Establishing a Scottish Nitrogen Balance Sheet: consultation analysis

Annex 3: Summary report of stakeholder engagement events (October 2020) preceding the consultation

Stage 1 - initial workshops

• Fri 2 October, 13:30-15:30 focussed on agriculture / land management
• Tue 6 October, 15:00-17:00 focussed on environment / waste
• Fri 9 October, 14:00-16:00 focussed on air quality / transport

Summary of themes raised across the three sessions:

1. Overall there was a very positive response from all participants on the principles of the new evidence base being collated for a national Nitrogen Balance Sheet (SNBS) for Scotland. Most stakeholder representatives explicitly welcomed the establishment of a SNBS and indicated that they are keen to engage with the process. Many stakeholders also noted that they are already raising awareness of nitrogen use efficiency (NUE) and working towards increasing NUE.

2. Joining up with wider policy structures and strategies - There was a wide consensus on the importance of joining up between the SNBS and a range of other national policy, regulatory and advice structures (across agriculture, transport and a range of other areas).

3. Spatial granularity - Many participants noted that a higher spatial resolution than national / regional (e.g. river catchment / landscape and/or farm scale) would be desirable for the SNBS at some point. Whilst there was recognition that the current statutory requirement and time-constraints mean that a focus on a "top-down" national scale is necessary for the establishment phase of the NBS, this needs to be able to dovetail with any more detailed bottom-up approaches in the future.

4. Frequency of updates - Several stakeholders expressed views in favour of annual updates, once the SNBS is established, noting that this would match reporting cycles for other key datasets (e.g. agricultural census/survey data; UK National Atmospheric Emission Inventory; Scottish Pollutant Release Inventory (SPRI). There were also suggestions to prioritise the largest nitrogen flows and those most expected to change over time, with others perhaps on a less frequent update cycle.

5. Targets for increasing nitrogen use efficiency - Some stakeholders suggested that such targets would likely be helpful at some point, but that the baseline evidence needs to be established first.

6. Presentation and content of SNBS outputs

• Accessibility – Some stakeholders expressed a desire for SNBS outputs to be as accessible as possible (including for the wider public), to help with wider understanding of the cross-cutting nature of nitrogen across all sectors of the economy and the environment, and for developing joined-up strategies and measures.
• Additional functions / content elements for the SNBS:
  • Some stakeholders suggested including information on impacts (financial and otherwise) alongside the actual N flows. Examples mentioned were the savings potential to sectors from reducing nitrogen losses, or mitigation measures and associated cost curves (MACCs) to determine the most effective strategies.
  • Across a range of sectoral stakeholders, there was an interest for "sub-sectoral" level values for NUE to be available from the SNBS (e.g. the NUE associated with different types of businesses within agricultural sectors, such as intensive/extensive systems)
  • One stakeholder queried whether the NBS could, at some stage, be extended to include scenario modelling functions to explore policy interventions.

7. Specific/technical points raised

• The definitions of the external system boundaries were mentioned by several stakeholders (e.g. for marine/coastal systems, import/export such as livestock feed/food)
• A range of specific data sources suggested for checking/potential inclusion (e.g. urea use for de-icing, N emissions from rocket launches, fishery discards)
• [One stakeholder suggested consideration of a different acronym (to avoid confusion with Nature Based Solutions)]. N.B. This has been addressed, with the acronym changed from NBS to SNBS.