The role of public sector bodies in tackling climate change: consultation analysis

Introduction

About This Report

This report presents the main findings arising from the consultation on the Role of Public Sector Bodies in Tackling Climate Change. The consultation ran from 11^th September 2019 to 4^th December 2019.

Background

There is a Global Climate Emergency and everyone across Scotland needs to be part of the solution. Tackling climate change and ensuring we have a sustainable, thriving and healthy environment is critical to our collective wellbeing, and central to the ambitions and responsibilities set out in Scotland's National Performance Framework.

Scotland has already almost halved greenhouse gas emissions since 1990, while simultaneously growing the economy and increasing employment and productivity. We now need to increase our efforts and the pace of change, while maintaining the focus on reducing emissions in a way that supports inclusive economic growth.

On 14^th May 2019, the Cabinet Secretary for Environment, Climate Change and Land Reform gave a statement to Parliament about Scotland's response to the global climate emergency, and committed to consult widely on what needs to happen across the country in order to end Scotland's contribution to climate change. The Big Climate Conversation, of which this consultation paper was part, aimed to:

• Build an open, transparent and collaborative, whole-Scotland approach to reducing emissions.
• Identify and share ideas about opportunities, what works, barriers to action, and what we need to do differently.
• Generate ideas for the update to the Climate Change Plan.

This consultation has focused purely on Scottish public sector bodies. Public sector bodies are legally required to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and support Scotland's adaptation to a changing climate. Scottish Ministers, in turn, are legally required to provide guidance to public sector bodies to help them with this. Public sector bodies are also legally required to report annually on their greenhouse gas emissions and what they are doing to help adapt to a changing climate.

The consultation contained two parts:

• Part 1 - How information is provided and shared, and how public sector bodies collaborate with each other and the rest of Scotland.
• Part 2 – How to improve the reporting arrangements to reduce the administrative burden on public sector bodies, and to drive action.

Outputs from the Big Climate Conversation, including this consultation, will help inform the Climate Change Plan update and will inform Scottish Government plans to bring forward secondary legislation that update the details of the public sector climate change reporting duties.

Analysis Methodology

The Scottish Government provided EKOS Ltd access to all responses via Citizen Space.

A number of responses were not submitted by respondents through Citizen Space (15) and did not always follow the consultation structure (e.g. email or letter response to the Scottish Government), or answer the individual consultation questions. Where this was the case, the Scottish Government manually inputted the responses into Citizen Space for inclusion in the overall analysis.

Quantitative (closed questions) and qualitative (open-ended questions) responses were exported into Microsoft Excel for subsequent analysis. All closed questions have been presented in table format, and qualitative responses have been sorted and analysed to identify common themes.

Profile of Respondents

A total of 146 responses were received to the consultation, broken down by individuals and organisations in Table 2.

The consultation attracted responses from a diverse range of organisations, Table 3. Other public sector bodies and local authorities made up almost two-thirds of organisation responses (62%). Indeed, the consultation attracted responses from many different public sector bodies that are currently required to submit annual reports on their climate change activity.

Note: the Sustainable Scotland Network undertook a series of engagement activities with public sector bodies over the duration of the consultation period. The insights gathered were reported both as part of the Network's response, as well as individual public sector bodies' responses. In many cases, individual public sector bodies provided wider narrative in their response.

Note: 'Other' organisations included unions, procument organisation's and professional society. Percentages have been rounded therefore totals might not equal 100%.

Report Structure

The remainder of the report has been structured in line with the consultation document:

• Section 1 and Section 2 covers questions related to Part 1 – information and collaboration.
• Section 3 to Section 8 covers questions related to Part 2 – targets and reporting.
• Section 9 presents any final comments provided by respondents.

Wider information has been appended.