related to public access to justice in environmental matters could play a role. Actually, there has been a trend also in EU law to ensure private enforcement of environmental law. The EU and international oversight have already pushed forward. I think access to justice in England and Wales and in Scotland, but more can be done. I think according to those lines, and this is something that could be done in the current legal system. These are opportunities that exist today. Also questions more generally about transparency and public input into permitting procedures and other decision making processes. Those may be also ways that I generally see from environmental scholarship as ways to ensure checks and balances and to provide additional layers of oversight, as well as additional resources that may not be available to the government. Very useful point. So what you're saying is that irrespective of a hard Brexit occurring, we don't opt out of our international human rights regulations and that that would come to apply in that state. Presumably issues like the our house convention would apply as well. Or who's convention, European Convention on Human Rights. But the point I want to make is that there have been issues about the adequacy of current law in the UK about ensuring public access to justice that may have to do with costs of litigation availability to bring cases in the public interest. There has been progress, but I understand that, for instance, from the point of view of environmental NGOs, more could be done. So the areas where perhaps more progress could be made to be even more in line with existing international obligations should be looked at also from the perspective of the loss of additional international oversight. That's very useful. Thank you. Would anyone else like to comment, including Bob Ward? I'll draw attention that a hard Brexit, if it means that we see tariffs, it could make a big difference to the development of low carbon technologies in the UK. It would, for instance, make it more difficult perhaps to export to the European Union, and it would also affect the imports. Now, you might be able to get the development of a larger UK domestic industry to serve a domestic market in those cases, but it's hard to see that that would end up with a better deal for the British consumer, because you won't be having the competitive effect of all the European Union member states as you currently do. If you look at the trade figures at the moment that in terms of our exports of low carbon goods, more than half is to the European Union, and in terms of imports, which includes things like components for wind turbines, it's more than three quarters from the European Union, it would not be easy to replace that with sources from other countries that we might trade with. Any further witnesses on that point? I move on to my final point, so I'm conscious of time. I think Maurice Golden's got a supplementary. I was wondering if the panel had any views just on the, obviously you've mentioned, ICJ and as an enforcement mechanism, and I was interested because if you could draw parallels between national legal provision for enforcement versus the international court of justice as an enforcement mechanism, recognising that in Europe we've had the Gapchakovo, Nagy Marys dam dispute between Hungary and Slovakia, which was at the ICJ for the best part of two decades, and doesn't seem to represent a speedy enforcement mechanism. How would that work in a post-Brexit landscape with a national enforcement mechanism versus a European mechanism tool? I think it's important to bear in mind that the International Court of Justice and the European Court of Justice do very different things. The International Court of Justice is the main international tribunal in existence and, overseas litigation, resolves disputes between states over the interpretation of international law. The European Court of Justice has a very different job. The European Court of Justice is the supreme court of the European Union, and in that connection it interprets the law of the European Union, but also it solves disputes that emerge in relation to EU law. In this specific connection, what the European Court of Justice does that will no longer happen post-Brexit is to act upon what the European Commission requires it to do in the context of enforcement. So a Member State, typically as you could recently see in the context of air pollution, is not complying with its obligations under EU law. The European Commission decides to bring the said Member State before the European Court of Justice on a matter of enforcement. The International Court of Justice could never do this. It's simply beyond its remit. So it would never be a supplement for the European Court of Justice. What we are looking at here is a situation where all European Member States have for the last few decades been in a situation where the European Court of Justice has performed an unusual role of watchdog in co-operation with the Commission of the Implementation of EU Law. The question is how do you deal with its absence? Because the institutions in this country, like in any other European Member States, are used to this oversight, have been held to account, and what will replace this if anything? There are some who argue that it doesn't need to be replaced. We can safely rely upon existing institutions to do their job. Possibly, it really depends on how they go about supplementing the loss of the enforcement aspect that is embedded into EU governance. Just to follow up on that, if you take the example of something like the bathing water standards, if the great repeal bill may say, right, we just simply transfer the bathing water standards into domestic law, how do you actually, when it's discovered that the bathing water standards are not being met, who has the right to go to court or wherever to enforce it, what's the process by doing that, what's the remedy that is provided because you can't, it's the government and SIPA would be the bodies that are responsible for actually reaching the target, but if you're claiming they failed, obviously they haven't done it, so you can't rely on the government or SIPA is absolutely every citizen going to have the right to come to court, if so, through what process, to what tribunal and so on, big issues there. Mark Russell's got a supplementary question as well. Yeah, thanks, convener. Professor Little, you touched on the potential impact of trade deals on regulation and enforcement. You'll be aware that there are considerable concerns about CETA and Vesta state dispute mechanisms within that and requirements for corporations to be involved in the writing of regulations going forward. I'd just sort of be interested from different views around the panel about how you see the direction of trade deals in the future and whether that has an impact in terms of the production of regulations and their enforcement. I think that's a very difficult question to answer, because if the UK and Scotland as part of it, presumably, was wholly reliant on WTO style arrangements, that would, well it would be, it's very difficult to see where it will go because it's completely uncharted water for the UK or for an economy like the UK. So I'm not really sure I can answer that question in a way which is definitive. If I may add, I mean it depends with whom the trade deal will be arranged. I mean the European Union has started a wave of bilateral trade and investment agreements that have provisions on environmental regulation cooperation, so there are opportunities there for instance to continue to work with the EU on raising environmental standards. There are usually also provisions not to lower environmental standards to attract foreign investment. There usually is no hard enforcement in relation to those environmental provisions. It's rather a system of collaboration and support rather than a punitive system and this system that you put in place in opposition to for instance what is the practice of the US and other big players who use their trade agreements in different ways. Now there are also ways in which one can use a hard enforcement and through trade agreements again to raise environmental standards. The US has done so with some countries for instance in Latin America to ensure better implementation of international law, but there are also risks that other provisions in those very complex agreements having to do with invest creating favorable conditions for investment and trade may pose more subtle threats to the environment. So once again it's a very complex question. Those agreements are usually very voluminous and the interaction among their provisions as well as interaction with international law and the national law of the two countries are very complicated. They