Getting the best from our land, consultation on a draft Land Use Strategy for Scotland 2016 - 2021

In as far as they go, they are fit for purpose, but they have not changed from the original and appear somewhat weak, so some change would have been good to see - notably I would like to have seen the addition of reference to direct requirements for sustainable management of natural resources and to the maintenance of ecosystem resilience, the latter being a key element of adaptive management for climate change

There are two problems here:
(1) The use of the phrase 'that continued use of an ecosystems approach is an effective way to manage...' in the wording of the question, as distinct from the wording of the policy. The policy is for better understanding and managing through promoting an ecosystems approach.... - very good - but it is ridiculous to suggest that anywhere bar as part of a very few small and time-limited pilot projects this is in effect happening already! (as the question implies).
(2) Secondly, let us be under no illusion, this is NOT ‘Business as usual’. One cannot just lay this out as a generic and idealistic platitude and think that this is progress and actions will follow! An Ecosystem Approach means taking a fundamentally different (a challenging!) view of the values of different land uses ad of stakeholder engagement (as done in the Borders LUS pilot). It requires the measuring and managing of all ecosystem services, not just the market-driven production services but revealing also the previously ‘invisible’ ecosystem services delivered by land use and the impacts on them – and of being honest and open about trade-offs and losers (life is not all win-win), .
Annex A details the duty under the Act – it requires (2c) that the strategy lays out the timescales for these actions to take effect. I see no evidence this has been addressed anywhere in the new strategy

The table (p14) fails to pick out and highlight the need to address many key areas that an Ecosystem Approach should encompass openly - Health, Urban issues, Air quality, Tourism, Development, even flooding (as opposed to Rive Basin Management Plans). These need to be set out in the boxes on 'Sectoral Plans, Policies and Strategies' - and clarity shown on how they will link in.
What evidence is there (and crucially will be developed by Scottish Government) to show that an ecosystem approach and the LUS has had any impact on these other strategies? If, as claimed the Land use strategy 'has a vital role to play in delivering' these key strategies, how will anyone know this has happened? and would these policies look any different without the Land Use Strategy in place I wonder.
Even within the Borders LUS pilot, there was and still is confusion as to the status of the Land Use Strategy - especially as the majority of ecosystem services covered in rural land use have little or no direct connection to planning or many of the other local Authority powers and responsibilities.
This lack of clarity between the planning system, development and the LUS was a key lesson learned from the Borders' pilot project. Planners in local authorities stressed that they alone cannot and do not address the many issues that ecosystem services deliver – they are determined by individual land owners at a small scale making decisions, not controlled by Planning Committees. So, to progress we must prove the added value of taking an ecosystem approach and the added value of the LUS. Otherwise, much will remain irrelevant to the real decision-makers, driven by markets, subsidies and personal interests

This is essential.
A nationally consistent utilisation of the Ecosystem approach to SEA could be very beneficial
However, as noted in response to the previous question, many of the ecosystem services and land uses covered are not controlled by Planning decisions, but by other factors - such as the Common Agricultural Policy, World Trade, Global markets and commodity prices (especially for foodstuffs, fuel, fertilisers, etc). Individual land owner decisions are more important in many cases.

It is unclear why you propose a review of the Forestry Strategy.
That said, there are many ways you could encourage the further take up and delivery of the Land Use Strategy concepts and practices - and this would be good.
Existing work by FCS and others has shown how the use of an Ecosystem Services mapping approach can assist with targeting the delivery of multiple benefits - through forest planting in the best locations and areas (and at the landscape scale). Additional gains for water quality enhancement, natural flood management, biodiversity,landscape and, close to urban areas recreation and health, are all clear opportunities for forestry to achieve in addition to timber production.
Woodland Expansion (WEAG targets 25%) though needs to be addressed using an Ecosystem Approach with local community engagement. Stakeholders views on topics such as the conflict with sheep farming cannot be overlooked.

This is one of the most disappointing and, in my view wrong proposals within the Revised strategy.
It is also makes and promotes a flawed and wrong connection. Land use does not equal land management does not equal land ownership. There are many massive private estates (e.g. old - Buccleugh, and new - Feshie) that are doing wonderful things for a sustainable land use strategy, and working with ecosystem services. Equally, there are Community Buyouts and cooperatives doing the same (Eigg, Ciogach & Assynt). BUT equally, there are private landowners and community groups of all sizes not doing this. Land ownership is neither the problem, nor the solution. Indeed one could go further and suggest it would be potentially more difficult to effect landscape change where there are thousands of very small owners and managers - but that is not the heart of the issue.
This potential linkage has been raised often and touted as a potential advantage of politically-driven land reform, but throughout the whole period of the Borders LUS pilot, all involved (Government, Local Authority, Tweed Forum and individuals) spent the last 2 years telling folk that the LUS was not and is not connected to or part of the Land Reform agenda. To now reverse this and make a direct connection will destroy all that trust and goodwill – without which the LUS will wither.
This must be removed if progress with the land use Strategy is to be maintained.

