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"Who should run the countryside?
Rural Scotland 2006"
SCA annual conference, Royal Highland Centre,
Ingliston, Edinburgh,
25th April 2006
Tony Andrews
Chief Executive Scottish Countryside Alliance
Filed 04 May 06
©www.land-care.org.uk
Ladies and gentlemen, good morning. Welcome
to the fourth rural Scotland conference.
Managing crisis is familiar territory to Scotland’s
rural communities; BSE, foot-and-mouth and now avian flu have all
taken their toll and kept the pressure on. And all this in the context
of falling farm prices, declining incomes, an aging rural population,
farmers leaving the profession, and serious uncertainties about
the long-term viability of farming and the rural sector.
As farm subsidies are de-coupled from production;
land managers, wildlife managers and all those concerned with the
management of the land, need to find new ways of achieving business
viability. So, ‘who should run the countryside?’ is
the central question as we enter a period of massive change. The
Scottish Executive’s consultation on rural development has
now begun. Ross Finnie calls this “the on the ground approach
to rural development;” this is welcome. Especially the commitment
to provide financial support for managing the environment and rural
infrastructure with special funding for less favoured areas.
Tony Andrews
Chief Executive of the Scottish Countryside Alliance
giving the introductory talk at the conference
(To enlarge photo Click Here)
photo©Kimpton Graphics
It’s also encouraging to see an emphasis
on investment in diversifying the rural economy, but I have a horrid
suspicion that ‘on the ground’ may mean more meetings
of government agencies, so-called stakeholders; in other words,
more of the same. That simply must not happen. My concern is that
this laudable new approach to rural regeneration ignores the central
issue – the break down of trust. There is, I believe, an urgent
need for government to address this.
So what is this rural development programme, and
will it be properly funded? Farm subsidies will be replaced by a
three-tiered funding package, available to land managers and rural
communities.
supporting quality in agriculture,
food and forestry, enhancing rural landscape
and natural heritage, and
promoting a diverse and vibrant rural economy.
They all have their names: Single Farm Payment;
Land Management Contracts; and the Rural Development Programme itself.
It is proposed that all that will be delivered through land management
contracts; and I know that there are critics in this room of those
and their track record, and through the Leader local funding trust
programme. All this sound great, until you start talking to people,
who have experience of applying for Leader funding, which has a
reputation for laborious bureaucracy and incredibly slow response
times. Local action groups, land management contracts, and regional
project assessment committees, probably dominated by academic minded,
business averse quangos suggest new layers of public sector management
and more red tape. We already had a tractor load out there this
morning, as you’ll see in the press tomorrow. What chance
enterprise in that context?
We also need to ask: how can rural enterprises
work with government for the common good? Because neither one nor
the other can do it alone. Agreement based on incentives, and not
on punishment, is a good start.
In 1992, the EU summit at Maastricht coined the
concept of ‘subsidiarity’, which means the idea of local
decision making. Passing decision making down the line as far as
it will go to a local level. One could be forgiven for thinking
that Maastricht took place in Latin America or somewhere else, because
since then there has been a succession of top down directives from
Brussels, telling us all how to manage our countryside in considerable
detail. It doesn’t help that the Scottish Executive has no
seat at the Council of Ministers table. This means that Scotland
has no, what I call, wriggle room; meaning they can’t wriggle
out of EU directives, when applying EU directives. We do what we
are told. We do it in the big letters; we do it in the fine print.
Unlike the Italian government who have a special department whose
job it is to minimize damage from EU directives. Or, put in another
way, a more positive way, to maximize their potential benefits to
Italian businesses. Perhaps Holyrood needs one of these, why not
for goodness sake? Let’s have a wriggle department; I’d
love to be the head of it.
Rural Scotland really is the sucker at the end
of the line. That is an aspect of devolution in practice for you.
I have long argued that for a thriving and sustainable rural sector,
we need to balance the economy, the cultures, the communities, and
the environment. We need to approach it in a balanced, measured
and holistic way. To take any one of these in isolation risks distorting
the decision making process. We need rural proofing, we need people
making dictats or legislation or rules about the way we behave in
the countryside, to consult properly. Rural proofing; that’s
what I mean by that.
To achieve a modern and diverse rural sector,
it is essential that we have economically viable, land-based businesses.
Farming, forestry and sporting interests have shaped and maintained
rural Scotland for centuries. Government subsidies and grants, to
some sectors, will continue to underpin the rural economy for the
time being. But what then? In a countryside, increasingly stifled
by bureaucracy, how will tomorrow’s rural communities make
a living? What of the landscape, and the massive potential of tourism
so dependent on it? There is tension between rural Scotland and
the government and all the departments and quangos of government.
This, I believe, has become a barriered process. Too often we see
government decisions at odds with the views of rural communities.
Even when government gets it right, the application of their policies
is so rigid and dogmatic that it leads, almost inevitably, to a
break down in trust between government, its agencies and NGO’s
on the one hand, and land owners and managers on the other.
The example of the Moorland Forum, a body without
public accountability is a case in point. For four long years, the
Moorland Forum has debated and deferred any decision to reinstate
Langholm Moor; probably one of the top grouse moors in Scotland.
To experienced upland managers, who are responsible for bringing
millions of pounds into the Scottish economy without any subsidy
note, the solution is to control predation. In his seminal 2004
essay on Langholm Moor, Claws Out on a Silent Moorland, and I really
do implore you to read it if you haven’t already done so;
Magnus Linklater wrote “For both sides, Langholm is a difficult,
even painful issue.
