Wetland

• Honorees were selected through journalistic reporting, nominations, and vetting by peers in environmental law.
• Kendig-Schrader represents clients in land use and environmental matters and administrative litigation.
• Nicholson-Choice has more than 30 years of experience with matters involving environmental, land use, brownfields, environmental justice, and marina permitting, with an emphasis on negotiating and resolving complex environmental cleanup, permitting, due diligence, remediation, and litigation matters.
• She serves as environmental and land use counsel on multimillion-dollar projects and transactions, and she advises Fortune 500 companies, individual property owners, and lending institutions on environmental liability and compliance.

• Kumasi, Ghana’s second largest city, has a high level of encroachment and this has led to the pollution of water bodies.
• As scholars of urban planning and chemistry, we conducted a study in the greater Kumasi metropolis to understand the extent of encroachment and pollution of two rivers, Subin and Wiwi.
• We also wanted to know more about the extent of water pollution, land-use dynamics and water resources regulations, and how they influence the quality of water resources.
• We recommend that the city authorities monitor what is happening better and do more to prevent degradation of Kumasi’s water bodies.

Effects of land use on the quality of water bodies

• Also, the intense pressure of urbanisation on the available land has resulted in a high level of encroachment in wetlands.
• As a result of limited investment in sewage plants, most of the city’s untreated waste water is discharged into the surface water bodies.
• This has implications for the quality and sustainability of these water bodies.
• During heavy rains, the refuse runs off into the water, affecting water quality and flow.
• The industrial activities along the water bodies include washing bays, auto-mechanical activities, welding and wood processing.

Time for Kumasi to wake up

• Urban growth can coexist with natural resources if human activities located near water bodies don’t threaten their quality and continued existence.
• Our study shows that Kumasi has developed with little regard for its natural assets.
• City authorities ought to put in place measures to clean the water bodies and convert buffer areas into parks and green spaces.
• Ecologically sensitive areas that are 100 feet away from wetlands should be compulsorily acquired as natural assets for the public interest.

The authors do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

• The Scottish government estimates that the carbon stored in its peatlands is equivalent to 120 years’ worth of the country’s emissions.
• The Scottish government has pledged to spend £250 million between 2020 and 2030 to restore 25,000 hectares of peatland a year.

• One manager at NatureScot, the government agency responsible for the environment, described the shortfall as a “national emergency” caused primarily by a “funding gap”.
• He argued that for Scotland to meet its net-zero commitments, there must be large injections of private finance into peatland restoration.

Crofters and carbon markets

• The selling of carbon credits is supposed to direct private investment into peatland restoration.
• With these credits, the buyer, whether a company or individual, can claim to have offset their own carbon footprint.
• Accreditation allows landowners to sell carbon credits on the UK land carbon registry.

Our research team travelled to the Isle of Lewis in the Outer Hebrides (an island chain off the Scottish west coast) in early 2023 to interview crofters and landowners. We found that confusion over the rights, responsibilities and benefits of selling carbon credits is slowing down restoration, not a lack of funding.

‘Pots of gold’

• The Outer Hebrides has the lowest average income in the UK and the highest rate of fuel poverty in Scotland.
• For crofters here, the prospect of monetary compensation for restoring peatlands (where 70% of the land is classified as peatland soil) is appealing.
• While these brokers made out the process was simple (“restore peatlands, sell the credits to us”) the reality is more complicated.

Muddy legal waters

• These (smaller) “pots of gold” are difficult for crofters to access due to legal complications.
• Our research with Lewisian crofters has shown that unresolved questions regarding profitability and legal complications have created a stalemate.
• Further advice and legal guidance for crofters – from the Peatland Code, Scottish government and the Scottish Land Court – is urgently needed to break the deadlock.

Ewan Gordon Jenkins received funding from STAIRS, the St Andrews Interdisciplinary Research Support fund.

This article was drafted in collaboration with Dr. Cornelia Helmcke (https://research-portal.st-andrews.ac.uk/en/persons/cornelia-helmcke) and Dr. Lydia Cole (https://www.st-andrews.ac.uk/geography-sustainable-development/people/lesc1) who were both co-leads on the research team.

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