Draft Environment Strategy

1. Introduction

This is the consultation draft of the Scottish Government’s Environment Strategy. Details of the consultation arrangements and evidence base for the strategy are contained in a separate paper that can be found here.

As outlined by the First Minister,^[1] the efforts of the Scottish Government are focused on delivering four central priorities:

• A wealthier Scotland, with higher standards of living for the people of Scotland and action to grow Scotland’s economy.
• A fairer Scotland, with Scotland’s wealth shared more fairly so that we can eradicate child poverty.
• A greener Scotland, taking action to protect the planet by tackling climate change and nature loss, while maximising the benefits felt by the people of Scotland.
• Public services that meet and exceed people’s expectations.

This Environment Strategy creates a holistic framework for delivering Scotland’s role in tackling climate change, nature loss and pollution. In doing so, it will help to ensure that Scotland’s environment is healthy and robust and benefits everyone in Scotland. The Strategy focuses on approaches that will improve the health and wellbeing of Scotland’s communities, promote social justice and strengthen our economy, helping us to become a fairer, more prosperous and resilient nation. In this way, it is designed to support the delivery of all four of the government’s priorities.

The Strategy begins by describing our 2045 vision for fulfilling our role in tackling the global crises of nature loss, climate change and pollution – in ways that create wider benefits for Scotland’s people and our economy. It presents a set of outcomes that will support the delivery of this vision. It then outlines high-level pathways for driving progress towards these outcomes, summarising key existing policies while also identifying priorities to guide future policy development across the breadth of government. Lastly, the Strategy sets out arrangements for monitoring and reporting progress towards the outcomes. Key messages from the draft Strategy for future policy making are set out in Box A on page 4.

The Strategy takes an innovative approach to addressing the connections between our economic, social and environmental goals. It highlights that biodiversity loss, climate change and pollution are closely linked, and stem from placing unsustainable demands on the planet’s natural systems (see Box B). This stress on our natural environment has a material negative impact on our people’s health, our communities’ resilience to adverse weather events and the many sectors who depend on our environment for growth. It recognises the growing international evidence that tackling these crises will depend on changes in our economy and society. It sets out steps for supporting and enabling these changes in ways that will transform our country for the better, improving the lives of people across Scotland. The Strategy is designed to capture the wealth of opportunities that transitioning to a green economy, and shifting towards sustainable lifestyles, will create for Scotland’s prosperity and wellbeing – boosting a wide range of green jobs and industries, improving people’s health, tackling poverty and promoting social justice. For example, our Green Industrial Strategy (page 40) sets out how we will secure the maximum possible economic benefit from Scotland’s energy transition; our support for regenerative and resilient land and marine-based industries (page 42) will help to strengthen our local, rural economies; and our approach to promoting circular practices (page 45) will help businesses to enhance their productivity, create new market opportunities and save money. The Strategy recognises that government has a key role in helping to ensure sustainable choices are convenient and affordable, enabling people and businesses to join in a national effort to tackle the nature, climate and pollution crises. Crucially, it commits to pursuing these transformations through a just transition that tackles inequalities, empowers people and communities and ensures everyone can enjoy the benefits.

The Strategy strengthens the international dimension of our environment policies, helping to deliver our International Strategy’s vision for Scotland to be an outward-looking nation committed to good global citizenship. The Strategy recognizes that our consumption and production in Scotland has profound impacts on the natural environment in other countries around the world, and explores opportunities for reducing our international environmental footprint. It also highlights Scotland’s commitment to promoting international climate and environmental justice, and to continuing our role as a committed international partner in global sustainability initiatives.

The Strategy responds to the developing international evidence base on effective approaches for encouraging transformative change.^[2] This shows that helping to reconnect people with nature can be a deep lever for change, supporting a renewed understanding that we are part of the web of life and inspiring care for the natural world. The Strategy explores opportunities for strengthening people’s connection with nature, for example, by creating nature-rich towns and cities and supporting nature-based education and health. These, in turn, offer enormous opportunities for enhancing the lives of people across Scotland: improving our health and wellbeing, helping to tackle inequalities and supporting stronger communities that are more resilient to climate change.

