Looking at Climate Change and its effects on Scotland’s landscapes – new research published by Scottish Natural Heritage

24/01/12

In coming decades the impact of climate change and sea level rise, and our response to addressing its causes and adapting to its effects, will increasingly have implications for Scotland’s landscapes, be it altering its character or the landscape’s contribution to our quality of life.  These effects are explored in two new reports from Scottish Natural Heritage (SNH).

The first report, ‘An assessment of the impacts of climate change on Scottish Landscapes and their contribution to quality of life’, notes that while the effects of climate change may not be certain, it will certainly have implications for Scotland’s landscapes and the social, economic and environmental benefits they provide.  Bringing together current research on the effects of climate change across a range of sectors, including forestry, agriculture, ecology and the built environment, the study explores how these changes could interact and alter Scottish landscapes and townscapes and the benefits they provide to people.  Landscape change will result from the direct impacts of a changing climate as well as from indirect impacts of human attempts to slow climate change (mitigation) or respond to a changing climate (adaptation). The study concludes that overall, mitigation and adaptation measures are likely to have a more significant influence on landscape character than the direct effects of climate change.

To make it easier to use these findings SNH has also produced a series of Regional Summaries, accessible on their website, highlighting the pertinent issues for decision making across Scotland.

The second report, ‘Climate Change Conversations’, carried out with the support of Sciencewise-ERC[1], presents the findings of a project that engaged two Scottish communities in discussing the implications of climate change for their place.  The process enabled them to consider what they valued about their area, the benefits their local landscape provided, how these could be affected by climate change, and their preferred response to these impacts.

Both communities recognised that climate change is likely to result in significant change across the area and that it will not be possible to prevent this. It was accepted that the focus should be on managing this change to retain or, where it may be lost, record, what is important and distinctive about the area. There was understanding of potential tensions, trade-offs, compromises and competing pressures for land; and a general preference expressed for smaller scale and diverse approaches to carbon reduction to fit better with their area’s resources and character.

The work has shown that considering climate change through its effects on the local landscape and quality of life provides a useful methodology for communities.  The framework provided by ‘ecosystem services’ proved useful in exploring the reasons why the local landscape is valued, and to assess the likely implications of change. This pilot work is currently being developed with the production of a web-based community dialogue toolkit (‘Talking About Our Place’), to aid communities to consider the value of their place and explore issues that affect it.  This will be available in Spring 2012.