MAGNUS DAVIDSON: Flow Country's carbon store is a valuable asset – but who will benefit?
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UHI North Highland’s Environmental Research Institute hosted what I am told was a very successful Flow Country Conference last week in Thurso. I couldn’t attend as I had travelled south as part of a study group to explore community impacts of carbon markets, a topic incredibly important to the peatlands of Caithness and Sutherland.
Our first visit was to the Trees for Life Dundreggan estate and soon to be Rewilding Centre. Don’t let the rewilding name put you off, their estate is home to common grazing, newly planted native woodland, and natural regeneration from focusing deer management a little harder on some areas of the estate. Gaelic, particularly important to the culture of the central Highlands, is being utilised to educate on people and nature across the 4000-hectare landholding.
Perhaps most importantly of all is that payments are being made to local community groups out of the profit made from carbon units being sold to companies looking to offset emissions, not too dissimilar to the payments we see in Caithness from the wind industry. Trees for Life deserve praise for this effort as well as providing a good example of modern eNGO ownership of land.
Our second visit was to the 500-hectare Bunloit Estate above the shores of Loch Ness. Bought two years ago by the solar entrepreneur Jeremy Legget, one of Scotland’s most prominent ‘green lairds’, its small size hides great ambition. The amount of employment they’re pulling out of two small estates is admirable, and many of the people involved are excellent advocates for better land management practices.
Bunloit and the company behind it, Highlands Rewilding, are worth keeping an eye on to see how this ambition plays out, I’m also sure their charismatic leadership won’t let us forget their presence throughout the coming years.
What does carbon offsetting mean for communities in the far north? We don’t know yet. There’s a lot of variables, not least landowners.
Larger quasi-corporate landowners may be keen to use carbon credits to inset their own business emissions, rather than sell credits to offset emissions from other businesses. This means less obvious profit from their landholdings as it is wrapped up in cost savings elsewhere. A lack of direct income from the land could mean less pressure to commit to community benefit.
Other landowners may be more cautious around future liabilities, pushing the line that there’s less profit to be made than communities might think. Shared ownership of land is an obvious solution, communities sharing liability, as well as profit, could reduce this risk to landowners.
We also know from academic research that communities in ownership of land deliver more holistic climate solutions than other landownership types.
Jim Johnston’s 1981 book, A Future for Peat, first found life as a series of articles for this newspaper. It is a book of its time but showed that there was never a shortage of ambition, for the benefit of local communities, in the use of the Flow Country’s peat resource.
Carbon offsetting, the new black gold, sits within the ambition of that excellent book, but contextualised with modern day thinking on environmental issues. It would be nice to think that we’re within sight of the Flow Country being better realised for its value to people, as well as nature.
The infamous forestry debacle was good for something, it proved that large-scale private investment could be mobilised very quickly with the right policy mechanisms in place. Consensus seems to be found across the board that private and public sector goals are aligning around government policy when it comes to peatland and climate. A land use change boom not seen since the 1980s looks to be on the cards.
But it raises a wider question – should we be leaving community benefit to the whim of benevolent landowners and businesses? I would argue that there’s a greater regulatory role for governments, mandating community benefit from private landowners through legislation and taxation.
The cyclical nature of the financial value of the peatlands of Caithness and Sutherland is back on the up. Sheep, grouse, deer and trees all have a story to tell. This time around we need to ask, will it finally deliver for communities, or will the great benefit once again be limited to the few?
- Magnus Davidson is a researcher based in Thurso.
