Land and marine managers, and Scottish public delivery bodies give evidence to Lords inquiry on nature-based solutions for climate change

The session will take place at 10am on Tuesday 2 November 2021 in Committee Room 4 and will be available to watch live or on demand at Parliament TV.

The Committee will hear first from organisations representing different types of landowners and stakeholders, including in marine environments. The Committee will ask about their net zero ambitions and the role planned for nature-based solutions. The Committee will also ask about the feasibility of Government targets for changing land use as part of the effort to achieve net-zero by 2050, and the trade-offs this may entail.

The Committee will then hear from public bodies in Scotland responsible for encouraging the adoption of nature-based solutions. The Committee will seek to understand how nature-based solutions are supported, and whether the schemes to support them need to be improved.

Giving evidence will be:

10:00am

• Richard Bramley, Chair, National Farmers’ Union Environment Forum, National Farmers’ Union (NFU)
• Professor Selina Stead, Chief Scientific Adviser, Marine Management Organisation (MMO)
• Thomas Lancaster, Head of Land, Seas and Climate, Royal Society for the Protection of Birds (RSPB)

11:00am

• Nick Halfhide, Director of Nature and Climate Change, NatureScot
• Alan Hampson, Head of Policy, Forestry and Land, Scotland

Possible questions include:

• What role are nature-based solutions intended to play within the net zero plans of different landholding organisations, and how will they be implemented at the required scale?
• Are the ambitions in the Government’s net zero and nature recovery policies for land use change realistic?
• What are the major barriers or concerns that are preventing land managers and other stakeholders from deploying nature-based solutions, and how could these be addressed? 
• Which government plans, policies and strategies are most relevant to supporting nature-based solutions, and could they be better coordinated? 
• What major uncertainties remain about carbon sequestration and storage by nature-based solutions in England, and what work is being done to address these uncertainties?
• Some nature-based solutions projects may not be viable unless co-benefits are suitably captured in their valuation. How should future projects and funding schemes take these co-benefits into account?