Call for community ownership of Scottish forests to combat corporate influence

The National

3 days ago

In three new discussion papers, Willie McGhee and Jon Hollingdale analysed the effectiveness and impact of industrial forestry on local areas and for meeting national targets.
McGhee is a forest manager and owner, and Hollingdale is an independent forestry and land use researcher.
The papers were commissioned by Community Land Scotland, which is the lead body representing community landowners in Scotland.
Dr Josh Doble, director of policy and advocacy at the organisation, said: 'These papers are designed to prompt discussion about industrial forestry and what an alternative forestry sector could look like in a Scotland which prioritises sustainable timber, community wealth building, climate and biodiversity.'
Dr Josh Doble (Image: Nick Mailer) Research in the paper concludes that more community ownership and management of woodlands, and more diverse ownership of forests across Scotland would increase community wealth, lead to greater environmental benefits, and produce more actively managed forests in Scotland.
It calls for changes to forestry management practice, reducing reliance on clear-felling, increasing the length of forest rotations, and a moratorium on planting peaty soils which they say would allow Scottish forestry to more effectively capture and store carbon.
McGhee said: 'We should be doing more intelligent and nuanced forest management to protect soils and soil carbon and to create diverse timber producing forests, both native and exotic conifer, managed on longer (harvest) rotations or as permanent forest."
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Hollingdale's paper states that the financial advantages of land ownership and the largely unregulated land market facilitate speculation are long-term obstacles to community wealth building.
Furthermore, he says recent price spikes and the limited supply of forest land add further barriers to the ambitions of communities.
Hollingdale argues that Scottish Government policies betray a reluctance to tackle emissions at point of consumption or to facilitate a systematic and measured land use transition.
Instead, they say, policymakers remain wedded to the discredited notion that large scale, extractive private investment is essential to deliver woodland creation and have focused on devising new incentives to attract external investment.
Hollingdale said: 'The current mix of incentives and mechanisms does little to promote active management of existing woods or the creation of the mixed multipurpose forests.
'The focus on area targets and the absence of measures to drive land release constrain afforestation to marginal ground and perpetuate the dominance of poor-quality plantations and ultimately will do little to tackle the climate crisis.'
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Dr Doble said: 'Community Land Scotland members have raised concerns about the impact of industrial coniferous forestry in their local areas.
'We as an organisation are concerned about the role of industrial forestry corporations and asset management organisations in further consolidating the ownership and management of Scotland's forests.
'If Scotland wants to be timber secure, and produce high quality timber for construction, how our forests are managed needs to be reformed.
'A clear way of reforming them would be to change some of the ownership patterns, allowing more local ownership and ensuring forests are actively managed over longer timescales to grow quality timber'.