can vary a lot. There are some opportunities but there are certainly some threats and I think once again a really broad range of expertise is needed to fully appreciate opportunities and risks. Okay. Dave, do you want to ask something? Thank you, convener. In the evidence that she provided to us which I might say was very helpful and very thorough, there was a theme that there's maybe a gap in the powers of this Parliament in that we may require some components of international powers in order to deal with Brexit. I'm not suggesting powers to set up embassies in Paris and Brussels although some of my colleagues may wish to go down that route, but powers temporarily to have an international component. What's your assessment of that? Is that a valid argument? Is there a gap in the powers that this Parliament has to deal with a post Brexit Scotland in the UK? Again, one has to distinguish between different issues in the sense that there are some areas of environmental law and policy where there is a very clear international law slash policy element which after Brexit may well be better dealt with by the both administrations on their own. One of the examples I gave was that of Fisheries presuming that post Brexit the current constitutional arrangement continues on Fisheries, for example. Scotland may find itself at loggerheads with Westminster concerning Fisheries policies, so what has happened in the past in connection with this specific issue, for example, in Denmark, has been that the Faroe Islands acquired full competence on Fisheries that is beyond what Scotland presently enjoys under the current constitutional arrangement, which is what gave the Faroe Islands, for example, the power to trigger that or threaten to trigger that famous macro war with the European Union. So a very small sub-national entity challenging even the EU on issues of Fisheries policy because it was in their clear interest to do so in the present constitutional arrangement that wouldn't be possible or rather it would be a matter for Westminster to deal with this rather than Holyrood. There are several assumptions in this hypothesis that I've just drawn but that was just to give an example of how post Brexit there may be some scope to reconsider the existing constitutional arrangement at least on some environmental issues in order for them to be addressed in a way that is in the interest of Scottish people. Any other witnesses like to contribute? Yes, Professor Reid. I think I just add to that a dozen course of life partly on what the other parties are happy to put up with and so on that the Pharaoh situation was agreed some time ago when perhaps I wasn't seen as being, it wasn't seen as creating a precedent that might cause trouble in other parts of Europe. I think nowadays with such sensitivity on various issues although it's a good example and it shows that with creativity and willingness you can achieve all sorts of patterns that are different from the standard binary one of the nation-state and that's it actually getting there and getting agreement and various things may not be altogether straightforward. Any other witnesses like to contribute? Can I just add to Colin's point there, I mean it wouldn't just be a case of getting agreement on an international basis it would also of course be a case of getting agreement for a particular configuration within the UK context as well and clearly that may be controversial too. Okay Bob Ward, do you wish to contribute? No, I don't think so. The Climate Change Act provides a specific role for the devolved administrations on the main areas of climate change policy so again it might be one of those areas where climate change turns out to be easier to deal with under Brexit than many other areas of environmental policy. Just to wrap up this session you've touched there on perhaps enhancing the powers that are available to the Scottish Parliament. How big a concern is it of the possibility of reverse devolution in some areas where powers could be taken away from the Scottish Parliament? Is that something that you've considered? Yes, it is something because the EU framework has provided a dampener on fragmentation. It means that all the devolved administrations have been able to go their own way but only so far and we haven't had to think of anything else in terms of co-operation willingly or forced and so on. There will be a question post-Brexit of well how much across the UK do we want to have collaboration, co-operation, harmonisation and how is that going to be achieved? Is it going to be achieved by agreement between the devolved administrations or will London say that well no actually we need to have a common UK agricultural policy? That will make sense and the only way to guarantee that or the best way or the simplest way is simply to say well actually we decide that the power resides in London. It's a question that arises how high or how low is the bar set? Yes and how much do you think you can achieve through informal collaboration and co-operation? How much do you feel you want to guarantee things? A quick one on that Professor Reid. Is there not also, there's the legal framework obviously so you mentioned previously about definition of waste but there's also a part where the application of that legal definition is interpreted somewhat differently in Scotland versus England and in your opinion would that remain in terms of how the practical implementation irrespective of what the legal framework there is working from? As long as we still have three or possibly three and a half, maybe four legal systems in the United Kingdom depending on how you regard the situation in Wales, there's always going to be scope for interpretations. The question of at what level do you set the common framework, the common measures, how far down does that go into detail and we've seen in the EU law system you've got things from directives that are very widely expressed all the way down to the detailed regulations that Neil thinks in absolute detail because that's thought to be appropriate to achieve the level of conformity, collaboration, cohesion that's appropriate for those particular subject matters. The same questions will arise between the parts of the United Kingdom in a way that we haven't had to think about because we know that the EU has provided that cohesion. Let's move us on Emma Harper. You convener, good morning everybody. Professor Reid, in your submission you wrote that some important EU laws may not necessarily carry over post Brexit and you mentioned that the comparative stability of EU environment law and policy it takes a long time for initiatives to proceed through EU law making processes but once made they tend to stick without constant change so I'm wondering what implications does leaving the EU have for a stable certain environmental policy on one hand and a flexible tailored environmental policy on the other and do you, I guess all the panel, do you have concerns that might be out with a wider EU environmental framework regarding access to your environment counterparts across the EU? If I may start on the general point you've identified correctly the two sides of the coin that by having the EU policy has been slow to develop, slow to change that means it's unresponsive, it's not flexible, it doesn't necessarily cope with local circumstances very well but on the other hand it means that people have known where they're going and when you're talking about major enterprises such as cleaning up the seas, cleaning up rivers, cleaning up air those aren't things that can be done overnight, they do take a long term co-operation, collaboration between different initiatives, different perspectives and knowing where you're going is important, it allows different areas of environmental law to tie together, it allows industry and investors to know where they're going is if we do something today is it going to be effective in 10, 20 years time and so on and that can be lost there is a tendency of national governments to be swayed for good reasons by short term political will and so on every time if you take the example of the long term plan to raise the tax on petrol it about every second year it got knocked back because there was a sudden short crisis that inflation was going up or something and what had seemed like a 20 year plan to reduce our dependence on motorised traffic or standard air pollution from traffic that long term plan was completely lost every two or so years because that went there's a danger that happens and when you think about the scale of investment that's needed and the upfront investment in capital projects knowing that what you're doing into the future having a certainty of planning for stand forth coming standards planning for what's going to happen is really important for