The only other person filling four roles on public boards is Ann Allen, the CEO of the Chartered Institute of Civil Engineering Surveyors (CICES). While she is not remunerated for work as a board member of the National Museums of Scotland (NMS), she receives £9,600 as Chair of the Architecture Design Scotland Board, and £7,800 working two days per month as a board member of the influential board of Scottish Futures Trust (SFT), – the SNP’s alternative to PFI. She also sits on the Water Industry Commission for Scotland board, which brings in £13,780 . A Chartered Surveyor with over 35 years’ experience, Allen has worked for organisations such as John Lewis, HBOS and the UK Government.
Questions have been raised over the power and influence of energy companies following analysis by The Ferret revealing how key sectors dominate Scottish lobbying. The Ferret categorised 711 organisations that lobbied Scottish Government ministers since the register was introduced in 2018 to increase transparency. Only regulated lobbying – which means face-to-face and zoom calls – has to be registered. While entries on the lobbying register dropped dramatically in 2020 due to Covid-19 restrictions, the energy sector was second only to industry in the number of times it lobbied ministers last year. With world leaders meeting at UN climate conference COP26 in Glasgow later this year, and the Scottish Government committed to a just transition away from fossil fuels, environmental campaign organisations like Greenpeace said the figures showed oil and gas companies were leaning on the government and “betraying people and planet” in the process.
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Swimming against a global tide to ban fracking outright, the government has published new proposals to safeguard South Africa’s declining water resources through “controlled” fracking – while simultaneously leaving the door wide open for oil and gas corporations to blast vast quantities of water underground to extract fossil fuels.
The new plans by Water Affairs Minister Lindiwe Sisulu propose a 5km buffer zone to separate fracking operations from strategic water resources, wells and dams, along with a ban on certain toxic fracking fluids.
Fracking – or hydraulic fracturing – is a water-intensive technology pioneered in the United States and Canada to get access to declining reserves of fossil fuels by injecting a high-pressure cocktail of water, sand and chemicals deep underground to smash apart underground rock formations, raising major concerns about the pollution of surface and underground water supplies – and increasing the likelihood of earth