The development of this draft Strategy has benefited from extensive stakeholder engagement and evidence gathering. We have also carefully considered the advice from the First Minister’s Environment Council. However, we recognise that achieving the economic and societal transformations needed to tackle climate change, nature loss and pollution is a highly complex challenge. This is Scotland’s first Environment Strategy. It provides a foundation for policy that will continue to be reviewed. While we have aimed to take an innovative approach through this holistic, cross-government strategy, we will continue to learn from other countries and the developing agenda in the EU. We will also use our Monitoring Framework to track progress towards our goals and use this to guide improvements. We look forward to working with stakeholders as we continue to develop our approach.

The draft Strategy is prepared pursuant to section 47 of the UK Withdrawal from the EU (Continuity) (Scotland) Act 2021, which requires Scottish Ministers to prepare and publish an environmental policy strategy.^[3] In particular, that section mandates that the Strategy should set out ‘objectives’ for protecting and improving the environment, ‘policies and proposals’ for achieving these, and arrangements for monitoring progress. The objectives are reflected in the Strategy’s outcomes, described on pages 7 to 8. Policies and proposals for achieving them are described in the outcome pathways on pages 13 to 60, and arrangements for monitoring progress are summarised on page 60.

Box A: Key messages from the draft Strategy for future policy making

• Scotland must play its full role in tacking the global nature, climate and pollution crises to help secure a liveable and just planet for current and future generations and the rest of life on Earth.
• Nature loss, climate change and pollution are all symptoms of stretching the planet’s natural systems beyond sustainable limits.
• If everyone around the world lived as we do in Scotland, we would need nearly three planets. We need to ensure that our consumption as a nation does not exceed our fair share of what our single, shared planet can sustain.
• To achieve this, we need to:
  • Drive Scotland’s just transition to a net zero, nature positive, circular economy by:
    • Improving the sustainability of key industries to reduce emissions, pollution and waste and ensure they do not take from nature faster than it can regenerate itself.
    • Supporting businesses to understand and manage their climate and nature-related impacts and risks and to embrace circular economy business models, harnessing the benefits this transition will create for business innovation, business resilience, attractiveness to clients, competitiveness and inward investment.
    • Embedding sustainability throughout supply chains.
    • Using a range of policy levers across government to support this transition and investing in public and private finance, innovation, infrastructure and green skills.
  • Support improvements in the sustainability of our lifestyles in ways that also improve people’s lives, including in our choices around food, transport, housing and consumer behaviours.
• Strengthening our connection with nature can be a deep lever for positive change. We will promote this by creating nature-rich urban spaces, supporting nature-based education and health, enhancing animal welfare and harnessing the role of rights-based approaches and the arts.
• Government has a crucial role in enabling these changes by ensuring sustainable options are more affordable and convenient for people and businesses.
• These transformations create a wealth of opportunities for improving the health and wellbeing of people across Scotland and ensuring Scotland’s businesses and industries are well positioned to thrive in the economy of the future.
• They must be achieved through a just transition that reduces inequalities and secures climate and environmental justice in Scotland and overseas.

Box B: The global nature, climate and pollution crises

Human activities have already caused global temperature to rise by 1.1°C and this is set to increase further.^[4] At the same time, the health of the planet’s ecosystems is deteriorating faster than at any point in human history^[5] and wildlife populations have, on average, declined by 73% since 1970.^[6] The UN describes a triple planetary crisis of biodiversity loss, climate change and pollution, recognising that pollution and waste are also placing unsustainable pressure on ecosystems and human health.^[7]

These crises are intrinsically linked. Climate change and pollution are among the five direct drivers of biodiversity loss. At the same time, restoring biodiversity is of fundamental importance for tackling climate change: healthy ocean and land ecosystems could remove half of human-made carbon emissions each year. The crises result from stretching the planet’s natural systems beyond sustainable limits. Since the 1970s, humanity has entered an era of increasing ‘overshoot’, where the scale of demands on the planet’s ecosystems has exceeded what they can regenerate.^[9] This is illustrated in the planetary boundaries framework (Figure 2). It identifies thresholds for aspects of the Earth’s system, beyond which there is increasing risk of tipping points that could trigger sudden or irreversible change. Six of nine boundaries are now thought to have been crossed.^[10] The World Economic Forum warns that the impacts of climate change, biodiversity loss and critical Earth system changes are the top three risks facing humanity over the next decade.^[11]