> ## Content Index > Fetch the complete content index at: https://www.peoplesfuture.scot/llms.txt > Use this file to discover other available public pages before exploring further. # 14. Sustainable Environment for Generations 🟢 - URL: https://www.peoplesfuture.scot/14-sustainable-environment-for-generations/ - Published: 2026-08-20T10:28:07.000Z - Updated: 2026-08-20T10:28:07.000Z - Description: Scotland created 8,470 hectares of new woodland in 2024/25 — 54 per cent of the UK total, and almost half the 15,040 hectares of the year before. The Climate Change Committee has said the 2023/24 rate proved a rapid rise is possible, and that grant-scheme cuts then halved it. - Author: The Peoples Future Scotland - Tags: The 28 Scotland created 8,470 hectares of new woodland in 2024/25 — 54 per cent of the UK total, and almost half the 15,040 hectares of the year before. The Climate Change Committee has said the 2023/24 rate proved a rapid rise is possible, and that grant-scheme cuts then halved it. Single-use cutlery, plates, stirrers and polystyrene food ware are already banned; plastic wet wipes follow in August 2027\. Forestry and waste law are devolved. The constraint is whether grant money and land-use choices stay still long enough for nurseries and landowners to plan. --- ## Current reality ### Legal and institutional position Scottish Ministers hold forestry, the Forestry Grant Scheme, Forestry and Land Scotland, and woodland creation targets. The Climate Change (Scotland) Act and the draft Climate Change Plan 2026–2040 set the planting pathway. Planning and deer management affect what can be planted and whether it survives. Waste and environmental protection are devolved. The Environmental Protection (Single-use Plastic Products) (Scotland) Regulations 2021 banned, from 1 June 2022, the commercial supply of specified single-use plastic cutlery, plates, stirrers, balloon sticks, and expanded-polystyrene food containers, cups and lids. Single-use vapes were banned from 1 June 2025\. The Environmental Protection (Wet Wipes Containing Plastic) (Scotland) Regulations 2026 ban the supply of plastic wet wipes from 11 August 2027, with medical, industrial, pharmacy and some public-body exemptions. The Circular Economy (Scotland) Act 2024 is the wider waste framework. Public procurement can tighten what public buildings buy. A UK-aligned deposit return scheme is a separate, delayed instrument. Reserved matters that touch the edges: some producer-responsibility design, UK-wide packaging rules, and electricity-infrastructure works that fell woodland (those replacement hectares do not count as new creation). ### The latest official numbers **Cover.** Forest Research, 31 March 2025: 1.51 million hectares of woodland in Scotland, 19 per cent of land area (UK 14 per cent; England 10; Wales 15; Northern Ireland 9). Forestry Strategy reporting: 1.496 million hectares in 2023, 1.501 million in 2024, 1.510 million in 2025\. National Forest Inventory 2024: about 1.494 million hectares, 19.1 per cent. **Creation.** 2023/24: 15,040 hectares (highest for 34 years). 2024/25: 8,470 hectares, of which 5,300 native (above the 4,000-hectare native line in the Programme for Government). England 5,770; Wales 960; Northern Ireland 500\. Scotland missed its own 10,000-hectare PfG figure and the previous 18,000-hectare Climate Change Plan figure. Scottish Forestry: about 30 per cent of approved projects that year — 2,800 hectares — did not proceed or were compensatory planting for electricity works and cannot be counted as creation. Pipeline cited at about 28,000 hectares under development, 12,000 approved, 7,000 intended for that planting year. Since the 2019 Forestry Strategy: more than 55,000 hectares created, including more than 20,000 native; average about 11,000 a year. **Draft Climate Change Plan path.** 10,000 hectares in 2025/26, then 12,000, 14,000, 16,000, 18,000 by 2029/30; 21 per cent cover by 2032\. Longer-term modelling in the plan points toward about 250,000 hectares of new woodland by 2040\. CCC Scotland 2025 progress report: 2023/24 showed the sector can rise quickly; 2024/25 almost halved after a 41 per cent Forestry Grant Scheme cut; funding in 2025/26 and 2026/27 is up but still below the 2023/24 peak. Peatland restoration, by contrast, reached 14,900 hectares in 2024/25. **Grant budget.** Scottish Forestry Briefing Note 52 (June 2026): indicative FGS 2026/27 £58.65 million, £5.65 million more than the prior confirmed year, with that increment aimed at up to 12,000 hectares of creation. The Draft Budget stated £57 million against a £51 million 2025/26 working figure. **Economy (Scottish Forestry compilation).** About £1.1 billion GVA a year; 34,000 full-time-equivalent jobs. Of which about £878 million and 16,000 jobs in forestry, processing and supply chain; £252 million and about 18,000 in recreation and tourism. **Plastics.** 2021 Regulations in force. Wet-wipe SSI 2026/75 in force 11 August 2027\. Carrier-bag charging earlier produced a large drop in bags issued at sale. The Beach-litter series (not a government census) still shows drinks-related and wipe-related items. Public bodies are already bound when they supply banned items; residual use is a procurement and exemption problem, not a missing ban on the listed products. ### How it is experienced in daily life A funded planting season creates work for nurseries, fencing gangs, and deer controllers. A cut year does not. A farmer with a sub-20-hectare scheme meets inflation in plants and labour. A compensatory hectare under a power line is not extra forest. A hospital canteen that still defaults to remaining single-use items sits under a ban that already exists for the listed products. A beach still collects wipes until 2027. ### How it got here Commercial planting was high in the 1970s (CCC notes an average around 26,000 hectares a year under tax