Maps, and the production and presentation of data and information in an attractive manner will be critical. GIS models are a key part of that but their presentation and use, along with other tools must be carefully 'geared' to the respective audiences being addressed. Technological wizardry, scenarios and multiple-option matrices may be great for academics, but may be of little utility to land owners, farmers and foresters with a practical real-life knowledge of working the land.

A baseline mapping tool would indeed be useful, but this should not be developed in isolation. We are not just talking about a baseline, but the impacts of Climate change on that baseline - so its design must reflect this use.
What is needed is clarity and consistency. At present, there are a plethora of potential tools - but what they lack are consistency (the methods for assessment vary between services and scales, some services are largely ignored or omitted, some use pure proxy data, etc.). Decision-makers would no doubt want to have faith in a standard set of methods and models.
Choice of tool is one thing, choice of which services to map (which are important) is another - this must have local community input through effective stakeholder engagement and earlier SEA.
Having the relevant data accessible (IPR and costs matter), available and up to date will be key (as is the need to maintain and update the data).
The information must be usable and understandable by all relevant stakeholders. It should not rely on technical capabilities and its origins must be transparent.
See for further information and discussion of some of these elements Vorstius and Spray (2015) 'A comparison of ecosystem services mapping tools for their potential
to support planning and decision-making on a local scale' Ecosystem Services 15 (2015) 75–83.

This will depend on a variety of aspects, but no one size will fit all.
The English experience with testing the Catchment Based Approach (CaBa) shows that this can be taken forward under a variety of different governance models and different leaders (NGO, Local Authority, Academia, Agency, Business). Issues such as the scale of the area under consideration; the width of the topics (services) and challenges being addressed will, with others indicate what sort of body may be most appropriate to lead. In all case though it is clear this must be a real and trusted partnership.
In Scotland, this is best exemplified by Tweed Forum, a participatory catchment organisation of long-standing and much trusted by stakeholders locally and nationally, which was central to the successful delivery of the Borders pilot. Elsewhere, either partnerships will need to be encouraged (and resourced) or if none exist a case may be made for direct leadership by a local authority of agency (SEPA, SNH, etc).

As noted above, where there is no 'obvious' potential champion, either one needs to be encouraged to be developed, or direct leadership must come from a local authority or agency initially BUT with a aim of securing a long-term sustainable partnership. It is no good thinking that the Land Use Strategy could, for example be delivered using an ecosystems approach as a top-down driven 'side project' to another statutory requirement (e.g. the Water Framework Directive and river basin management planning).

My main concern is that there needs to be absolute clarity at the very outset as to 'whose policy is this?'
Again,as noted earlier, it needs to avoid going down the route of alignment with land reform and associated legislation

It all depends...... on what you mean by a framework .....and what elements of decision-making you might propose to encompass within that 'framework'.
Clarity as the outputs and outcomes from establishment of such regional frameworks at the outset will be crucial - what is the added value and what will change as a result of their creation?
Having a holistic and ecosystem approach to a geographical area (of defined location and scale) might indeed be attractive. It could be akin to the Welsh Government's roll out of Area Statements and the delivery of sustainable natural resource management across the key seven policy sectors as envisaged through their Environment Bill (2015/16) and the commitments to sustainable and holistic management in their Well-Being and Future Generations Act (2015).

See above in 9b.
The challenge will be to try to collate and bring together a range of 'obvious' direct land-related strategies (biodiversity, flooding, agriculture, forestry, etc) with those that have such a impact from 'outside' - energy, transport, development, economic planning, etc - and show how the Land Use Strategy can help develop a unified direction of travel and road map to achieve it.

Experience shows in a number of instances, locations and sectors across the UK, Europe and America that having a 'trusted intermediary' operating between state (government and agencies) and society (individual land managers) can help establish real communication and potentially build and maintain partnerships for delivery.
Tweed Forum are one such example in Scotland, West Country Rivers Trust in England and the Farmers Watershed Council in New York State another.

A key issue is that farming, as other land uses is predominantly driven by external market forces, such as the Common Agriculture Policy and global prices. To be effective the Land Use Strategy must identify and set out economic reasons why such land managers should change practices and make different decisions to those driven by these and other subsidies and prices. So, yes a 'step change' is needed and should be encouraged if we are to address climate change, but it won't be delivered by focusing efforts just around the 'edges of influence' that are offered by the SRDP agri-environment options for example.

