Climate Connections towards low carbon high biodiversity economies Policy Futures Series No 3/2011 About the Scottish Wildlife Trust THE SCOTTISH WILDLIFE TRUST, established in 1964, has the charitable purpose to advance the conservation of Scotland’s biodiversity for the benefit of present and future generations. With more than 36,000 members, over 120 reserves and a network of volunteers the length and breadth of the country, we are proud to say we are now the largest voluntary body working for all the wildlife of Scotland. Our vision is of a network of healthy and resilient ecosystems supporting expanding communities of native species across large areas of Scotland’s land, water and seas. This is the ‘Ecosystem Approach’, which is the basis of The Wildlife Trusts’ UK Living Landscapes and Living Seas initiatives. This report should be cited as: Galbraith C.A., Hughes J. and King A. (2011) Climate Connections: towards low carbon high biodiversity economies. Scottish Wildlife Trust, Edinburgh. Contents Executive summary ii Introduction iii Part 1 1 What we know Part 2 9 What we can do Part 3 27 Looking to the future Bibliography 31 Annexes 35 Front cover images: bluebell wood; tractor with seagulls © Charlie Phillips; nuthatch © W.E. Middleton. Above left image © Niall Benvie. Acknowledgements We wish to thank Oliver Davies and Maggie Keegan (Scottish Wildlife Trust), Ed Taylor (Prince’s Foundation for Built Environment), the Trust’s Conservation Committee and Clifton Bain (IUCN UK Peatland Programme) for their contributions to this report. We would also like to thank Ed Mackey, Greg Mudge, Sue Marrs and Duncan Blake of SNH, and Ruth Wolstenhome of SNIFFER for help in sourcing material. SNH, SEPA, SNIFFER, IPCC and the Millennium Scottish Wildlife Trust Ecosystem Assessment kindly gave permission for use of Cramond House several Figures and Tables. 3 Kirk Cramond Any opinions, conclusions or errors in this report are the sole Edinburgh EH4 6HZ responsibility of the authors. T 0131 312 7765 Publication © Scottish Wildlife Trust, 2011. F 0131 312 8705 W www.swt.org.uk Executive summary This report explains how the maintenance and The key messages contained within this report, listed restoration of ecosystem health can play a key role below, are focused on Scotland, but are applicable to in helping balance Scotland’s carbon budget and countries across Europe: create a low carbon, high biodiversity economy. • The restoration of ecosystem health could make Prerequisites to the restoration of ecosystem health a major contribution to achieving Scotland’s 42% include the recovery of species populations, the greenhouse gas emissions reduction target by improvement of habitat quality and the building of 2020. functional connections between fragmented patches • Through focusing on relatively cheap ‘natural of habitat. By focusing effort on the restoration of fixes’ such as peatland maintenance and ecosystem health, Scotland will make significant restoration, woodland creation and management, progress towards achieving ambitious greenhouse de-intensification of agricultural systems and gas emissions reduction targets (42% by 2020) the greening of settlements, Scotland could also and at the same time hit targets to halt the loss of achieve its targets to halt biodiversity loss by biodiversity by 2020. 2020. • Restoring ecosystem health will make habitats The peatlands of Scotland alone store a stock more resilient in the face of climatic and of carbon 3 times that of all forests and other environmental change, helping us adapt to the vegetation: nearly 200 times the carbon contained worst effects of global warming. within the nation’s total annual greenhouse gas • In towns and cities, the greening of the emissions. A loss of just 1.6% of this peatland carbon urban ecosystem could create more liveable is equivalent to the total annual human carbon settlements, adapted to the challenges of higher emissions in Scotland. Active peatlands, growing temperatures and changing weather patterns forests and sustainably managed uplands will all such as more intensive rainfall. sequester and lock up carbon in soils and biomass. • We already understand how to restore degraded Using this ‘natural fix’ will help reduce the estimated ecosystems and what the key threats to ecosystem 1.5Gt of global carbon emissions arising from land health are (Hughes and Brooks, 2009). We simply use change every year (Trumper et al, 2009). need to ensure policy, regulation and incentives are designed to allow this work to happen. The cost of implementing a system of land use • The development of ecosystem health indicators which delivers carbon sequestering landscapes is is urgently required to help monitor change and at least as cost effective (in terms of £ per