Chamber and committees

My question is for Jo Pike. You talked about Riverwoods, which is the conservation covenant that is being looked at in England and Wales. Are you aware of any Scottish Government funding for riparian tree planting?

If I were a landowner and I wanted to cool my waters and increase the salmon population, could I apply to a Scottish Government fund to pay for riparian tree planting?

I would like to know which budget the funding is coming from. Producers are obviously incredibly important to animal welfare so, from their point of view, I would like to know the capacity of the scheme.

The SNIB’s aim is to sustain 200 jobs and to create 500 additional jobs. Do you know how many jobs have been created so far through the £50 million investment?

I wonder whether Pat Snowdon can tell us how reductions in emissions can be measured through the woodland carbon code.

I was tickled by a comment that made it to The Scotsman, in which you said that

“it wasn’t enough for big corporations to greenwash themselves by purchasing carbon offset credits in the same manner as the nobility had purchased redemption from the church in mediaeval times.”

That summarises what you have just said.

My next question is about how to get that public-private balance and equality of benefit for everybody. You talked about not just planting swathes of trees in the Highlands, but using the central belt as part of the conversation. How do we, with regulation, separate emissions reduction and carbon sequestration, and judge the success of both of those either separately or together?

Are private investors put off by the fact that it takes a lot longer for them to make a return on investments in hardwood plantings such as oaks and beeches than in, say, Sitka spruce?

Thank you.

I would like to go back to Pat Snowdon. Sectoral pathways are not yet policies as such, particularly those on agriculture, so there is no way to measure emissions, as the Climate Change Committee said. That is a difficult position for land users and land owners to be in. On the point that I made about riparian tree planting, has the Scottish Government implemented any funding strategy to incentivise people to plant riparian trees?

In that case, would you recommend that corporates or companies that are looking to offset carbon but that are not actually reducing emissions be encouraged to invest in hardwood instead of Sitka spruce and to look very much at reducing their emissions on top of any carbon offsetting that they might be doing?