Chamber and committees

As Karen Adam has no further questions, I will move on to Jenni Minto.

Do you have another supplementary question?

Thank you. Before we move on to David Finlay, I declare an interest as a neighbour of his. Having had the pleasure of farming on similar ground in Borgue, I have often felt his pain. I invite him to make an opening statement.

Our main item of business today is the second in a series of evidence sessions on the impact of the climate and nature emergencies. Today, we will focus on innovation and new approaches to environmental challenges in the rural economy.

I welcome our first panel of witnesses and thank them for their patience. They will discuss the terrestrial environment. We have Michael Clarke, Scotland chair of the Nature Friendly Farming Network; David Finlay, owner of the Ethical Dairy; Dee Ward, chairman of the Wildlife Estates Scotland initiative; and Andrew Bauer, head of food and footprint. Mr Bauer is replacing Rebecca Audsley.

The evidence session will take a slightly different form. I invite Michael Clarke to make a brief opening statement setting out some of the background to his innovative projects, followed by David Finlay, Dee Ward and then Andrew Bauer.

Absolutely.

That is fascinating. I am about to move on, because I am at risk of hogging the whole session. You talked about changes in growth. Do warmer waters increase growth rates or, because cod are cold-water metabolising fish, if you like, do they slow them down? Do warmer waters have the opposite effect to what would be our normal thinking, which is that warm water increases growth?

Last but not least, I call Bill Austin.

Welcome back, everyone. I welcome our second panel, who will be discussing the terrestrial environment. We have with us Dr Helaina Black, honorary associate, and Professor Rob Brooker, head of ecological sciences, both at the James Hutton Institute; Professor Marc Metzger, chair in environment and society at the University of Edinburgh; and Professor Pete Smith, chair in plant and soil science at the University of Aberdeen.

I will kick off with a statement:

“For terrestrial and freshwater ecosystems, land-use change has had the largest relative negative impact on nature since 1970, followed by the direct exploitation, in particular overexploitation, of animals, plants and other organisms mainly via harvesting, logging, hunting and fishing.”

Is that level of pressure the same in Scotland as it is globally? Do those global impacts affect Scotland in different ways? I ask Professor Brooker to kick off.

We are short of time. I will hand over to Marc Metzger, who has indicated that he wishes to respond.

I sometimes feel that, with a lot of the species loss that takes place in Scotland, the process does not happen right in front of our noses. For example, we do not notice that sand eel and other feedstocks are moving further north, and the general public are not aware that cod are getting closer to the Arctic circle.

Professor Fernandes, can you give us an idea of what is happening to our fisheries? As that takes place below the surface of the sea, we obviously cannot see what is happening. How is climate change affecting our fisheries in Scotland?