Better Society Academy: First Minister's speech

Good morning, everyone. Thank you very much for the opportunity to be with you at the Better Society Academy. And I just had a marvellous opportunity with Charlie to understand a bit more about this venue; what it brings together in terms of student accommodation, hotel accommodation and gathering facilities within the city of Glasgow.

And I suppose the physical shape and nature of this venue illustrates essentially the point I wanted to make this morning, fundamentally, which is about the way in which we all as a community have to come together to play our part in addressing the challenges that are thrown at us by the climate emergency that we are facing.

And that has been the focus of your discussions over the last couple of days, and I'd like to add my contribution to some of the thinking that has been going on as part of the discussion and the interaction that the Better Society Academy has brought together as part of its commitment to inclusive, action driven learning on issues of such significance in our society.

And that kind of collaborative ethos sits at the very heart of my approach to government and my approach to government in Scotland. Since I became First Minister just about a year ago, I recognised the necessity for us to bring people together to find common cause and common purpose around key themes that are of significant challenge.

I don’t think it’s particularly overstated to make the point that the nature of political discourse has changed dramatically and has become much more polarised. And the need for us to find some degree of common purpose and common themes and common understanding is absolutely central to what we have to do as a society. So next week, I'll be setting out to government, our next Programme for Government, the last Programme for Government in this parliamentary term, and I'm reaffirming my government's commitment to make Scotland a healthier, cleaner, happier and fairer place for everyone to live.

And tackling the climate emergency, which has been very much at the heart of the discussions you've been having at the Better Society Academy, is central to that program.

The government is committed to reducing emissions, to growing renewable industries, to regenerating Scotland's biodiversity and sharing the costs and the benefits in a way that leads to a fairer and a healthier and a happier society.

Our commitment, as voted for in the Scottish Parliament in 2019 is that Scotland will be a net zero nature positive nation by 2045,. Our goal is that Scotland's contribution to climate change will end definitively within one generation. And we do this in a very challenging global context for that particular debate.  The journey to net zero is tough enough with the practicalities of what is involved, but the journey to net zero, when that route is disputed and contested and denied, is an even more significant and challenging journey.

So we've got to reaffirm and I reaffirm to you today, and I'll reaffirm in Parliament when I address Parliament on Tuesday with our next Programme for Government, that climate action is unavoidable.

It is an absolute necessity for us to do that and in the face of the anti-science climate denial approach that we have just now, I think it's important for all parties to recommit ourselves to tackling one of the great global issues of our time, and ignore the dangerous rhetoric that is growing on the right that sometimes climate action is avoidable.

Those who would undermine climate action do so in the face of all evidence. It's undeniable that extreme weather events are becoming much more frequent. Here in Scotland, we see an increasing number of named storms, including earlier this year, Storm Eowyn which was the fifth storm of the 2024-25 season and the most powerful wind storm in the United Kingdom in over a decade.

And it wasn't alone. Further afield, we've recently seen a spate of disasters such as the devastating floods in Valencia, dangerous heatwaves in Japan and flash floods in Pakistan and Brazil. Last year, according to the UN's World Meteorological Organisation, extreme weather events across the globe displaced more than 800,000 people.

And climate change is increasingly contributing to conflict, to migration, to famine and to disease. At the same time, growing unsustainable debt to the Global South is diverting resources away from much needed investment in climate action. This is not only a climate crisis, but it's also a financial crisis.

Those least responsible for climate change have been forced to choose between paying historic debts and protecting people from its impacts. That's why many now call climate debt, the growing burden on vulnerable nations who are paying the price for a climate crisis that they did not create, one of the most significant issues we have to face.

Now, at the same time, some nations are scaling back climate commitments and uncertainty grows about multilateral funding. In that context, there is a growing risk that momentum on climate finance for vulnerable nations could be sidelined just when it is needed most.