industry as well as as well as for government and coordinating environmental policies. In addition to what Colin just said I think it's important to remind ourselves that we're here looking at the picture that very much like that of a european court of justice has become familiar for us and we take for granted many of the things that the EU has been doing for a long time for its member states and here i'm talking about its technocratic governance a lot of the elements of environmental law are designed crafted and fought of in Brussels by very specialised bureaucracy that they are endowed with we may think this is not a good idea from a democratic point of view but the result the end result of this is that a lot of what is today environmental law in member states is the result of those decisions that have been made there um how do you go about replacing that uh you have in a sense to develop capacity for example the uets very good example of a construction that is you made the uets is far from being perfect and has no arguably performed as it should have but now that you are in charge how do you replace that so this is exactly what Colin was talking about how do we give investors businesses the regularity center certainty that they will be operating under center conditions that you gave that certainty in a way how do you make up for its loss now anyone else just to add i mean for how much of course EU law is cumbersome there are there have been benefits in different member states coming together exchanging views and building on each other is also lessons learned and and i think most EU environmental law had flexibilities built in so in some ways the advantage is there where there was a clear direction where um EU environmental regulation was going but there were also there were minimum mostly minimum standards in place so there was also a possibility for member states um under certain circumstances to go higher and be more ambitious in environmental protection but within a system that guaranteed a lot of transparency and i think that transparency is normally not there at the level of member states and national parliaments i think that's one loss that will come and this transparency also applies to bilateral trade and investment agreements we don't really have nearly as much information about EU negotiations on bilateral trade agreements as we have for any other big partner um the other aspect which is to be considered i think Annaliza has hinted to that is the the pooling of resources that occurred in EU environmental lawmaking and the experiences that have been exchanged and the networks that have been created not only among regulators but also enforcers and managers of waters for instance some of those networks may remain available to non-member states and possibly be joined informally so there's again there are some avenues where continued piggybacking on the pooling of resources at EU level may may be explored can i just add on to that as well another factor to to think about is that in terms of policy making and lawmaking currently of course done primarily at the EU level when that shifts down to domestic level there will in addition to there being issues with resourcing of policy making and lawmaking there will also be political pressures that are brought to bear in that process lobbying much more intense lobbying than probably is the case at the moment vested interests and so it could also be that at a more sort of general level the issue of the environment becomes far more politicised and that too is something which may well bear on environmental policy making and lawmaking perhaps around the agricultural sector where we've already heard phrases like level playing field and gold plating bandied about possibly and there's also I suppose other issues which have been parked really at a TU level such as GMOs absolutely bob war wants to come in yeah so with climate change there are a couple of things to point out on the policy making front and it should be recognised that the UK has been a leader within the EU on climate policy it has been cutting its emissions faster than the average so if the UK is no longer part of the EU's commitment to its long-term collective goals such as the commitment to reduce its emissions by 30% by 2030 the it's going to be more difficult for the European Union to achieve that without the UK in addition the UK has been a proponent of stronger action within the European Union to some extent counterbalancing those amber states that wish to go slower such as Poland and without the UK part of that process I think the EU's going to find it more difficult to go faster but conversely the UK if it is now going to be negotiating in the UN as a single country rather than collectively as the European Union it's likely to be a less influential player that's certainly going to be true within climate change and it may have to look for other groupings there is within the UN climate change negotiations a new group called the high ambition coalition of countries which are for instance pushing for the commitment to limiting the rising global mean surface temperature to only one and a half degrees so that might be the future for the UK but it's hard to see that the UK will be as influential in those international fora alone compared with its role within the European Union I think that that takes us nicely on to a question that Angus MacDonald wants to ask convener i'm falling on from the panel's comments and in particular Dr Savarese's and Bob Ward's I'm keen to explore in a bit more detail the issue of nationally determined contributions which detail the action each state will take to meet the Paris agreement now given that EU officials undertake most of the work involved in drafting, compiling and completing NDCs on behalf of all the EU states I'm curious as to whether there are capacity issues with regard to whether or not the UK has the capacity to complete its own NDC which it will presumably have to do immediately after Brexit is the capacity there to deal with that over the next two years and are there any safeguards to ensure the UK doesn't backslide on its own specific NDC and also the existing EU one that was signed in 2015 The UK's domestic target which is outlined in the fifth carbon budget is more ambitious than the EU's collective target for 2030 so the UK now the government the UK the Westminster government is currently trying to work out what policies it needs to deliver on that 2030 target in the fifth carbon budget and that's due to be published at some point this year we hope in the clean energy plan which will lay out in detail what needs to be done I would imagine that that information will be more than sufficient to provide the details for a UK nationally determined contribution which would need to be submitted at the point when the UK decides to be a separate entity with regard to the Paris Agreement rather than as a part of the European Union member state so my now on the capacity issue the UK's been has provided many of the lead negotiators in the European Union in the UN negotiations particularly Pete Betts has played a strong role my so there is expertise there I would say though that the big problem at the moment one of the main reasons why the clean energy plan has been delayed is the amount of time that's being spent on trying to work out what Brexit means it's causing an enormous destruction in many of the Westminster government departments and is limiting the ability to make progress on these other commitments I suppose as well the issue of how high a priority this is in the grand scheme of things comes into play yes well I mean the the discussions going on about climate policy in the department for business energy and industrial strategy are also closely linked to broader discussions about the energy union and issues such as what about interconnectors for the UK with other EU and non EU member non EU states so it's a complicated set of issues but the UK at least has the domestic legislation in the 2000 climate change act which will should not mean a big dislocation if we are extracting ourselves from the joint negotiating partnership with the other European Union member states. Dr Salbracing. There are a number of things that could be said about NDCs but I'll try to keep this brief and as un-technical as possible. NDCs are new. They are a very recent creation in the context of international climate law and policy so there is very limited experience with them. What has happened so far for EU member states is that the Brussels bureaucrats have taken care of working out a collective NDC for the European Union and its member states. In this context I've also worked out what sort of targets will be assigned under EU law to each EU member state. So moving out from this