It may look tranquil, but rural Wales is in some turmoil. The government has ambitious tree-planting targets, and there are fears that private equity companies and landowners have started a feeding frenzy around a trough of tree-planting grants, woodland carbon units, pending issuance units and other complex forms of carbon-offset trading. Rural people see that their communities are under threat, and fear landscape change and land being taken out of traditional food production. Farmers may be torn between their loyalty to the community and offers for their farmland that they cannot resist. Conservationists and rewilders risk becoming targets for the kind of rural anger that undermined the ‘Summit to Sea’ rewilding project in West Wales recently. Welsh nationalists are likely to support local communities and want them to be involved and consulted. This is a potentially explosive and destructive situation where conservationists and farmers who could be working together may find themselves embittered opponents and both lose out as a result. There is a way through, though, and the model could be based on the Scottish Land Fund and the Community Right to Buy, that have enabled many Scottish communities to take control of their futures by acquiring their local landscapes. From the islands of the Hebrides to the moorlands of the Scottish southern uplands, communities that have historically been dominated by absentee landlords have acquired the land that surrounds them, and started to manage it for the good of the locals and of the planet. In Wales the need for communities to take control of their destinies is just as urgent.
A very deep and insightful piece Richard, as we keep seeing it is the moneyed vested interests that have the ability to skew the world for everyone else - human and nature. Localism is truly the way forward?
A very deep and insightful piece Richard, as we keep seeing it is the moneyed vested interests that have the ability to skew the world for everyone else - human and nature. Localism is truly the way forward?