The options offered in SRDP should indeed be seen as one way to encourage and deliver the Land Use Strategy and ongoing work in the Borders pilot phase 2 is showing just how effective this can and could be. Using locally (quality assured and ground-truthed) ecosystem assessments really does offer hopes for careful targeting to deliver multiple benefits.
The same is true for forestry and for natural flood management.
As noted earlier though, the Scottish Landscape will not be fundamentally changed by focusing on SRDP. Land use choices per se are dictated and controlled by markets, subsidies, soils, etc.. The LUS needs to recognise this if it is to make changes at a truly landscape scale.
Using land for Natural Flood Management is one area in particular that the LUS should explore further.

I am not convinced that the science behind defining and measuring 'ecosystem health' is robust enough at present to help add value to the work already underway at the scale at which the Land Use Strategy must operate.
The work completed in 2015 on Ecosystem Accounting by Defra (part-funded by Scottish Government) included the Borders as a pilot area. However, its results were disappointing and did not come up with any overarching useful indicators on ecosystem health.
Focus on such areas as Soil quality, on NFM, Biodiversity and Woodland expansion would seem to be a more pragmatic immediate way forward.
Taking a spatial approach is a good idea and, as noted earlier would follow that being taken forward by the Welsh Government with their Area Statements.

Focusing on Urban areas brings many new aspects into play, and perhaps the 'fit' needs to be better defined first and the aims of such a project. scoped. how does land ownership fit in? how can the techniques and tools being developed for rural land use be applied in populated areas with multiple small land ownerships?
The focus on urban could utilise ecosystem services deficit mapping perhaps, highlighting where services are currently unavailable to urban populations (eg. access to green spaces and health). Cumbernauld and the work of Scottish Wildlife Trust might be a good case study, using the work on ECOServGIS already done.
Meanwhile, one of the 'missing' elements raised in the Borders pilot and which does need addressing now anyhow are the linkages between rural and urban issues (e.g. buildings on urban floodplains being flooded by run-off from intensely managed and drained upstream catchments).

Whilst the uplands are, in a Scottish context important, they have a relatively small population and some relatively large landownerships. But whether they need or will benefit from a new strategic vision within the Land Use Strategy is debatable. A strategic vision that is bought in to by all relevant stakeholders would help certainly, but already in 2015 Scottish Natural Heritage produced a major report on sustainable Moorland management (www.snh.gov.uk/docs/A1765931.pdf) and others are also active in this field (Moorland Forum, etc). The question is what and how will the Land Use Strategy add value to the debate in terms of real outcomes.
There is certainly a lot of potential for land use change (increases in peatland conservation for carbon resources and wetting of upland moors; native tree recolonisation; commercial forestry, etc.) alongside declines in traditional sheep farming - so in these respects the essence of multiple benefits and conflicts
between uses become very obvious, as does the linkages to climate change.

In as far as they go, they are a start, but they need to be more focused, more quantitative and directly link actions to outputs to outcomes. They need to be able to measure change. They need to be SMART.
In themselves they are too high level and do not show these essential links.
They also miss a direct cross-over to the key ecosystem services produced by the land.
They should be differentiated between Actions (means and activities) leading to Outputs and on to Outcomes. these need both bio-physical measures and socio-economic ones.
They have some important gaps - where, for example is soil? Our whole productive countryside depends on soil quality (productivity is being decreased consistently) and quantity (tons of top soil being washed off in to rivers) yet it is nowhere.
They need a re-think to reflect the key services delivered (production, regulating, cultural and supporting) and the key stressors on them.

A major effort to improve communication around WHY ecosystem services are vital to out whole livelihood. As long as this is seen only as part of a 'Green' agenda, it will get little or no traction beyond a few sympathetic land-based businesses and those 'committed to the cause'.
So, showing the relevance to other sectors and the added value of an ecosystems approach and a land use strategy is vital.
Taking 'advantage of' the recent floods would be an immediate 'opportunity'. They have shown the links between land use and well-being with real powerful images of economic and personal damage to people and properties. Linking this to the need for a comprehensive landscape scale strategy for delivery of multiple ecosystem services would be good.

I am somewhat disappointed as to how far (or rather how little) this has apparently moved forward since the production of the first strategy. Whilst recognising that it takes a long time to turn round a super-tanker, the need for and delivery of a revised Land Use Strategy has never been more urgent or better demonstrated in the last few years - food security, floods, energy demands and a changing climate have all been prominent in the headlines and in full view of the public and politicians alike.
The Land use Strategy needs real targets, real actions and measurable demonstrations that it is making an impact - and the impact is what is needed.

Nothing to add herein