Vested interests killed new national park - SNP should be ashamed

The Herald Scotland

6 days ago

One of the key characteristics of the debate over the Park was inaccurate information in the media, which was distributed to residents via mail-drops. We noticed a similarity to the campaign against the deposit return scheme, another one of Action to Protect Rural Scotland's key areas of work, which was also subject to a campaign to discredit it.
These tactics have, once again, proved extremely effective, and the plans for a new National Park in Galloway have been axed.
A detailed look at the consultation analysis confirms that the anti-campaign had an insidious impact on the outcome. The Government made the decision to scrap the Park, despite their knowledge that most of the arguments being used against the National Park had no basis in evidence, whereas the arguments used in support were generally evidence–based.
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Worse than this, the Scottish Government used the consultation process as a numbers game, something that consultations are not designed to do. Consultations are used to gather information about complex policy proposals, and, in this case, a proposal with a number of options: for the area that Park would cover, powers of the Park, governance arrangements, among other things.
This consultation, though, has been used as a de facto referendum by the Scottish Government in their decision making, as evidenced by the Cabinet Secretary emphasising the exact numbers from the consultation response, despite the NatureScot report cautioning against the approach in their report. This problem was compounded by the Scottish Government failing to weigh any of the answers according to whether their objections to a National Park had a basis in fact.
NatureScot reported that the core of the opposition was based on concerns over the potential negative impact of the Park but then said. 'We would note that many of these issues raised in the responses to the consultation are not supported by strong evidence of how existing National Parks in Scotland operate, or more detailed consideration of how a National Park could be tailored to Southwest Scotland to address these concerns.'
In their detailed analysis of the reasons that respondents gave for being 'for' or 'against' the proposed Park, NatureScot assessed that 10 out of the 12 perceived drawbacks were not backed up by evidence, and two were uncertain.
Campaigners worried about the impact of the Park on the region's economy (Image: free) These two are both about the impact of future wind development, which is classed as uncertain due to the Government signalling an intention to change policy in new National Parks. On the other hand, of the ten perceived benefits of National Parks in the consultation responses, 8 were judged to have strong or good evidence, and one a medium evidence base.
It seems like a significant proportion of the people responding to the consultation have been persuaded by incorrect information. The Scottish Government, for whom supporting existing and new National Parks, is stated policy, failed to correct this tidal wave of inaccurate information before it had totally swamped all discussions of the National Park in Galloway.
This left three voluntary organisations: Galloway National Park Association, the Scottish Campaign for National Parks (SCNP) and ourselves with the impossible task of trying to get the evidence-base out there, with our tiny resources (SCNP and APRS share one day a week of funded officer time dedicated to National Parks, GNPA have none).
That the Government allowed misinformation to take hold, and then, to make things worse, converted the consultation into a de facto referendum, is totally at variance with the way in which Government policy should be consulted on and delivered.
NatureScot themselves, in their reports, counselled against treating the consultation as a numbers game saying, among other things, 'treating these results as definitive is problematic' and 'Nor was the survey designed to be a simple poll.
Our experience with the aftermath of the cancellation of the Deposit Return Scheme suggests that the Scottish Government will find that cancelling the new National Park will not draw a line under the issue.
The deposit return scheme was cancelled, rather than going ahead without glass, which they could have done under the terms of the Internal Markets Act. This turned out to be the start of a whole new set of problems. It led to a loss of £8 million due to the bankruptcy of Circularity Scotland, being sued by Biffa for £200 million, and now they are having to implement a deposit return scheme without glass three years after it could have happened, while setting up all the structures once again, but burdened by a lack of trust from business resulting from the U-turn.
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Similarly this will not be the end of the pressures from the anti-park campaign. Those who opposed the new National Park: the landed interests, farmers, forestry companies and huge power companies will be emboldened by this win. They won't be stop with taking down a Galloway National Park.
The Government has to face up to the fact that anything that clearly benefits the environment but potentially reduces profits for vested interests attracts a powerful anti-lobby. This is no different from public health in areas such as tobacco, alcohol and processed food. Any government supposedly committed to stopping and reversing biodiversity loss needs to stand firm on positive change.
Civil society, also, should be alert to the tactics that have been used to bring down the Galloway National Park. If the Scottish Government can't muster the energy to get a policy with such cross-party support, as a National Park over the line, how will we make the far more challenging changes we will need to stave off the nature and climate emergencies?
Dr Kat Jones is the Director of Action to Protect Rural Scotland (APRS) which has been campaigning for more national parks for Scotland since 2013