Now Scotland may not have a formal negotiating role in the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, but we've never been nations that is content to stay on the sidelines of this debate. We stand in solidarity with the Global South, and we're championing climate justice on the world stage.

We continue to play a part, and we will work with other governments to reduce emissions, to regenerate biodiversity and to adapt to the impacts of climate change. And one of the interventions that I'm most proud of is that the Scottish Government has worked with others, and we now hold a leadership position in the Under2 Coalition and Regions4 Development Network, where we have an active role in leading efforts and encouraging efforts to commit to the Global South and to support in finance, to assist countries in the Global South to address the impact of climate change.

And we will continue to lead capacity building forums such as the Net Zero Future Policy Forum, which is influential in changing the mindset of countries and organisations about the imperative of climate change.

I illustrate those commitments to highlight the importance we attach to fostering international collaboration and support for governments who are prepared to implement ambitious climate policies. We do this, because climate action is not optional, it's not a fad, it's not a gimmick, it's a fact, and the future prosperity and wellbeing of humanity depends upon it.

So my government is investing in tomorrow by investing today. We're investing in green energy and transport. We're investing in skills and infrastructure, we're investing in people and communities, and we're investing in nature. And we're doing so in a way that operates in collaboration with businesses, with institutions, with local government and with communities, and harnessing the ideas and insights of change makers like yourselves.

We want to ensure that climate solutions are not only evidence based and effective, but economically viable and socially inclusive. We want to make sustainability a competitive advantage and benefit community to communities, rather than a regulatory burden. The Circular Economy Act is a terrific example of this. It's a major milestone in how Scotland manages materials and resources. Building our circular economy not only protects the economy, it also supports businesses to grow and to create new jobs.

A society wide approach to achieving net zero requires a shared vision and strong partnerships to meet the speed and the scale of the changes that are needed. It requires meaningful connections through the likes of the Scottish Business Climate Collaboration and also our climate action hubs, which are crucial organisations based in our localities that bring people together to find climate solutions in individual localities.

And through the ideas generated in those discussions, we work closely with our enterprise agencies to make sure that businesses can be supported to develop the true range of opportunities that exist in this respect.

Each new public and private sector partnership moves us closer to achieving net zero, and the premium of bringing the public and the private sector interest together is fundamental to the type of collaborative policy action we need to take in this area. But we will never meet the greatest challenges of our age, which is represented by climate change, by doing things we have always done. We must adapt, we must invent, and we must innovate.

So the government attaches the highest priority to research and innovation, which is why we're investing £368 million in higher education research activity, recognising the centrality of the research institutions to work with business to achieve the objectives that I've set out today.

A great example of this is the GALLANT Project, a collaboration between the University of Glasgow and Glasgow City Council made possible by £10.2 million in Natural Environment Research Council funding. The project brings together over 50 researchers and 29 public and private sector partners to trial new solutions to the city’s and by extension, the region’s key environmental challenges. So this is an illustration of the type of practical ways in which you can bring people together to focus on ideas of common purpose.

We're also supporting our workforces because brilliant ideas won't avail as much if we don't support people to turn them into reality. So from primary classrooms to vocational training centres and universities, we're embedding our net zero future into the heart of learning.

We've invested £3.4 billion into our post school education and skill system, and we're equipping workers with the education, training and tools that they need for rewarding careers in cutting edge industries like renewables, energy efficiency and low carbon industries. As part of that, we are taking forward measures through our Just Transition Fund for the North East and the county of Moray to enable workers to be able to transition from activity in the fossil fuel sector, to move into renewable energy, and to use their skills in a transferable way.

And that way, we help businesses to create jobs, and we support a transition that enables individuals to remain economically active as part of that process.

So across a range of different interventions, we are taking forward a range of measures to ensure that we are supporting the economic transition that's required through a combination of systems in research and development, but also in skills and training development.

But we've also got to make sure that we take action to restore the natural environment that we've had the enormous privilege to inherit. We've just concluded the first four months of this year. In another three humanity will have used more natural resources this year than the Earth can produce in a year.

