Peter Smith

Scotland’s recent announcement to raise over £100 million through private investment while abandoning grants for nature restoration projects , as reported by The Guardian , may at first glance seem a bold and progressive step towards environmental conservation. In reality, it risks becoming yet another mechanism to enrich the affluent while burdening future generations with insurmountable costs. Many conservationists rightly point to the destruction wrought by commercial forestry—stripping valuable habitats such as peat bogs, releasing vast amounts of CO₂ from our soils into the atmosphere, and accelerating climate change—as the main culprit. These are indeed symptoms of the perverse incentives embedded within our current economy and regulatory landscape. But the issue runs far deeper than mismanaged forestry or carbon leakage. At its core, this policy is a textbook case of rent-seeking. It invites speculative finance—much of it from American institutions—to carve up our natural heri...