ABOUT SEDA LAND

VISION STATEMENT

SEDA Land is a unique, cross-sectoral forum for the discussion, formulation and promotion of ideas that will improve land use in Scotland to achieve both a healthy ecology and dynamic social economy. Its strength lies in the experiences of a broad range of stakeholders - including land managers, owners and employees, third sector groups, communities, industries and researchers - working together to meet the challenges of environmental and social change. SEDA Land provides an independent viewpoint, drawing on a large pool of knowledge to make the case for better land use, especially in, but not limited to, rural areas.

The aims of SEDA Land are:

• To bring together individuals and groups from different sectors to design and test imaginative solutions for land use that can address the priorities of climate change, food and energy security, biodiversity loss and social issues

• To be a source for sharing cross-sectoral knowledge and promoting ideas on the ecological use of Scotland’s land

• To broaden awareness of these ideas, and possible solutions, through events, publications and the media

• To inform and influence policies around land use in Scotland, with the aim of delivering the changes needed to ensure Scotland’s land works for all who work, live or visit it, as a part of a thriving ecology and economy.

  SEDA Land is well-placed to deliver this, rooted in SEDA's impartiality on land use, our track record in changing regulations regarding urban fabric and our familiarity with multidisciplinary approaches. We are used to dealing with complex issues involving many disciplines in an imaginative way. We see these skills as being transferable to the land sector and, with the help of experts in the field, as capable of finding and proposing innovative solutions for the use of Scotland’s land.

Get Involved

We would like to work with as many different voices as possible, including (but not limited to) community groups, outdoor leisure groups, land owners and workers, rural enterprise owners and workers, conservation groups and organisations, activists, outdoor education providers, youth workers, artists and musicians.

We are looking for individuals who want to be involved in SEDA Land, as opposed to organisations. Please get in touch at land@seda.uk.net if you want to work with others who want to find better, more ecological, and socially successful proposals for land use.

This is the initial steering group for SEDA Land.

Steering Group

Dr Chris Powici
Poet and Teaching Fellow, University of Stirling

Chris’s poetry focuses on human and natural environments and how the ‘natural’ and ‘human’ worlds overlap one another. His poems range from the shed door to the back of beyond, from a rain swept railway station to a graveyard on Skye.

Powici edited the literary magazine Northwords Now for seven years. He lives in Dunblane, and teaches English and Creative Writing for The Open University, the University of Stirling, and in the local community.

His poems have been published in numerous magazines and anthologies including Gutter, BBC Wildlife, New Writing Scotland and Scotia Extremis. His latest collection is This Weight of Light, published by Red Squirrel Press in spring 2015.

Helen Todd 
Campaigns & policy manager, Ramblers Scotland

Helen has worked for Ramblers Scotland since 2004 where she is now campaigns & policy manager.  She is a former  trustee and chair from 2014-17 of Scottish Environment LINK, and also served as a director and vice-chair of Transform Scotland, the national alliance for sustainable transport. She is currently vice-chair of Planning Democracy. Before working for the Ramblers, Helen was a campaigns researcher for Friends of the Earth Scotland working on planning issues and she has a MSc in Ecological Economics from Edinburgh University.  In a previous career Helen was a teacher, trainer and language school manager, mainly overseas.  She is a keen walker, cyclist and gardener and completed her Munros in 2015.

Sion Williams
Farms manager, Bowhill Farming Ltd.

Sion, originally from a mixed livestock farm in Montgomeryshire, Wales, has been working at Buccleuch’s Bowhill Estate in the Scottish Borders since 2004, after working for Scottish Government. Sion is responsible for 16,500acres under Bowhill Farming Ltd. Stocking includes suckler cows, ewes, hinds for venison, a hen poultry unit and a 200kW anaerobic digestion plant. Efficiency improvements, and market-focused changes have been central to his policies. He is currently a LEAF (Linking Environment and Farming) Demonstration Farm and one of 32 Agri-Epicentre Satellite farms. In 2013 and 2016, Sion was runner up in the Farmers Weekly ‘Farm Manager of the Year’, 2014 ‘Shorthorn Suckler Herd of the Year’, and 2015 and 2018 Scottish Sheep Farm of the Year finalist. Sion is currently the Borders Machinery ring director, sits on the Moredun local panel, Sainsburys lamb development group member and QMS Red meat panel member.

