Supporting Scotland's transition - land use and agriculture

Rur­al Skills, Land Use Policy and Part­ner­ships Scot­tish Gov­ern­ment D Spur Saughton House Edin­burgh EH11 3SP

Cairngorms Nation­al Park Author­ity 14 The Square Grant­own on Spey PH26 3HG

T: 01479 873 535

07 Octo­ber 2025

Dear Land Use Strategy Team,

The Park Author­ity wel­comes the dir­ec­tion of travel in the Fourth Land Use Strategy, from pre­vi­ous iter­a­tions describ­ing the dif­fer­ent land use sec­tors, towards an integ­rated land use mod­el that recog­nises the dif­fer­ent demands on the same area of land and the need for dis­cus­sion around pri­or­it­isa­tion and trade-offs. How­ever, we feel the strategy could, and should, go fur­ther in sup­port­ing land use decision mak­ing with clear­er evid­ence, guid­ance and an under­pin­ning align­ment of policy, incent­ive and reg­u­la­tion frame­works to sup­port imple­ment­a­tion on the ground.

Fur­ther data and map­ping will be cru­cial as an evid­ence base for future dis­cus­sions around tar­gets and ambi­tions and how they inter­act. Mit­ig­a­tion, adapt­a­tion and resi­li­ence to the impacts of cli­mate change are a fun­da­ment­ally import­ant object­ive for Scotland’s land use. Future data and data map­ping would bene­fit from being seen in the con­text of cli­mate predictions.

Baselines for cur­rent land cov­er are help­ful and must be con­sidered along­side land use in order to be mean­ing­ful. Sport­ing, a sig­ni­fic­ant land use in the Cairngorms Nation­al Park, import­ant to the eco­nomy and the cul­tur­al iden­tity, is not recog­nised. Equally, nature des­ig­na­tions, reserves and land man­aged prin­cip­ally for eco­sys­tem res­tor­a­tion are not cur­rently con­sidered. We would like to see inform­a­tion on eco­sys­tem ser­vices and nature-based solu­tions included.

The Park Author­ity would like to see the Land Use Strategy used to sup­port decision mak­ing in a way that enabled region­al, catch­ment and sub-catch­ment assess­ment of the impact, effect­ive­ness and value for money of pri­or­it­ising dif­fer­ent land use scen­ari­os against the deliv­ery of dif­fer­ent pub­lic policy areas (eg flood resi­li­ence, forestry, food pro­duc­tion, nature res­tor­a­tion, net zero); in the deliv­ery of mul­tiple bene­fits; and the capa­city for con­trib­ut­ing to nation­al land use out­comes and pri­or­it­ies. Land cov­er, land use and socio-eco­nom­ic factors used col­lect­ively could inform where max­im­um, mul­tiple pub­lic bene­fits can be achieved and help guide pub­lic pay­ments and policy to sup­port pre­ferred nation­al and region­al outcomes.

Acknow­ledging the com­pet­ing demands on land from a pub­lic policy per­spect­ive high­lights the need for a more coordin­ated approach, and that not all out­comes are com­pat­ible eg herb­i­vore impacts can­not be main­tained, or increased, where wood­land expan­sion and peat­land res­tor­a­tion are con­sidered to be pri­or­it­ies. There needs to be a stronger link to how land use policy, incent­ives and oth­er levers can be applied to real­ise the prin­ciples on the ground.

There is a risk that using spe­cif­ic indic­at­ors and not an eco­sys­tem func­tion­al­ity approach per­petu­ates or reen­forces a one-for-one trade off rather than con­sider the mul­tiple bene­fits approach. Any sys­tem of mon­it­or­ing should be able to con­sider deliv­ery against a suite of indic­at­ors col­lect­ively. Fur­ther work on how bene­fits can be ​‘stacked’ and any poten­tial mul­ti­pli­er effects would be helpful.

Nation­al Parks are not cur­rently recog­nised in the descrip­tion of integ­rated land use in action. Nation­al Parks have a key role to play in demon­strate col­lect­ive and col­lab­or­ate decision mak­ing in deliv­ery across wide range of pub­lic policy out­comes, with sig­ni­fic­ant poten­tial to be recog­nised and val­ued as exem­plars and pion­eers in integ­rated land-use decision mak­ing. we would strongly like to see this role rep­res­en­ted in, and overtly sup­por­ted by, the strategy.

Policy and incent­ive schemes align­ment, map­ping and data are cru­cial tools to aid land use decision mak­ing and integ­rated land use, and sub­sequently to the deliv­ery of the Nation­al Park Part­ner­ship Plan. It is good to see this point reflec­ted in the Fourth Land Use Strategy and the Park Author­ity looks for­ward to the next stage of the Strategy devel­op­ment where it goes on to more dir­ectly provide these functions.

Yours sin­cerely

afl

ANDY FORD Dir­ect­or of Nature and Cli­mate Change