Seòmar agus comataidhean

You talk about not pausing, but we are already seeing extortionate prices for agricultural land that would normally be passed on to the next generation of farmers or new entrants—it is being snapped up for planting. We have also heard about wind farms potentially being put on peatland. You say that we should not pause, but do we need to do more work to ensure that we do not go too far down the road and then have 25,000 hectares of inappropriate planting of Sitka spruce and so on? Maybe “pause” is not the right word, but do we need to go back and ensure that we are doing the right thing?

Dr Snowdon, we often hear the phrase “the right tree in the right place”. How is Scottish Forestry ensuring that we are doing far more than that and looking at the long-term consequences of actions that we take now?

Thank you. Jim Fairlie has a supplementary question.

I call Jenni Minto.

That brings us to the end of the session. I thank Professor Sir Dieter Helm for his thought-provoking answers and for giving us his valuable time. His contribution is very much appreciated. I am pleased that we ended on that optimistic call for action.

We will suspend the meeting to allow for a changeover of panellists.

Perhaps Ian Dickie might like to comment.

We are running out of time, so we will move to final questions from Beatrice Wishart.

There is a supplementary question from Rachael Hamilton.

We can certainly do that. We can write to the Scottish Government with any queries.

I will write to the cabinet secretary with the questions that have been raised on the instrument.

That concludes the committee’s public business.

I get the feeling that investors are treading water at the moment. There is a bit of a pause. It is not entirely clear where money should be invested to get the best return for climate change and biodiversity. Professor Helm said that we need to base some of our work on river catchments. and non-native invasive species play a role in that consideration.

Ian Dickie has done a lot of work on the state of natural capital in the Borders. That involves baselining a range of things including woodland creation, habitat creation, flood management and farmland management. Do we need to do that across the country before we know where we should invest?

There has been a fairly critical report from the Climate Change Committee that suggests that there is no detail of the policies that underpin the Scottish Government’s ambitions to reach net zero by 2045. That is also creating uncertainty. Does the Government need to do some baselining and put some meat on the bones of the policies before we invest in the right areas?