architecture will entail that the UK will have to submit its own NDC as it has already mentioned. It will not be possible to backslide on whatever was promised before that point but that shouldn't be a problem because it was already observed domestic UK policies are more ambitious than the targets are envisioned in EU law so I will be concerned about that. What could be an issue in the context of UK NDC is how the NDC is prepared. In other words there is no precedent for this. It has never been done before so what will be the role of devolved administrations in the preparation of the NDC and most important I think for Scotland will be what will be for example the role of renewable energy in that context. What kind of targets if any will be embedded in that so there will be a conversation I think to be had for example on this issue as well as any other that is touched upon in the NDC. It's important to note that there are no rules presently on what NDC should say. There's no NDC template because the parties could not work it out in advance of the Paris agreements adoption so they will come up with a template in the next few years and when that is available of course it will be a matter to stick to that template when it's available. Anyone else? Right thank you for that. Alexander Burnett. Thank you for moving on from the bureaucracy of integrating environmental policy challenges around funding. Could you comment around the funding implications of leaving the EU particularly given that we're currently a net contributor? Don't know the details of the funding I concentrated on the legal side. I know that the funding arrangements are complicated because there are the various programmes that tie into EU measures and programmes. How far they will, it will obviously be a domestic policy decision, how far we replicate those which could obviously go up or down in particular areas. The agriculture areas have obviously been identified as a huge area where there are financial implications in the details of the schemes and the overall framework of financial schemes that can operate. There are throughout the EU environmental law, there are odd bits and pieces that have financial implications for example charging for water services and so on is embedded in the water framework directive but that's all of those details I'm afraid are way beyond me in terms of detailed expertise. I'm also not an expert but I think there are perhaps two sets of considerations to bear in mind so the first is internally what will be the amounts of funding that will be made available for continued for instance integration of environmental issues into the agriculture and fisheries policy but it's not just a question of amount it's also a question of rules and at the moment there are particular rules related to funding going to farmers or fishermen that either bind them or encourage them to take a more let's say ecosystem stewardship approach. Now those rules could change and funding could really be a huge factor in whether or not our productive sectors take an environmentally sustainable approach or not. The other question is whether the UK outside of the EU could still participate in funding schemes that the EU manages. There are different I think there are some experiences there there are some lessons learned for instance looking at the question of also research funding negotiations can take some creative routes so again it may be a question of both looking at precedents but also perhaps thinking about ways in which agreement can be found with the EU for some continued participation in funding schemes. What it is just said it's interesting for example to note what EU members do presently they all have different arrangements in relation to funding so it will be down to negotiations really what specific elements the UK and or Scotland may want to adhere to post Brexit research only development only both it would be really up for grabs. I really wish to add much more than that I mean I think that the issue of funding is is predominantly a political one it's a policy issue rather than a legal issue which is what we would speak to it. Jenny Gouldith. Good morning to the panel Professor Litter, in your written submission you talk about in the event of a hard Brexit how that could impact upon environmental policy and lawmaking in terms of the loss with regard to resources and expertise in Scotland. You state that this may result over time in Scottish and UK environmental policy and lawmaking becoming more piecemeal incremental minimalist and reactive so there's obviously an issue here in terms of capacity I'd just like to ask the panel more broadly do we have that capacity in Scotland at the moment in terms of environmental resources and expertise? I'm not sure that the UK has it and I think that it will be a struggle for both Scotland and the UK to try and replicate the level of expertise and the capacity that the institutions of the EU have. The comments that I made in my paper I mean I think that one thing that I would want to add to them is that I think that you know it was alluded to the fact that it's unlikely that environmental issues are going to be a priority in the context of everything that's happening and I think that what is likely to happen in the event of a hard Brexit is that there will be a gradual process I don't I don't see things happening in an immediate sense so we're talking in the medium to long term what you'll see is an uncoupling of provision substantive provision in some areas in Scotland from the rest of the EU and I think too if one looks at the history of environmental law in Scotland and the UK what you might call the long 19th century of environmental law or public health law in Scotland we did see a pattern of lawmaking and policymaking which was generally ad hoc pretty slow incremental and now it's not necessarily the case that given the nature the transnational nature of much modern environmental law that that would be the case in a post-Brexit situation but it's possible that that might reflect a national dynamic if you like within Scotland and within the UK on environmental issues. Outside the EU or within the EEA who have built up the capacity to track European directives and legislation and implement them and if there are successful models we can look at there. If you put in terms of to track the EU directives that's the easy way out that's the way out that says well we you know here's an important area we recognise something must be done in it we look around and we take something off the shelf the EU model of off the shelf but that may or may not be what is wanted in a post-Brexit UK or a post-Brexit Scotland where the whole idea is that you design your own policy to design your own you know to fit your own particular needs and circumstances. I think the the sheer scale when you look at the the number of things that the EU does on environmental area in any given year you can go through some of them someone would be unnecessary and so on but actually a lot of them are things that are worthwhile doing and they're going to be hard and there's no way in which Scotland, Northern Ireland, Wales, England by themselves can do all of those so you come back to this idea of some form of co-operation cohesion at the UK level beyond the beyond the UK with some or all of the member states of the EU, EEA and so on are we allowed to have some sort of associate membership of the the various professional and other collaborations that operate so we can continue to pool experience and so on. I don't have details of it when I'm told that de facto in some areas in the EU it's recognised that different member states take the lead on it so you don't actually although all member states are meant to be engaging equally with things well you leave that to the doctor or you do this so and so and there may be areas where we suddenly find that we have a lack of experience but again that's the internal workings of the government departments you really have to ask them what what they think about it. Can I follow up on a point that Professor Reid has made there on an issue of tracking EU legislation? In the Scottish context that may prove problematic if you have UK strategic legislation which is contrary to this is post brexit UK legislation which is contrary to EU law. Equivalence is going to be vital in terms of trade whatever trade deal is established. Equivalence over a large number of environmental standards will be will be important. One would think so but as was mentioned earlier there could well be some areas where that would not be the case and where member states or not member states would have a greater degree of national discretion. I guess that's scenario where you would be pulling something off the EU shelf and seeking to implement it