Government accused of assisting private investors to ‘exploit Scotland for profit’
SIGNIFICANT amounts of public money are being spent supporting powerful private investors and absentee developers to “exploit Scotland’s natural resources for profit”, a group representing landowners has claimed.
Community Land Scotland (CLS) said national policy on nature restoration and carbon capture projects is too heavily weighted towards major developers.
It is concerned that there may be a shift from grants to public money being used to “de-risk” private investment in an industry that is still in its infancy.
The market is underpinned by carbon offsetting schemes where big companies buy carbon credits from peat-restoration or tree-planting schemes to compensate for their carbon emissions.
CLS said the industry is being driven by unrealistic figures about the amount of finance required to support the burgeoning industry.
Scottish Government planning reflects assessments in a 2021 report from the Green Finance Institute which identified a “gap” of about £20 billion in what was needed to develop natural capital in line with net zero targets, and a more recent figure which states an ambition of securing £12.5bn in private investment. “There is an idea that the main problem in terms of achieving these nature restoration targets is a financial one and there’s the huge finance gap of billionsof pounds and the only way to address that is through private finance,” said Dr Josh Doble, policy manager for CLS.
“If we accept that there is a £20bn finance gap – and we don’t – if the thinking is that there is this gap, obviously the public purse can’t pay for that. What we are saying is that this finance gap is not credible and it’s being used to drive this market.
“We are just asking the government to consider the fact that these figures are not credible and there needs to be a more credible approach because private finance models are not going to keep wealth in Scotland.”
The organisation wants to see 10% of Scotland brought into community ownership by 2030.