Seòmar agus comataidhean

As the member will know—or she might not have been present for the committee’s evidence session—

We are looking at a variety of measures to support small producers. As I outlined in my answer to the convener, although hundreds of producers are signed up, there are some who have not yet signed up. We are digging into the detail of what the challenges are there. In response to conversation with those producers, Circularity Scotland has already put in place considerable cash flow measures—£22 million-worth of measures have been put in to reduce up-front costs and help with cash flow, because that was identified as a barrier.

Another identified barrier for small producers was labelling. Getting their bottles redesigned with a different barcode requires minimum order quantities and it takes a long time. To remove that barrier, Circularity Scotland will be issuing sticky labels to producers. When they have fewer than 25,000 of any particular product, they can get those labels from Circularity Scotland. They will kind of already be pre-registered, because the labels will have been issued to them.

Those are two—

[Inaudible.] A return point must be registered in order for it to be a return point; anyone who sells these materials has an obligation to register. That is so they can enter exactly the detail that Mr Kerr was pointing out in terms of how much storage they have and the volume of returns that they expect to receive so that the logistics can be organised. If a business wishes to be exempt, it needs to apply for an exemption. Zero Waste Scotland is managing the exemption process.

The matter of recovering and protecting vulnerable and important species is one of the five themes that the biodiversity strategy covers. The strategy has 26 actions that we are taking for nature, grouped into those five themes. Theme 4 is to recover and protect vulnerable species, and one of the actions there is to

“Revise the Scottish Biodiversity List of species and habitats that Scottish Ministers consider to be of principal importance for biodiversity conservation in Scotland”.

Perhaps Matthew Bird or Lisa McCann can add some detail on that process.

Thank you, convener, and thank you for inviting me here today to discuss the outcomes from COP15 and how we are integrating them into our biodiversity strategy. I know that you have already heard overwhelming evidence about the extent of the biodiversity crisis that we are facing here in Scotland and across the world, and about the importance of taking action now to tackle the decline in nature.

You have also heard about the historic Kunming-Montreal global biodiversity framework, which was agreed at the end of last year. That framework builds on a vision, which I hope you share, of a world that is living in harmony with nature and where, by 2050, biodiversity is valued, conserved, restored and wisely used, through maintaining ecosystem services.

As you are aware, I was honoured to attend COP15 with a small Scottish delegation, which culminated in our presenting the Edinburgh declaration to that conference’s high-level segment, on behalf of subnational bodies. As well as calling for a high-ambition outcome from the meeting in Montreal, the Edinburgh declaration also called for the critical role that subnational bodies play in addressing the biodiversity crisis to be recognised and allocated the necessary resources and powers to help to tackle it. I am delighted that the declaration was adopted at the conference and now forms part of the new global biodiversity framework.

The Scottish Government led the Edinburgh process at the request of the Convention on Biological Diversity’s secretariat, and I am very proud of the work that was done to promote it and to garner support for it. That work is demonstrated by the fact that, at the final count, the declaration had been signed by more than 300 subnational bodies from around the world.

Our draft biodiversity strategy was published to coincide with COP15, but it remained in draft form to allow us to take into account the new global biodiversity framework, thereby ensuring that we are meeting the global ambition. The strategy is where we set out our high-level vision for a nature-positive Scotland and our ambition to halt biodiversity loss by 2030 and reverse declines by 2045. I have often wondered whether that is ambitious enough; although there has been a huge amount of really positive activity across Scotland in recent years—for example our scaling up of peatland restoration and our groundbreaking nature restoration fund—it is clear that there is still a huge amount of work to do. The type of change that we need takes time, which is why it is even more important that we start taking action now.

We are currently refining the strategy and are now very much focused on developing the delivery plans that will sit underneath it. Those plans will be where we will set out how we are going to achieve our high-level vision and outcomes.

I was very grateful to the committee for the careful and detailed consideration that it gave to the draft biodiversity strategy last year. Your comments formed an important part of our consideration in developing the strategy and, as I set out when I wrote to the committee in December 2022, many of those points were incorporated in the final draft.

We are also starting to explore with our subnational partners the next steps on implementing the Edinburgh declaration and how best we can work together to really deliver on the new global framework. I welcome this discussion today and I appreciate the attention that the committee is giving to this important matter.