Davy McCracken 
Head of department, Integrated Land Management, Scotland's Rural College (SRUC)

Davy joined SRUC in 1995 and has been Head of SRUC’s Hill & Mountain Research Centre, at Kirkton & Auchtertyre farms near Crianlarich, since 2013 and Head of SRUC’s wider Integrated Land Management Department since 2019. The Centre is seeking to ensure that the farms provide a platform for upland agricultural, environmental and – increasingly – agro-forestry research and demonstration. Davy studies farming and wildlife interactions and has been working on agricultural and agri-environmental policy at a national and international level for 30 years. He has been involved in providing advice and guidance on policy development to a wide range of governmental and NGO committees over the years and is currently inputting to the development of both Scotland’s new agricultural support policy and future biodiversity strategy. More information at: https://pure.sruc.ac.uk/en/persons/davy-mccracken

Debbie Mackay
Director of Planning, Savills

Debbie Mackay is a Director in Savills Planning team and Head of Residential and Rural Planning for Scotland. After learning her trade in the public sector as a Planning and Economic Development officer in Argyll and Bute, and Action Plan Manager for Edinburgh City Centre, Debbie set up the Smiths Gore Planning Service in Scotland in 2006. In 2015 she became a Planning Director at Savills specialising in large scale masterplanning projects and rural planning. She is the Planning Advisor for a large number of Scottish Estates, a Director of Rural Housing Scotland and sits on the National Policy Group of Scottish Land and Estates. Driven by a particular interest in the provision of affordable rural homes and the revitalisation of rural Scotland, Debbie is a frequent speaker on these topics and has recently lead research teams on Rural Planning Policy to 2050 and Enabling New Housing Supply in Rural Scotland.

David Miller
Knowledge Exchange Coordinator, James Hutton Institute

David has a BSc in Topographic Science from University of Glasgow, and a PhD on expert systems from the University of Aberdeen. He has worked at the Institute since 1984, currently as the Knowledge Exchange Coordinator. In the initial years of the James Hutton Institute he was Research Theme Leader of Realising Land's Potential. He has worked on techniques for handling and analysing geographic information and applying them to mapping, monitoring and modelling changes in peatlands, land cover, urban and rural land use, landscape and seascape, and the development of Geographic Information Systems for use by government and its agencies. Currently he is a member of the Scottish Government Digital Task Force as part of the reformation of planning. He was an advisor to the Scottish Government Land Reform Review Group

Dr Mads Fischer-Möller 
Food policy advisor, WWF Scotland

Mads joined WWF in 2023 as food policy advisor. Previously he was professor of Food Policy at Scotland’s Rural College and leader of SRUC’s Future Food Systems Research Centre, aiming at discovering transformation paths towards more sustainable food systems. 

Mads has had a career in food policy. He was policy advisor to the Danish Government on nutrition, food culture, gastronomy and SME’s (2011-2015) and has most recently been responsible for all common Nordic food policy development and implementation in his position as senior advisor for food policy at the Nordic Council of Ministers. Here Mads was also leader of the Nordic Food Policy Lab; an initiative from the Nordic prime ministers aimed at communicating Nordic food policy solutions to global audiences through co-creating “policy labs” and active online outreach.

Adrian Loening
Managing  Director, Mór  Hydro Ltd.

Managing Director of Mór Hydro Ltd a technical consultancy and project developer of hydro renewable energy projects; Past Chair of the British Hydropower Association, Adrian has over 30 years experience in the development of renewable energy systems including landfill biogas energy development, solar refrigeration, solar heating and member of the Wave Power Research Group at Edinburgh University.

Gail Halvorsen (Chair)
Halvorsen Architects

After qualifying from the Architectural Association School of Architecture, Gail worked for Michael Hopkins and Partners in London. She established Halvorsen Architects in 1994, moving to Edinburgh in 1999, where she specialises in ecological design for residential and nursery school buildings. Gail was chair of ECAN (Edinburgh Chartered Architects Network) from 2001-2 and on the board of Gorebridge Community Development Trust for 10 years, being chair from 2014-16, where she project managed the £2.5m community centre, Gorebridge Beacon. She was a Civic Trust Award assessor 1997–2011 and has run environmental projects with primary schools. Gail is an events organiser for the Scottish Ecological Design Association and organised the A New Vision for Land Use in Scotland: Six Conversations in Spring 2021.

Neil Sutherland
Architect / Director, Makar Ltd.

Neil is an award winning, ecologically driven architect who runs his own construction company, MAKAR Ltd., South of Inverness. MAKAR is a pioneering company that designs and builds ecological homes, offices and community buildings using off-site construction. Neil is passionate about building healthy, environmentally friendly, low energy buildings using locally grown timber. Neil has experience in timber and land management and teaches at the Scott Sutherland School of Architecture, Aberdeen.

Geoff Squire
Honorary Principal Scientist, James Hutton Institute

Professor Geoff Squire is a biologist specialising in sustainable systems, global energy-matter cycles and biodiversity. He spent formative years in the Microclimatology in Tropical Agriculture group at Nottingham University before working on land use and sustainability in several countries of Africa and south-east Asia.  He joined the forerunner of the James Hutton Institute over 25 years ago, since then leading multi-partner research programmes (UK and EU) and research departments in topics including vegetation systems, landscape-scale geneflow,  and environmental risk assessment. More recently, he was the first head of the Institute’s Agroecology group. Now retired, he continues an interest in the biology of land use, both in a personal capacity and supporting ex-colleagues and students.  He runs the Curved Flat Lands blog: http://curvedflatlands.co.uk/land/seda-land-conversations-matrix-and-decision-tree/