The Scottish Government’s Rural Development Programme (SRDP) is the main fund supporting rural development in Scotland. It supports economic, environmental and social measures to encourage sustainable development within rural Scotland.
The programme provides funding for projects covering farming, forestry, rural enterprise and business development, diversification and rural tourism.

ClimateXChange was asked to review the impact of the programme’s Agri-Environment options, i.e. the suggested incentives to farmers and land managers to ensure they manage their land in an environmentally sensitive way.

This report:

• assesses the existing SRDP options in relation to their impact on greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions or carbon sequestration;
• evaluates potential additional benefits from the SRDP options with regards to their GHG impacts; and
• provides an easy to use matrix of the potential SRDP options.

The research found that most SRDP measures provide benefits across a range of indicators of GHG savings and reduced nutrient losses. However, there is significant geographical variation in how applicable different measures are. This can limit their potential for greenhouse gas mitigation at the national scale.

Land drainage is essential to maintaining the productivity of Scottish agriculture. It also has significant potential to mitigate greenhouse gas emissions.

Wet soils can produce large quantities of Nitrous Oxide, a powerful greenhouse gas. Much of these emissions may be avoided through adequate agricultural drainage.

The Scottish Government has historically provided funding for the drainage of wet agricultural land. However, there is evidence that the condition of Scotland’s drainage infrastructure has deteriorated in the past 50 years, with little investment currently taking place.

As such, improving agricultural drainage infrastructure could represent a cost effective greenhouse gas mitigation measure.

Through a review of existing data, this report identifies:

• the current state of Scotland’s agricultural drainage infrastructure;
• the potential magnitude of greenhouse gas abatement from installing or improving drainage; and
• the impacts that such activity may have on other climate change mitigation policies.