Our challenge is unprecedented, but so to is the opportunity to transform our lives for the better, and with education and innovation and collaboration, we can meet this challenge.

By working together in Scotland, we have created around 75% of all new woodlands in the United Kingdom and we intend to continue that pattern with the financial commitments we have given in the government’s budget for this year, because that is one of the significant steps we can take on climate action in our society.

By working together, we have held the world’s largest floating offshore wind leasing round, enabling us to transition to green energy.    

By working together, we are restoring nature and creating climate resilient communities across Scotland.

We have achieved our target of installing 6,000 public charge points for electric vehicles, two years ahead of schedule. 

With all of that progress, we have got to sustain our efforts and our focus on the practical steps that can make a difference in this respect.

Not all of this can rely on the efforts of government, because government can do many things, and I’ve set out some of things that we can do, but what we also much encourage and enable is a sense of purpose within our communities to take the action they can take to address this challenge as well.

One of the points I am acutely aware of as a public representative is that many communities can look at all of the issues I’ve set out, in particular that statistic about the way in which humanity is using the resources of the planet as we speak, and be daunted by the scale of the challenge that we face. But what we increasingly see is communities adapting to that challenge.

Let me give you an example of one community in the constituency that I represent in Dunkeld and Birnam, about 12 miles north of the city of Perth.

That community has come together in essentially a voluntary endeavour about climate action and a couple of landmark things have come out of that work.

The first is that in a collaboration between the community and Scottish Water – with a modest amount of educational activity, explanation to households, a few gadgets here and there to monitor the activity within households – that community was able to achieve the status of being Scotland’s first water efficient village. Why? Because in a year that village, by not particularly dramatic action, saved the use of a million litres of water.

That was achieved through education and engagement. Nobody had to make a big sacrifice, it was just about watching what people were doing with the use of water. Flowing from that collaboration was the generation of an absolutely magnificent movement, which started in a small village in Perthshire and is now a global phenomenon – the establishment of climate camps.

The community came together to decide, after the water efficiency project, what else they could do. That created a discussion forum and an interaction that allowed people to come together and find common purpose.

These climate cafes, that started in Dunkeld and Birnam, have grown up all over the world. It is a really fantastic example of how people in communities can just decide for themselves they are going to do something about all of this.

Of course, there are countless other examples around the country. You will understand that as a proud member of parliament I like to talk warmly about what goes on in my own community, but plenty of other good things go on in other parts of the country as well.

Big or small, these ideas are an illustration of the fundamental point I’m making to you today – that we need to work together to achieve our objectives. We cannot be compartmentalised in what we are doing.

That, I suppose, is my ask of you. You have come together to develop new thinking and new ideas, to be in this melting pot of the Social Hub which allows you all to come together and discuss, in a great environment, all of these questions under the auspices of the Better Society Academy and I welcome that.

But what I would say to you is that my government is open to your ideas and your innovations, so please work with us, be part of that collaboration.

If we can champion your ideas then please share them with us and we will do what we can to make them happen.

If we can remove barriers in front of you – and I am not immune to the realisation that government can sometimes put up barriers to things happening – if we can remove barriers in front of you them please point them out.

And if we need to be challenged, challenge us. Because we need to be challenged to make sure we achieve our objectives.

Every one of us has a role to play and a voice to bring to the table. Every one of us has got a contribution to make to meet the biggest challenge of our age and we need to ensure that so many of our fellow citizens understand the scale of the challenge that we face.

We cannot resign ourselves to a prevailing political debate which seeks to diminish and deny the significance of climate action.

Climate action is an absolute necessity in our world today if we want to hand on to the world of tomorrow the world we have had the privilege to enjoy today.

That is action and responsibility that I take deadly seriously as First Minister. It is at the heart of my government’s programme and I am very open to the contribution and the ideas that you all have generated as part of this discussion and to help us on the journey to net zero.