Net zero drive has become another moneymaking racket for landowners

Scotland’s landowners have discovered a new source of wealth, aided and abetted by Scottish Government policy, directed through its conservation quango, NatureScot on which, needless to say, landowning interests are exceedingly well represented.

“Peatland restoration” and afforestation in the name of carbon capture are the latest underpinnings of the status quo, supported by huge sums of public money. These activities are turned into carbon credits which can then be sold in the greenwashing market, so polluters can carry on polluting.

Whether, 100 years from now, there will be any net environmental benefit is unprovable. What is certain is that actions presented as environmental imperatives have been organised in a way that brings minimal benefits to rural communities, who are not even consulted, while pushing up values of private land.

In other words, the drive for net zero has been diverted into yet another money-making racket for landowners, with the side effect of inflating land values. All this pulls in the polar opposite direction to “land reform” objectives which attract lip service but little else.

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These realities are highlighted in a new paper published by Community Land Scotland which represents bodies that among them own less than three per cent of Scottish land. “The Credibility Gap for Green Finance” is by Jon Hollingdale who, until last year, was chief executive of the Community Woodlands Association and knows how an opaque system works.

Hollingdale is scathing about a deal struck between NatureScot and a group of merchant banks to oil the wheels of the deals. The starting point, he says, is to “greatly inflate” the private capital required to bridge Scotland’s “environmental deficit”. The figure £20 billion is repeatedly used by Scottish Government ministers, to deter the idea this is something they alone can handle.

However, Hollingdale points out the vast majority of this is attributable to notional acquisition costs of land which does not in reality apply to most schemes, since they are carried out by existing landowners. Anyway, a purchase price acquires an asset which is likely to accrue in value, not least because of carbon credits.

Hollingdale writes: “The most straightforward method of securing land release is to provide increased support for woodland creation … Large-scale private investment is often justified on the basis that the public funds available are insufficient to pay for the necessary changes. However as much as £10bn – equivalent to half the over-estimate of the funding gap – could be found by the Scottish Government through the realignment of direct subsidies and changes to the taxation regime”.

This seems sensible. If there is a public policy imperative to plant more trees or “restore peatland” then delivery mechanisms should be as straightforward as possible. Either fund it directly or incentivise landowners through grants. There was no need to become handmaidens of carbon trading – though that would have meant standing up to landowning interests with an eye for big profits.

Hollingdale’s paper suggests: “Private sector capital should also be welcomed, but in appropriate partnership with local communities, and mediated through mechanisms such as community shares … offering fair but capped returns and with community control built-in”. The fact this market took off without even such moderate ideas being considered is outrageous and the stable door would now require strong political will to shut. Does it exist? Probably not.

At least there should be trees to show for afforestation schemes. I suspect “peatland restoration” will turn into an even more dubious enterprise. Scotland has more than 1.6 millon hectares of peatland and 80 per cent, we are told, is degraded. Restoring it is, to put it mildly, a long haul.

The idea that the best way to approach this mission is by creating a market in carbon trading which invites scamsters and speculators, as well as our existing acreocracy, seems to me contestable. The fact it has arisen without any community consultation or consideration of alternatives confirms that vested interests have led the Scottish Government by the nose.

Nor should the irony be missed that many landowners who will be further enriched continue to degrade the land by allowing deer herds to expand without adequate controls, in the interests of what they are pleased to call “sport”. This too is within the remit of NatureScot, though its interest seems distinctly limited.

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No subject used to give rise to more political rhetoric than Scottish land ownership but, with the ball at Scotland’s feet, where has it led in terms of action? Following a brief period around the turn of the century when limited reform did happen, subsequent talk has failed to produce a millimetre of change.

What could have become a fine advertisement for devolution, freed from the power of Tory rule and the House of Lords, should now be regarded as one of its biggest embarrassments - if anyone in the Scottish Government is even interested enough to be embarrassed, which is itself doubtful.

That is part of the problem. Nobody in the Scottish Government has displayed any expertise in these issues or focuses upon them. Meanwhile, the Scottish landowning lobby is as focused and well-resourced as it always has been. Guess who wins?

Maybe the Auditor General for Scotland could be the court of last resort with the limited objective of establishing what value the Scottish Government is getting for our £250 million support of “restoration” and carbon trading. Meanwhile, call halt until the whole thing can be properly assessed. These are highly political questions which cannot be sub-contracted to NatureScot.

Brian Wilson is a former Labour Party politician. He was MP for Cunninghame North from 1987 until 2005 and served as a Minister of State from 1997 to 2003