Land Conversations / The Lie of the Land
How climate change and food security will drive future land use in Scotland: Where we are and how we got here.
The present balance of land use is the result of several thousand years of continuous change. The global migration of people and ideas; replacement of natural vegetation; rural depopulation and the growth of cities; past years of famine and hardship; the efficient pursuit of farming; the need for clean water and electrical power – all have shaped today’s use of land. But what will drive future land use in Scotland? Debate is active: rewilding; the balance of land ownership; future rural subsidy; managed repopulation; halting ecological decline; preparing for future climate; and how to combat food insecurity. Do we use the land to its full potential and how might things change for the better for most people? Can we construct a map of Scotland that shows the best use of the land for the foreseeable future?
To continue the Conversation, please follow this link and add any more comments for the next week in the appropriate sections of the Padlet document:
https://padlet.com/ScotEcoDesign/LandConv1
SPEAKERS
Chair
David Miller
Knowledge Exchange Coordinator
The James Hutton Institute
David Miller has a BSc in Topographic Science from University of Glasgow, and a PhD on expert systems from the University of Aberdeen. He has worked at the Institute since 1984, currently as the Knowledge Exchange Coordinator. In the initial years of the James Hutton Institute he was Research Theme Leader of Realising Land's Potential. He has worked on techniques for handling and analysing geographic information and applying them to mapping, monitoring and modelling changes in peatlands, land cover, urban and rural land use, landscape and seascape, and the development of Geographic Information Systems for use by government and its agencies. Currently he is a member of the Scottish Government Digital Task Force as part of the reformation of planning. He was an advisor to the Scottish Government Land Reform Review Group.
Speaker
Hugh Raven
Hugh Raven is Chair of Scotland’s Moorland Forum and MD of his family’s business at Ardtornish
Hugh is managing director of his family’s business at Ardtornish, West Lochaber, and chair of the Highlands and Islands Environment Foundation. He is a former Director of the Soil Association in Scotland and chair of Scotland’s Moorland Forum. Hugh’s interest is in managing land for sustainability. His career has been spent in environmental activism, promoting organic farming, in philanthropy and fund-raising for environmental causes.
Panel
Dr Charles Warren
Senior Lecturer
School of Geography and Sustainable Development
University of St Andrews
Charles has a PhD in glaciology but his research interests now lie within the broad field of environmental management and policy, with a focus on Scotland. Current projects include the management of lowland & peri-urban deer, public attitudes towards renewable energy technologies, evolving understandings of rewilding, and the utilisation of the 'native' and 'alien' labels within nature conservation. He is the author ofManaging Scotland's Environment and is co-editor of the Scottish Geographical Journal.
Patrick Krause
Chief executive Scottish Crofting Federation
Patrick has been Chair of the SCF for over 17 years, which is the only member-led organisation dedicated to promoting crofting and is the largest association of small-scale food producers in the UK. Their mission is to safeguard and promote the rights, livelihoods and culture of crofters and their communities. He was previously Chief executive of Vetaid, an NGO set up to support pastoralists in East Africa, and worked in Tanzania, Somalia and Mozambique in this capacity.
Megan Rowland
Land and Deer Manager
Founding member of the Scottish Crofting Federations’ Young Crofters. An advocate for sourcing and producing food and drink locally; Youth Ambassador for the Highland branch of the British Deer Society and a Lantra Scotland Game & Wildlife Industry Champion. Wayfaring and Wandering blog.
Megan MacInnes
Land Commissioner, Scottish Land Commission
Megan has over 15 years’ experience working on land reform with community groups, NGOs, governments, international organisations and large agribusiness companies. She has considerable expertise in protecting land rights, land management, community empowerment, natural resource governance and human rights. She grew up on Skye and is now part of a crofting family in Applecross, and until May 2020 was the Land Advisor with the international NGO Global Witness.
Andrew Whitley
Baker, author, co-founder of the Real Bread Campaign and Scotland The Bread.
Andrew Whitley started an organic bakery in Cumbria in the 1970s. He wrote the award-winning book Bread Matters, and has been credited with ‘changing the way we think about bread’ by the BBC Food & Farming Awards. From 2010-20 Andrew grew a small organic agroforestry project in the Scottish Borders and began researching historic cereal varieties – work that led to founding Scotland The Bread, a community benefit society based in Fife which proposes a Scottish grain and bread supply that is diverse, healthy, equitable, locally-controlled and sustainable.
ARTISTIC CONTRIBUTIONS
Each of the six conversations will include four artistic contributions, from poets, musicians and video artists, bringing a cultural perspective to each event. Each of their pieces will be a different take on the changing rural landscape around them, the climate emergency and the unstable connections between the human and the natural worlds. Some will be provocative about the way forward, some reflective of the current situation, and others just a joyous celebration of nature.
The contributors tonight are:
Hamish Napier & David Russell Snow on the Caledonian Forest
Jules Horne Unconformity
Chris Powici Drystone & Deer
Pau de Planet Tipping Point
