If a National Park designation could deliver even a fraction of the benefits claimed, we should make the whole damned country a National Park and then, in theory, just sit back and watch all our problems disappear.
All this from becoming a National Park, with an annual budget of just a few million quid: an end to climate crisis and biodiversity loss, the solution to the affordable housing crisis, an influx of well paid jobs and career opportunities, a stream of inward investment desperate to be a part of the NP brand, protection for culture, heritage and community and of course the promotion of the area as a tourist destination that can improve connected-ness and mental health.
If it sounds too good to be true, it’s because it is, and we are not turning the whole country into a national park but dumping the designation on Galloway.
The proposal for a third national park was a part of the “Bute House” agreement, a political accommodation between the Greens and the SNP. It did not attempt to address the cost-of-living crisis, the affordable housing crisis, the budget crisis facing local and national government, the National food crisis, or the NHS crisis, to name but a few.
No, the only crisis the Bute House agreement sought to resolve was the SNP party’s lack of a parliamentary majority crisis.
Bute House and its proposals have now collapsed amid political recrimination, legal actions and a toxic legacy of costs for Scotland running into millions. But the plan for a Galloway National Park persists.
From the beginning, the process for nomination of an area has been unfairly prejudiced. Proposers have been supported while some opponents have been kept in the dark.
The Galloway National Park Association has been supported and operating for over seven years while No Galloway National Park only became active when the successful bid was announced in July this year. This cannot be considered “fair, equitable and transparent” as laid out in the government’s prospectus.
The role of NatureScot and its attendant organisations in this whole process really must be questioned. It has engaged with the proposers, so its role as the impartial assessor and independent reporter to the Government that fully funds the agency means it is hopelessly compromised.
I believe it is worthy of a public inquiry, and I would encourage NGNP and its supporters to consider this.
In National Parks around the world, it is the indigenous people living within the park boundaries who suffer. Those who depend on the natural resources of the land and sea, the communities and cultures which have sustainably used these resources for generations are treated as an invasive alien species whose traditional practices and industries no longer fit with a new National Park ideology.
Indigenous communities and their cultures have been forced from park areas around the world; the San in the Kalahari, the Maasai in the Serengeti and the Crows, Shoshone and Blackfeet in Yellowstone are just a few of those forcibly removed ─ the Massai in Tanzania as recently as 2022.
Of course, the Scottish Government isn’t about to evict Galloway people from their lands, but it is clear that increased house prices, an accelerated ageing population and a decline in working age families associated with national park status have a destructive socio-economic impact.
A park authority might not stop a particular development, but it will make it more time consuming, expensive and bureaucratic to achieve anything, as the two existing Scottish parks clearly demonstrate.
Despite clear cross-party political agreement that a National Park should not go ahead without majority support from affected communities there is no mechanism for a local referendum in the National Parks Act Scotland. Do supporters fear democracy?
I wish you well. You are truly taking on a Goliath and you are winning. The people of Galloway are the custodians and protectors of Galloway, not a politically appointed National Park Authority.
Regards,
Ian