tonne of to target action towards key systemic threats to CO2 saved) when compared with technological fixes. ecosystem health. This report outlines what such Such a land use system will also deliver other vital indicators might look like for Scotland. ecosystem services including biodiversity, clean water, flood amelioration, soil protection, cleaner The most important section of this report is Part cities and recreational benefits. Provision of these 3, which details ‘20 policies for 2020’ based on public benefits on private land may lead to small evidence gathered during the writing of this report. reductions in productivity and income. Such changes These have been developed to be both affordable from the de-intensification of land use will need to and deliverable within 10 years, although some be compensated for through well designed agri- fundamental changes to incentives and regulation environment payments schemes. will be required if many of them are to happen. ii Climate Connections Introduction Action to tackle climate change and efforts to How we plan our towns and cities for a sustainable prevent biodiversity loss are two sides of the same future, what transport systems we should have, coin. This report makes the case that maintaining how we manage our countryside and how we look and restoring ecosystem health is a prerequisite to after our peatlands are all key issues that require mitigating the impacts of, and adapting to, climate decisions now to inform future management. Recent change. The creation of carbon sequestering years have seen a number of legislative and policy landscapes and ‘climate change ready’ cityscapes changes from government in Scotland that provide a offers new opportunities to re-balance our carbon framework and clear targets for action. The Climate budget whilst creating environments that provide Change (Scotland) Act 2009 sets challenging targets for the needs of both the human population and for emissions reduction and is a key part of this new for biodiversity. legislative framework, as is the Marine (Scotland) Act 2010. In addition, major policy initiatives have been This report highlights the steps necessary to restore launched including the Scottish Land Use Strategy ecosystem health through maintenance and (Scottish Government, 2011a). Clearly, this is a period improvement of ecosystem services: those essential of real opportunity for the development of actions processes that we obtain from the environment and new ideas that will simultaneously help recover including clean air, clean water, pollination, biodiversity, improve the health of ecosystems and biodiversity assets, flood protection and soil for foster a low carbon economy. food production. It considers also how maintaining ecosystem health is essential in the fight against Of course, this new approach will not happen climate change and in maintaining our economy, spontaneously, and this report makes a series of prosperity and well-being (EASAC, 2009). These interlinked recommendations for policy development approaches echo some of the key issues raised in and for action to help in the creation of resilient, The Economics of Climate Change: the Stern Review biologically diverse and carbon sequestering (Stern, 2007), which analysed the overall financial landscapes. This report is aimed at the policy costs of climate change. Ensuring ecosystem health community, decision makers, parliamentarians is potentially a triple win, helping climate change and officials, as well as third sector organisations. adaptation, mitigation and assisting biodiversity It is written with a focus on Scotland, but many of conservation (World Bank, 2008). This report the issues highlighted are common across much of will begin to reveal the true value of a natural fix Europe. (Trumper et al, 2009) to these problems, working with the grain of nature rather than against it. Some of the issues covered in this report have been considered at a global level by a range of bodies. For example, the Intergovernmental Panel Box 1: converging agendas on Climate Change (IPCC, 2000, 2007) is addressing issues related to climate, and the Intergovernmental • 1990s – biodiversity conservation Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and • Late 1990s – biodiversity and people Ecosystem Services (IPBES, 2011) will perform • Early 2000s – biodiversity, people and a similar role in relation to biodiversity and ecosystem services ecosystems. The UK National Ecosystem Assessment • The future – biodiversity, people, (Watson and Albon, 2010) has also drawn attention ecosystem health and climate change to the considerable economic value of the services we obtain from the environment. Climate Connections iii The clear message emerging from these initiatives is