is where the threat of lobbying and pressure comes in where groups are saying to government you don't have to do this and it doesn't suit us for you to do it and I suppose that's where we get into the territory we touched on earlier. Of the interlinkages and that's where also the pulling of resources at EU level was helpful so implications across different ranges of international negotiations having to do with the law of the sea as opposed to biodiversity and water trade and investment at different levels in all these things are really very much linked and even pulling just one thread may unravel a lot of other areas so that it's not just a question of tracking EU environmental law but also understanding why certain developments occur at EU level in relation to developments perhaps in other areas. On a purely anecdotal basis I know for a fact that in the context of Norway for example they have developed capacity in order to just do that, keep track and keep tabs of EU law because this is what they have to do as EEA members and not even on all issues but this is an enormous bureaucratic undertaking in the sense that not being part to those negotiations and those deliberations means that they are really very much in the darkness many times as to why some issues were addressed the way we were addressed so it's definitely even harder on the outside to keep tabs of EU law and regulations at the same time and this may sound overly optimistic but it's important to remind ourselves that the EU has broken the path on so many environmental issues for example you may be aware that post 2020 the EU is coming up with a comprehensive plan for reducing emissions from land uses which is unprecedented nobody else has done it before everybody is looking at what the EU is doing and it's very much like when the EU ETS was drawn up nobody had done it before everyone wanted to learn from the EU and the US learned by error actually as it happens but this is just to say these very ambitious designs that have been drawn up in the context of EU will be out of reach I think for a time being what realistically the UK will have to do is to build capacity just to cope with the present level of regulation and to keep tabs of whatever EU laws they have to implement because of the trade issues that you mentioned and then move on to the next level once they have managed to build the capacity very unique David Stewart wants to come in here give me more observation and question but clearly the witnesses will know that the EU itself also relies on and other bodies for example and codes of practice for food production they rely on the codex Alimentaris which in turn relates to World Trade Organization so there is a one level there is a life out with the EU much as obviously personally I'm very enthusiastic of the work that's done that they themselves rely on and world experts to give advice on food protection yes absolutely the EU doesn't do anything everything itself that would be impossible in the very global world we live in everything is so interconnected what I mean to say with the example of land uses is that in many areas like chemicals and so on the US come up with new tools to govern environmental issues that have attracted a lot of attention and have become sort of a benchmark internationally for good governance or at least pioneering governance now outside of that framework it will not be impossible I'm just saying if you probably take time before the UK is up to speed on these issues and I think what we see also with the EU is that efforts in advancing internal EU environmental law are linked to efforts in having influence on those other international bodies that provide standards and complement so there is there is a link between what it's done in terms of EU environmental law what the EU does as a negotiator in other international organizations as well as what then the EU does bilaterally with its partners be that Japan Canada the US or South Africa so all of that I think in time has become much more strategic the use of these different powers that the US has as a whole and again being out of EU environmental law making being out of EU negotiating teams mean that again those strategic approaches to regulation that grows from internal to international and transnational it'll be very difficult to affect to make an impact on those or propose something different being a pioneer also means having the advantage of being a first mover being seen as a model and having others collaborating or following an example moving on Claudia Beamish thank you convener good morning to the panel I'd like to explore with you in in a bit more detail the the issue around the opportunities to try and be positive at the moment for better integration of environmental policy and climate change policy with other policy areas such as agriculture fisheries rural or land use and also wellbeing and sustainability so I would like to start just by highlighting something from the Strathclyde Centre for Environmental Law and Governance submission and quote that the the comment that Scotland could develop a system of integrated regulation financial support for ecosystem stewardship by farmers that is more ambitious from an environmental perspective than in the EU and that goes on to refer to ecosystem services and and those those issues so I wonder if we could start perhaps with yourself Professor Moghera. Thank you very much I mean I think one of the advantages of the EU and new environmental law making being so transparent is that one can point quite clearly the finger on on shortcomings and I think both the EU common agricultural policy and the common fisheries policies have been for a long time have not necessarily performed to at least to the expectations of environmental NGOs and other and other stakeholders. There has been progress but I think there are still clear areas where the EU is not necessarily has not devised policies the fully integrate environmental concerns or sufficiently effectively integrate environmental concerns in those areas. There are particular new concepts which actually the EU supports internationally such as ecosystem services or for instance international obligations related to ecosystem restorations the restoration that don't quite find either yet place or systematic support in EU policies so there are opportunities there for while remaining perhaps in line with certain approaches to do better the question there is whether there is a political will whether there is there will be leeway perhaps for devolved administrations that have more and interesting going in that direction to pursue that direction and then of course there is the question of the funding and whether funding will be there particularly I think for for agriculture and fisheries to support those farmers and fishermen who will take that quite burdensome ecosystem stewardship role on to be supported and to be not put at a disadvantage compared to other approaches in that productive sector. Thank you. Are there other comments from other panel members? I think to say that it is a great opportunity to start again you know we could start completely afresh in thinking what do we want our countryside to be providing do we want it people to be living there at all if we want them to be living there what are they doing are they being productive are they making productive in a free market system or are we going to pay them for different things if so is it for agriculture production is it for landscape is it for environment how important is food security in all of these issues all of these things that in a sense we haven't really had to think about hard for several decades now are absolutely on the table and have to be thought of but they have to be thought of at the same time as we're coping with all the disruption from coping with Brexit all the carrying over of existing laws simply to make sure that something something operates in its first place is in a sense is a real problem everything comes at once the the big opportunities come at the same time as you're struggling to cope with just keeping things ticking over. Thank you. Yes. In our very area it comes to mind and where Scotland has actually led the way is that of community energy that is now becoming an issue in the EU for those who have seen the draft renewable energy directive for 2020 there is actually a mention of this issue but Scotland is already there and everybody I came last week from a meeting in Finland where everybody was asking about the Scottish experience with community energy so there is a lot more space now for Scotland and the UK to pursue whatever policies they intend to pursue on the specific issue beyond the EU. Thank you and could I bring you in please Bob Ward in relation to the question of the integration