We will have to wait and see what the gateway review comes up with. For example, previous reviews have given us a steer towards streamlining the exemption process. That was a bit of advice that came to us straight out of a gateway review, which we were then able to implement along with our guidance. Such reviews are constructive and detailed in saying where we have challenges, what is going well and what we can work on. That enables us to take points away, which, as I said, we have done following previous reviews. We all look forward to seeing the results of the review, and we hope that the panel will have constructive input for us.

Absolutely. On the second point, regional land use partnerships and the national parks incorporate that approach of having different land managers under different business and ownership models working together on nature restoration and land management. The best example of that is the globally recognised Cairngorms Connect, which covers a mix of public and private land and involves people working together to achieve regeneration in the national park.

The member is right that land reform is part of the toolkit for addressing ownership patterns, which is part of the Scottish Government’s policy. Some good work is being done, as we move towards our land reform bill, on how it can work for nature. I went with Ms McAllan on her road show on the land reform bill, so I got to hear from stakeholders at first hand about land reform and about their hopes and dreams in supporting biodiversity. The purpose of the land reform bill is to help land go into community ownership where there is a public interest, particularly where it is for the common good and the benefit of nature.

The key aspect is the land management plans, which I hope we can use as a tool to ensure that land is managed well. Biodiversity is absolutely intended to be part of that, so that we can help to move the dial toward responsible land ownership around the country. There are already some really good examples of that.

As Liam Kerr knows, implementing that commitment to a 50 per cent shift and the conditionality around it is on-going work in agricultural reform. I believe that the cabinet secretary made an initial announcement on the direction of travel a couple of weeks ago to the national annual meeting of the NFUS. However, it is a matter of on-going consultation with stakeholders to make sure that we get it right.

The number 1 priority is to make sure that that 50 per cent is not only delivering for biodiversity but is practical, workable and accessible for farmers and land managers, so that they can get that money in a way that supports their business models.

What I said we are doing—

That is no problem. I will tackle both of Jackie Dunbar’s questions.

The Scottish biodiversity strategy ties in with other strategies. It is essential that biodiversity considerations are mainstreamed in all our policy development, and that is one of our key aims. Given the breadth of matters that the Government deals with, there is a wide range of strategies and plans to address issues in particular sectors. The biodiversity strategy provides a clear vision and set of outcomes that all of our policies must help to achieve. The environment strategy for Scotland presents a whole-of-Government approach to tackling the climate and nature crises by creating an overarching framework for Scotland as well as strategies and plans on the environment and climate change, and by strengthening the connections between environmental policies and policies across Government. It helps us to identify priorities and opportunities and to drive the transformative change that we need.

We know that healthy biodiversity underpins our prosperity, wellbeing and ability to reach net zero. I know that all the committee members are aware, because of the evidence that you have taken, that we need to mainstream this piece. Tackling biodiversity cannot be done in a silo; it needs to be done across all of society.

Specifically on wild salmon, they are an indicator species, so things that we do to protect wild salmon will also protect other species that have similar life cycles or share their natural environment, such as those that Jackie Dunbar mentioned.

As members will know, wild salmon are in decline. In response to the decline of those populations, in January 2022 we published Scotland’s wild salmon strategy, which is a collective vision for flourishing populations of wild Atlantic salmon. In that, we set a high level of ambition and a direction of travel. We followed up the strategy with an implementation plan, which was published last month, and which sets out more than 60 actions that we will take over the next five years to protect and restore salmon populations. The strategy and plan were developed in close collaboration with stakeholder groups, including representatives from Government, NGOs and agencies. We are clear that positive outcomes can be achieved only through a co-ordinated and collaborative approach.

I have been lucky enough to visit some of the nature restoration work that is being done along some of the rivers, such as removing weirs and, where the weirs cannot be removed, putting in passes to allow the salmon past, and of course those will apply to other species as well.

I want to mention another great river restoration project. One problem that some rivers in Scotland have is that they are too clean—there are no trees along the banks, there is nothing in the water, and they run too fast, too clear and too hot, because the sun shines on them all the time. This particular project takes fallen trees and embeds them in the riverbed. That not only slows the water but creates shaded spots and eddies where fish can spawn and invertebrates can breed. That is the kind of practical on-the-ground action on which the nature restoration fund is having an impact and that specifically targets those important species.