For the RSPB; the idea that birds of prey, if
allowed to multiply, may wipe out other species including small
birds and rare waders; poses a huge moral dilemma. A society devoted
to the preservation of bird life finds it hard to accept that one
of its most cherished species may have been responsible for reducing
the wildlife area to an ecological dessert.” Contrast those
apocalyptic sentences with the same author’s recent comments
on Nature’s Gain, a published researched document of the Game
Conservancy Trust. Quote: “Nature’s Gain presents a
very different picture. It shows that on land managed for shooting
wildlife is thriving. Over the past ten years on grouse moors for
instance, golden plover, curlew and lapwing all under threat in
so many parts of the UK, have multiplied by up to five times. The
merlin, Britain’s smallest bird of prey is twice as common
on grouse moors as elsewhere. In managed grouse moors in the Northern
Pennines curlew have increased by eighteen times more than in the
Berwyn Special Protection Area, managed by the RSPB”. Need
I say more?
Distrust has become normality. This is especially
true in the area of wildlife management. Where gamekeepers and farmers
have been demonized as culprits in wildlife crime and habitat destruction.
This evident lack of trust is hugely damaging to achieving any real
consensus or vision for our countryside. It also means that the
species and biodiversity targets which everyone involved, and I
mean everyone, involved in land management should want to achieve
are disowned by the very people who should be delivering them. Rural
Scotland needs a new approach. We can do it.
The best example we have is the regeneration of
the River Tweed. This is now in many many people’s minds,
and I think the figures verify it, the world’s top Atlantic
salmon river. Why? Because, about fifteen years ago the local community,
inspired and sustained by the owners and proprietors of the rivers,
and the managers, led by the proprietors and with matched funding
from Europe and working with their own foundation, the Tweed Foundation,
got together and using support of any kind on offer, including large
sums of money from Europe, driven by commercial common sense, decided
to regenerate the whole Tweed system. The result is a burgeoning
economy based on sustainable tourism, enhanced environment and biodiversity,
and communities involved in, and proud of their achievements. The
Tweed has, of course, needed good luck: the removal of the North
East drift nets, as well as good science, but would have got nowhere
without local dynamism and leadership. We need to study and recreate
the circumstances of the Tweed success and replicate it all over
Scotland. Local managers in control, making decisions and leading.
The Tweed foundation learned years ago that fisheries management
has nothing at all to do with fish - it’s all about managing
man’s effects on fish.
So, Mr Finnie, I’m sorry you’re not
here, it’s all about managing people. Ministers will insist
that all their decisions are based on rigorous consultation but
often that process is limited, exclusive and so academic in nature
that rural communities feel they have no role to play. The best
examples of global conservation management are where scientists
are working hand in hand with local managers. I gave you the example
of the Tweed’s regeneration because it provided us with a
perfect example of this approach right here in Scotland. It is worth
noting that the Tweed’s regeneration is motivated by angling
tourism. This country sport, in much the same way as grouse or pheasant
shooting, deer stalking or hunting in its fairest forms, underpins
the rural economy. Oh that Langholm could have a Tweed approach.
The reluctant application of top down policy by
land managers affects the well-being and sustainability of our countryside.
The failure of Scottish Natural Heritage to meet most of its biodiversity
targets is one example. Government experts, scientists and environmentalists
should be there to offer advice and incentives to land managers
rather than bind them in red tape. Rural people need science and
conservation advice on tap, not on top. Science can provide managers
with insights, implications and applications, but it cannot replace
local knowledge, experience and good husbandry. By short circuiting
decision making and excluding the local manager we lose out on knowledge
inherited through the generations. Like hefted flocks of sheep,
local people know their own area. Once knowledge is lost it is gone
forever. There has never been a better time to repair the damage
and rebuild trust, as there is now. If the rural development consultation
is genuine, if it leads to empowerment of local managers, the reward
for the Executive will be a diverse and vibrant rural Scotland,
contributing to our economy, quality of life and national well-being.
If we fail to build trust, then we can expect economic decline and
environmental impoverishment.
The future therefore depends on concerted action
from public and private sector managers. Achieving our national
targets for biodiversity will depend on a more enthusiastic participation
by rural communities. But this is only possible if government is
prepared to move from a punitive approach to one based on incentive
and trust. Rural people will agree to accept a framework of practical
targets for land and wildlife management. But only genuine consultation
offers the prospect of effective partnership. Let us build it now.
©www.land-care.org.uk
Acknowledgements and Disclaimer
Land-Care is grateful to Tony Andrews, CEO Scottish
Countryside Alliance, and to Dick Playfair of Playfair Walker for
the invitation to attend the conference in a media capacity, the
opportunity to participate in both formal and informal discussion,
and for their help in providing Land-Care with transcripts of the
papers presented.
No responsibility for errors or omissions in the
transcription process can be taken by SCA, Playfair Walker or Land-Care.
Kimpton Graphics is a division of Land-Care.
Further reading recommended by Land-Care
 Linklater,
Magnus (2004). Claws out on a silent moorland. A heated debate rages
over the birds of prey threatening to destroy Britains' grouse.
The Times 25th August 2004.
Reproduced on Land-Care with permission of the author and the
newspaper
See ENVIRONMENT Homepage, filed 27 Aug 05, www.land-care.org.uk
Click
Here to View
Irvine,
James (2005). Contrary to what RSPB and English Nature would have
us believe, curlews are doing fine on upland moors managed for grouse
shooting.
See ENVIRONMENT Homepage, filed 24 Aug 05, www.land-care.org.uk
Click
Here to View |
