THE owner of a Scottish nature recovery project has warned of the potential impact a victory in the upcoming US election for Donald Trump could have on Scotland and the environment.
Greenpeace’s former director and founder of Highlands Rewilding, Dr Jeremy Leggett, has said in an opinion piece that "the diametrically opposed attitudes" of Kamala Harris and Donald Trump in the US election on November 5 could affect how the Scottish Government can work on rules for a new market in nature restoration.
Highlands Rewilding is created and run by a network of more than 220 “patient” green investors – rewilding and repopulating areas across Scotland alongside local communities.
Leggett argues that the victory of a candidate like Trump will influence investors away from "a liveable future", and instead continue to invest "billions of pounds today flow into the destruction of nature".
In the Scotsman, Leggett wrote: "If Donald Trump wins, the very future of rules-based societies will be at risk, in the rising tide of authoritarianism his success would encourage.
"Far-right politicians do not generally care about the global environment, and indeed most wear the trashing of it as a red badge of their belief system. Most investors simply react to what governments do, rather than meaningfully trying to influence them in the direction of a liveable future"
Turning to Harris, Leggett said that if the Democrat was to win. "hope for progress will live on".
He said: "Her platform includes action on global environmental threats, and respect for the multilateral treaties aimed at reversing them. Her success would encourage like-minded governments.
"Financial institutions would ignore the scope for momentum in new markets in nature at their peril."
Leggett said that a Harris victory coupled with a breakthrough at Cop 16 in Columbia, would "potentially breathe life into the emblem-for-hope that our nation could become in nature recovery, by boosting our investability".
The UN Biodiversity Summit, known as COP16, is currently being hosted in the Colombian city of Cali until November 1.
Nearly 200 countries are in attendance at the summit and Leggett hopes to see a breakthrough similar to the one seen in Paris 2015.
The Paris Agreement saw countries agree to hold global warming to well below 2C above pre-industrial levels and pursue efforts to limit it to 1.5C.
Leggett said: "That outcome would have great benefits for the rural economy in Scotland. Hundreds of millions of pounds would flow into it. Nature recovery requires a large and nationally dispersed rural workforce.
"Serious efforts to reverse Scotland’s biodiversity collapse would require reversal in parallel of the national emergency in affordable rural housing. It would help enormously with the Scottish Government’s repopulation ambitions."
Former president Trump has called climate change a “hoax” several times, claiming it is being perpetrated by the Chinese government to weaken the US.
Vice President Harris has remained quiet on her climate plans, potentially because polling shows climate change is not a top issue for voters in the US election,
