COMMENT

Parliament Gives and Parliament Takes Away

By Mike Dales
(MCofS Access and Conservation Officer)

By the time your next edition of The Scottish Mountaineer hits your doormat you should have been out for your first walk or climb under Scotland’s new statutory right of access. Whether it will have felt any different, will be for you to decide. It may take a few years to judge what difference the new legislation really makes, but the ink on the Land Reform Act and Scottish Outdoor Access Code is dry and the new system is ready to go when Scottish Ministers hit the button.

In the long-term I believe the statutory right of access, backed up by a sensible emphasis on responsibility on all parties, will prove to be an effective and fair way of protecting a fundamental human right. The MCofS worked alongside a wide range of recreation bodies to propel access rights onto the political agenda of the newly devolved Scotland and we played a vital role in shaping the access provisions in the Land Reform (Scotland) Act 2003.

With this major piece of work reaching a conclusion our access work is already turning towards implementing the new access system. Likewise our conservation work that concentrated for several years on individual planning cases, like the Shieldaig hydro proposals, has turned to the widespread threat posed to Scotland’s mountains by the proliferation of wind factories.

The focus of our work looks like concentrating on the wider energy debate, the questioning of the science behind onshore wind energy and the development of government policy. We will oppose any specific proposals that pose a threat to mountain areas, but we do not have the resources to consider the potential impact of every onshore wind application in Scotland. Just like working to change access laws rather than trying to solve every access problem, it is becoming clear that the most effective way for the MCofS to stop inappropriate wind factory proposals is to expose the flawed thinking that lies behind this inefficient and destructive industry.

Renewable energy built up a huge amount of support over the last 30 years, but the scale of the latest generation of onshore wind factories is leading to a loss of support for renewables and an increase in support for nuclear. I believe in renewable energy generation and accept the argument that climate change is the major threat to our planet (and mountains), but I also believe that public support for renewables needs to be maintained, and that is unlikely to happen when opposition to onshore wind proposals is ignored.

Micro-scale renewables on our rooftops and in our gardens has the potential to produce less controversy and more power; and could crucially regain public support for renewables. The energy debate, wrongly in my view, leads to more discussion about jobs than it does about saving the planet and securing a reliable supply of energy. That said; I suspect that small turbines would create more jobs, especially local jobs, than massive turbines, which tend to support non-local jobs. For instance, who are you going to call in to fix the 4-foot turbine on your roof if it develops a fault? A guy from Denmark or a local engineer?

Just when we have won a statutory right of access to enjoy the countryside, that enjoyment could be snatched away by the thoughtless dash for wind that threatens to destroy the very thing that we have fought for access to. This is a monumental threat to our mountains and we must stand up for landscape like we stood up for access rights.