of climate change policy which we in many ways are very proud of in Scotland and the UK just in terms of going forward this week as people will know we have the debate on the climate change plan and the continuation of integration post Brexit value some comments on. Yes well some of the key areas have already been highlighted in particular the common agricultural policy since 2013 has tried to create a priority for increasingly resilience to the impacts of climate change in EU farming practice. One would hope that the UK will in whatever replaces the common agricultural policy will similarly place a high priority on that and also on reducing emissions in agriculture much of UK policy up till now has focused on the power sector for reducing emissions and we've been very successful but the really difficult stuff that we now face certainly reaching our 2030 targets and the fifth carbon budget is going to be around heating and around transport and we can certainly do a lot domestically within the UK to promote but it promote that but it's going to be very very difficult. I would like to flag it I mean I must apologise that I'm not an expert on the Scottish aspects of of climate change policy but it is of concern that the that DEFRA has not done a very good job in England in my opinion of raising the profile of climate change risks and of the need to adapt to them and it's been very much muted partly because its department has been paired back and they haven't had the staff to implement these policies but it has to be a priority right across the UK for all the devolved administrations and Westminster to improve the incorporation of climate change adaptation within a lot of existing policy particularly around flooding policy that needs to take account of the fact that we are seeing rising sea levels which are increasing the risk of coastal flooding and we're seeing heavier rainfall which is increasing the risk of river flooding and surface water flooding and it's not always obvious that that's being properly taken into account at the moment in terms of our forward planning. Thank you could I ask the panel more broadly if there's not more broadly but actually specifically but to move on to the integration of marine policy with fisheries and other other uses of our marine environment in relation to the birds and habitat directive and concerns about that in the future and also marine protected areas but any other comments that the panel may have. In some ways the discussion about common fisheries policy can be related to the common agricultural policy I mean the EU has done some progress in integrating perhaps less progress in fisheries than in agriculture but there's a lot that could be done better. At the same time I think the marine environment is where we have significant layers of international law and structures in place so perhaps leeway in some way we have less leeway than in the agricultural sector. It's an area where also I think internationally we're lagging behind I mean ensuring protection of the environment in the marine context creating marine protected areas and engaging in sustainable fisheries they're global challenges and there is much less experience and understanding than we have about terrestrial protection. So there are again there are opportunities there but there is also I think it's a sector where it's very difficult to it's not impossible almost impossible to go along there's a lot of need for cooperation there's shared stocks there are global impacts that affect different areas so in some ways it's a process where one can can be a leader but really very much in cooperation in regional sectoral organisations as well as international processes. Thank you yes. Just to add a very much endorsed that final point about the fact it's not something you can do it yourself two other different points one it's an area where within the United Kingdom the jurisdictional issues become particularly important about which what is UK what's Scottish Northern Ireland and so on the other point is that it's perhaps a good example of an area where the absence of the EU enforcement measures may be present if we are not designating enough areas as special areas of conservation marine area inside the EU the commission will investigate people who complain and there's a possibility of action being taken against the United Kingdom to make sure it does do enough in that area once you're out with the EU what's the process who calls the government to account if we're not living up to the the targets. Thank you and finally are there any examples that the panel can highlight in other countries of very effective integration of environmental climate change and and policies such as agriculture or or land use or any of the the topics we've touched on within or outside the EU any good examples country focused on land uses um this is very much um a new story in the sense that the parties agreement has changed the game a little bit and this means that states are moving in this sector more slowly than they have in other sectors this is where the EU experience is so interesting and why everybody's so interested in seeing what they're doing simply because the way international obligations were crafted before where was not an incentive for states to take aggressive action in this specific sector so the story needs to be told yet about mitigation in the land sector a lot of attention has been put of course on reduced deforestation in the tropics but this is not what is the issue here um I think in terms of fisheries this example is very well showcased but Norway seems to be the leader to look up to in terms of sustainable fisheries management so we have here a good example of an EEA member state but does not do what the EU does and has managed to achieve success in this very tricky area one of very few good examples I have to say because fisheries is a very difficult issue for all states um and there is a lot of thinking to be done and this is an area where the UK on its own could potentially make a difference bearing in mind that there are international obligations the UK would have to abide to even outside the EU I mean there are international processes there are exactly trying to do that to identify good practices I mean just this December 2016 196 parties to the UN Convention on Biological Diversity have been discussing their obligations related to mainstreaming biodiversity in fisheries agriculture and tourism that also has to do with ecosystem based approaches to climate change adaptation and mitigation but but the jury is still out I mean there is a the obligations have existed since the 90s we haven't necessarily made a lot of progress we need to bring together examples where things have worked and different international organization will try and pull that information together over the next biennium so the FAO I think has been mandated to provide experiences and tools related to mainstreaming of biodiversity in the fisheries sectors so there are ongoing processes international ones that may provide food for thought for what the UK and Scotland may wish to do but at the same time I think one one has to be aware that not things that may work somewhere may not work elsewhere and there may be practices here that may be helpfully also shared in the context with a view to compare experiences and find the right approach okay moving on to something we've touched on earlier but we'll deal with some more detail now the EU emissions trading scheme Mark Ruskell yeah thanks convener um so yeah I think we've already had some comments on the ETS in relation to policing I think and the role of the European Court of Justice and also capacity issues as well um perhaps we could just go around the panel and get some more thoughts on what you see as the most likely outcome here I mean do you see us remaining within the European ETS and if we're not to remain within that then how do we either link to it or create something as good as if not better than the ETS going forward now um as I mentioned in my submission I think um pulling out of the ETS would be best when the end of the present period is over which is 2020 in 2021 so that would be the ideal time to unplug from the ETS should the UK decide to do so but why do I say that because there are cycles in the ETS so the idea of pulling out at the end of an present cycle would be the least painful option for those installations at own allowances and there it could be possible to address the technical issues possibly even compensation issues that need to be addressed in that context um that would also be a good opportunity to work out what to do with these installations after 2021 because these are the heaviest polluters these are the largest polluters so they will have to be regulated in a stringent