incentives). Rates then collapsed. Devolved strategy from 2019 rebuilt volume, peaking in 2023/24\. Annual grant politics then cut the peak. Plastics policy followed a sequence of item-by-item SSIs rather than one omnibus. Public buildings were never the first target; they are the remainder. ### What has already been tried, and what that showed A large FGS year delivers a large planting year. A 41 per cent cut delivers a near-halving. Native-area targets can be hit while the headline hectare target is missed. Approval is not planting: 2,800 hectares fell out. Small farm schemes are the first to stall on inflation. Item bans work on the items banned; they do not empty the litter stream. The CCC and the sector have asked for multi-year certainty and have not had it. --- ## What needs to happen ### The improvement in measurable terms - Creation at or above the draft CCP step for that year, and then held, not spiked. - A higher share of approved hectares actually planted and countable. - Native and productive mixes both visible in the official split. - Cover moving toward 21 per cent on a published inventory, not a slogan. - Public-sector contracts that do not default to remaining single-use plastics where a listed alternative exists. - Wet-wipe enforcement ready for August 2027. ### Sequence Settle FGS for more than one claim year. Clear the approved pipeline. Keep deer and nursery capacity in step. Publish a land-use map that shows where expansion is expected without converting the best arable land. Then tighten public-building procurement. Do not announce 18,000 hectares in a year the grant line cannot buy. ### Workforce, capital and standards Nurseries, planters, deer management, and fencing. Woodland Carbon Code integrity. National Standard-equivalent for public catering specifications. Accessibility exemptions that remain real. ### What would count as success in twelve months - 2025/26 and 2026/27 creation figures that meet the CCP steps those years were given - FGS spend against the £58.65 million indicative line, with slippage explained - A public-procurement circular on remaining single-use items in the estate - Wet-wipe guidance issued well before August 2027 --- ## What can be done under current powers ### Who holds the lever Scottish Ministers and Scottish Forestry: FGS, targets, FLS estate. Local authorities and NatureScot: planning and designated land. Public bodies: their own contracts and contracts. Landowners: whether they apply. ### The statute, budget or direction Climate Change (Scotland) Act; Forestry and Land Management (Scotland) Act; FGS rules; 2021 and 2026 plastics SSIs; Circular Economy (Scotland) Act 2024; public procurement directions. ### What is already possible and unused A multi-year FGS settlement inside a spending review. Enhanced small-scheme rates already sketched. A land-use statement that integrates agriculture as the CCC asked. Estate-wide reusable catering specs. Enforcement capacity for the 2027 wipe ban. ### What would still be true if management improved tomorrow Trees still take years to sequester at scale. Deep peat is still the wrong place to plant. Deer still browse. A power-line hectare still does not count as creation. A canteen rule doesn't solve household litter. --- ## Where the limits are ### Law and reserved powers The core tools are Scottish. UK energy works can remove countable woodland. Some packaging EPR remains UK-shaped. ### Money £58.65 million is not the 2023/24 peak. 18,000 hectares a year is a Budget choice competing with every other line. ### Workforce and capital Nursery stock and skilled labour cannot be created in one winter. Fencing and deer control are capacity, not press releases. ### Time, geography, UK-wide systems Cover in 2032 is the product of this decade’s planting. Upland deer and Atlantic exposure are not Central Belt problems. Timber markets are UK and import-exposed. ### Political difficulty, kept separate from legal impossibility Farmers will contest land. Communities will contest sitka. That is politics. It is not the absence of a forestry power. --- ## What is not yet known 2025/26 planted hectares. Whether 12,000 hectares in 2026/27 is delivered. How many pipeline hectares lapse. A single official land-availability map that agriculture accepts. Beach-litter change after the wipe ban. Deposit-return launch date. --- ## Honest summary **Achievable now.** Fund creation at the CCP step. Plant what has been approved. Hold native and productive together. Specify public-sector catering. Prepare the 2027 wipe ban. **Only partly achievable.** 21 per cent cover by 2032 if the next five years repeat 2024/25\. Elimination of all plastic litter. A forestry carbon sink rebuilt in a single parliamentary term. **Would require reserved change.** Not the planting programme or the listed plastics bans. Some UK-wide packaging and energy-consent interactions. **Colour mark: green.** The legal tools are already in Edinburgh. 2023/24 showed volume is possible. 2024/25 showed volume is optional. Green is not a claim that 18,000 hectares is easy, or that a canteen rule cleans the sea. **What this item does not settle.** It does not choose sitka over native as a creed. It does not treat 19 per cent cover as a failure because Europe averages higher — climates and histories differ. It does not claim each new hectare is immediately additional carbon. The test is whether the next Forest Research year is closer to 12,000–14,000 hectares than to 8,470, and whether public buildings have stopped buying what the 2021 Regulations already made unlawful to supply as a default. --- ## Connection Item 8 is the same land-use and grid tension (compensatory planting under electricity works). Rural jobs and skills sit with items 7 and 9\. Public finances decide the FGS line. The Independence Debate is not required for these two instruments. --- **People’s Future Scotland**