way to reduce their emissions moving on the ETS is not the only option there are other options that could be pursued a UK UK ETS or carbon tax there are so many policy tools regulatory tools that could be deployed the UTS not necessarily is the best it has had its problems the U is going to carry on with it post 2020 there's no doubt about that and that regulatory certainty is an asset for investors in this sector that have been said that for the UK after Brexit this is not necessarily the best option so it would be a matter for the UK to decide what they want to do in this sector but for sure something will need to be done and something will have to be in place by 2021 I think my views I'm happy that other people are a lot more expert on the subject than I am so I'm happy just to UK leaving the EU ETS the it's certainly true that it's it's better for your companies to be inside a large emissions trading system than inside a small one because the opportunity then to buy permits and sell permits is greater and you're more likely to have a stable price over that period if the UK does need does leave the ETS there will be significant costs associated with extracting its itself those are costs that no doubt will have to be passed on to consumers and then there will be costs of then setting up whatever would replace it so on the whole leave the ETS is less of a good idea than staying in if we do leave if we do leave then it's an opportunity to um maybe design something that is functions better than the EU ETS it has been hampered in recent years by um a structural flaw that meant that it had rules for dealing with cases where the price spiked but not where it it dropped and and hence we've had this extended period of very low carbon prices which have undermined future investment in low carbon alternatives the the Westminster Government has attempted to address this through the carbon price support rate which has added 18 pounds a ton on top but it then immediately undid much of the good of that by freezing it instead of continuing to increase it the so the UK would have options and there there are again trade-offs between whether you want an emissions trading system in the UK which then has some sort of relationship with the EU ETS the advantage of emissions trading system is that it sets a cap you know what you're going to reduce emissions to you don't know what the price of carbon will be equally if you set a carbon tax you know what the carbon price is but you don't know what emissions reduction you will get as a result so in general economists think that emissions trading systems tend to push towards the most efficient savings of emissions because the trading system allows you to for instance go to those parts of the system where reductions and emissions are cheaper but on the other hand carbon taxes can be administratively easier to you to to implement so my guess is that if we are going down the route of extracting ourselves from the ETS we will need to look at what makes the biggest sense in terms of our current system and at the moment it's worth remembering that the traded sector covered by the emissions trading system only accounts for 40% of the UK's emissions roughly and how we in an ideal world you would want a strong uniform carbon price right across the economy in order to give the most cost effective emissions reductions sorry can i just pick up on that bob war um forgive me if i got this wrong but is it not the case if the UK stayed in the ETS as some sort of associate member in the midst of a drive to reduce the cap it would have no voting rights around that so therefore it would be part of a policy it had no input to shaping that well that that's certainly my understanding although you cannot the question is how much influence the UK currently has the UK wanted a more ambitious reform of the ETS and we ended up with a rather watered down version by comparison so it's certainly true that if you're a member of the of an emissions trading system you want to play a role in determining its rules and i would suspect that it then becomes a trade-off are you better off being in a in a trading system which is likely to be more cost effective for your companies because the trading of permits is offers you more options or would you rather be in a system where you had greater control over the rules but that the costs overall might be larger for compliance thank you apologies to martin what's going on just sort of further to that i mean where do you see reform of the ETS going then beyond 2020 i mean what what kind of rules as a convener was was mentioning there are we are we likely to have post 2020 what kind of flavour of ETS are we going to have going forward well the um sorry is this for me or uh for for you both please go ahead pop yeah okay um so um well the problem for the i mean you can look at the low carbon price from two points of view you can argue that it's meant our emissions have been cheaper to reduce than we would otherwise have expected but it really is a problem that the price has been so low for so long because many uh many companies now are not expecting a high future carbon price in the as a result of the ETS and re-establishing a credibility of a strong price in the future and the expectation of a price in the future will need to be a priority for the post 2020 phases of the ETS which the easiest way is by setting more ambitious caps there are also the question of what we do around other um around the non-traded sector we have the aviation sector which is slowly moving towards coming up with its own scheme which means that it hasn't been included in the ETS as it has been but i think that um a strong price signal is absolutely fundamental to driving the investment that you will need in low carbon technologies and the UK has tentatively gone that down that route through the carbon price support rate although that that still only adds a very small amount my guess is that we are probably expect we would need a carbon price of about no less than 50 pounds a ton going forward and higher if you're going to be serious about meeting the paris targets and that doesn't look likely at the moment in the ETS the way in which they handled the reform has also tended to undermine confidence of companies because the ETS the more that policymakers intervene in the operation of a carbon pricing system the more it undermines the confidence of companies that the rules are going to say the same and that they can plan for the future so you're kind of caught there you want um more or less to leave the system to operate but leaving it with structural flaws in it has its own consequences as well just to add to what was the state um the European Commission has made its proposals for reform of the UTS POS 2020 whether these will be welcomed or not and how they will be paid pan out in practice remains to be seen but the great focus there as it was just mentioned was that of ensuring that we get some kind of stability in the price and a more robust price for um and CO2 now we know for sure what will not be included and we know the land use sector will not be included so there will be no effort in moving towards that universal uh UTS that Bob was mentioning a few minutes ago um there were a very good reasons why that was made as a decision and I think it's in itself a good decision especially in the context of a system that has still quite a few teeth in problems even in the context of a very homogeneous sector where measuring emissions is actually fairly easy so the expansion towards other sectors that are less heavily regulated as activities and therefore where measuring emissions is harder it's trickier and certainly should be considered only when we have a robust well performing emission trading scheme where no surprises can arise of uh you know hot air and all the other technical jargon that is used to depict the fact that we are actually paying for emissions reductions that are not taking place so this is this is where the UTS is um talking about technicalities and arrangements it was already mentioned the fact that even though there are no members of the EU a member states have opted to actually join the UTS and therefore they have their own ETS that are uh well they are part of the UTS but they have installations in their own jurisdiction that are part of the system which could be an option for the UK moving on but as it was mentioned the problem with that is that you would not have a C in how the rules are drafted and this is the always the issue with the EEA membership um you are part of a regulatory system that you have no control over uh but the point that Bob made is also very fair there is an issue there with how much every EU member states actually controls the UTS there is a widespread dissatisfaction with the UTS at the same time um it has been very hard to fix it so far okay yeah you're happy with that one okay thank you um Kate Forbes great thank you very much so we've covered an enormous amount of ground this morning and as we sort of moved towards the end what are the lessons that each of you would identify that we could learn from other countries for either specific environmental issues or for environmental policy as a whole you've stomped them scenario i don't think we can have very easy precedents or or examples to look at i think probably the the biggest challenge this raises questions that are unprecedented and it forces us to look at even very well known areas of environmental law with very different eyes i myself have worked on some of these issues and and i found myself reaching very different conclusions now that i think of brexit um i think that there are more considerations that should be looked at so the fact that we need to look i think at environmental law as a whole not just picking priorities because that can be very dangerous so of course climate change is very visible but i think it is intimately connected to what we do with biodiversity and water and environmental impact assessment we need to look at the environment as part of a broader sustainable development strategy and looking at questions of trade investment human rights human health um and i think to me the biggest lessons that we need to work much more across disciplines and across expertise to really understand how as we were saying earlier pulling one thread may mean unraveling many other things we're trying to address um i don't think there's any clear example of somebody that has excelled in integrating the environment in different sectors these are ongoing challenges um so i think it's yeah i don't think there are any simple or one examples that we can look at as a different way of avoiding the question i think i'd say that so much depends on the wider background that simply in the legal side you take the simple example of nature conservation in the united states the attitudes of what the landowner can do on their own land are so different from what they are in europe that the approach that we have of sites of special scientific interests so on and so forth just doesn't work they doesn't exist in the same way and those differences pervade all the systems the the legal structures the legal ideas likewise the way in which the economy works is the economy driven by small businesses larger businesses what's important in relation to the trade-offs between food security food production profit and so on so the looking around the world is always very dangerous because you can see particular things look wonderful but when you try and transplant them there can be huge problems because in so many ways they are a product they work in their own particular context okay it's been interesting it's been fascinating this morning hearing your evidence one of the things that struck me is that there's been a little or no disagreement across the panel across the subject matters we've covered now it's wonder is that the case across wider academia and if it is what role can academia play in assisting the UK and Scottish governments to identify the risks and opportunities that that are there and to plot a way forward i mean are you aware of any approaches to the sector from either of the government seeking access to your expertise and as you may know i co-ordinated for sooner report that was published before Christmas on the environmental impact of brexit in Scotland and in fact many impact all of our panellists except for Bob Humphreyd contributed to this report so on the back of that report we did have a meeting a couple of weeks ago with members of the Spersonal from the Scottish Government seeking our expertise and the idea would be moving forward to engage in a sustained dialogue with them because there's so much expertise fortunately in Scotland on environmental law but it is as explained we are also fairly specialised so it does make sense to address issue by issue and engaged with us in a conversation moving forward simply because this is what we do this is what we know but at the same time there is so much that nobody really knows in relation to brexit so it makes sense to bring our heads together and try and figure out what we should do or could do absolutely anyone else professor read parent unanimity might be because at this stage we are still identifying the challenges rather than actually producing the solutions when you get forward to work out what is the best way of dealing with these challenges we you may find that different people have different views bob ward yeah i i i think that academia has a big role to play in in making sure that the brexit and the environment is not just about regulation and this is a particularly crucial point on climate change there are some within the english national political system who would portray climate change as simply a drag on economic growth or cost to be minimised as a profoundly narrow and mistaken point of view and i'm glad to say that scotland seems to have a slightly more enlightened view but the trade opportunities are going to be there we have seen with the paris agreement a big international policy driver which will drive the development of low carbon goods and services across the world and most of the world is outside of the european union if the uk wants to take advantage of trade deals outside the european union and build them up it ought to be looking in particular at the low carbon goods and services sector and i think that the academia needs to help the political those in the devolved administrations and in westminster to understand this point it's a huge trade opportunity the uk has very considerable comparative advantages in many low carbon technologies and as well as a world-class science base working in many areas of of low carbon r&d and it would we need to be sure that this is not just portrayed as a regulation issue this is really about trade opportunities driven by the paris agreement profession just to say that i think i mean we're all part of an informal network i think of environmental lawyers in scotland we're also some most of us i think part of this scottish network on y yulaw so i think there is willingness in academia to to collaborate what i think has been perhaps challenging until now has been to collaborate in an effective way partly because the time frames are very tight and it really needs for us to work mor ysgol a'r bwrdd yn ysgol, ac ydych yn y ddweud fyddai'r lleiw. Rydw i'r ffordd yn ei ddweud ar y ddechrau ac yn y rhaid yn ffordd o'r pwylltau, yna'r cyhoeddiad o'r ffordd o'r rhaid yn gweithio'r ddweud o'r ddweud o'r dweud o'r dweud o'r ddweud o'r ddweud. Felly, os ydych yn ei ddweud, mae'n byddwn ni'n dechrau i'r ddweud i eich ddadwyd, ond mae'n meddwl i'r ddweud ac oedd yn cael ei gweld, Ond ydw i'r cynyddu oedd y Llywodraeth yng ngyfyniad o'r yrdfodwr yn gwyllwzaru'r Llywodraeth ym Mwysigol y byddai'r gwahagau lleol gyda chael gyda'r gwahagau, nid ydych chi'n olyf yn sicr ffordd o'r cabellus cyllideb sydd gyda'r cyfrifydd o'r dyfodol i ysgrifennu'r ymddiadau. Ond ydych chi'n olywodraeth yw'r lleswn ydyn nhw, dyma'r ddwyad yma yn ymdyn nhw wedi'r byw ymddai'r lleswn. is to have a broad-based dialogue where, of course, academics don't just speak to each other, but speak to NGOs, to the other stakeholders, to business. And we have that. We work out together what can work and what can happen and what kind of creative solutions we can all try to come up with. But it needs a bit of a systematic approach, identifying key questions and then giving time frame for us to get together and reach out to stakeholders. Professor Little. I would endorse that entirely. I think that it is important that the academic contribution is a multidisciplinary one. That requires other academics to think about how that collaboration should be configured. But it also requires bodies such as the Parliament here to have an awareness of what that sort of collaborative activity amongst academics and contribution by academics can offer and also what it can't offer. Thank you very much, all of you, for your contribution this morning. It's been very, very helpful and enlightening. At its next meeting of the committee, on 21 March, when we will take evidence from the Cabinet Secretary for the Environment, Climate Change and Land Reform and the Carbon Accounting Scheme, Scotland Amendment Regulations 2017, the committee will also review its work programme and consider its response to the wildlife crime in Scotland annual report. As agreed earlier, we will now move into private session and I ask that the public gallery be cleared as the public part of the meeting is closed. Thank you.