Environment strategy: transformative changes for sustainability

Foreword

Reflection on a Stakeholder Workshop

Extensive discussions in a Scottish Government stakeholder workshop (September 2024) broadly welcomed the recommendations presented by the Stockholm Environment Institute from their own study, and some derived from related commissioned studies by the New Economics Foundation, Global Footprint Network and James Hutton Institute. The significant risks for the Environment Strategy were discussed in terms of existing social inequalities and the risks of new inequalities being created by sustainability challenges and sustainability transition actions. Additional comments highlighted the importance of building public engagement and acceptance of proposed actions in Scotland, especially amongst marginalized groups and the need to support their participation in environmental transitions in ways that also tackle social inequalities. Strong partnership working was essential, as demonstrated by the Climate Action Towns Project. Public procurement was seen as an important lever for helping organisations and people to prioritize more sustainable options. Revamped sustainability education was also noted as key to achieving change; importantly this should not be seen solely as an issue for children and young people, but for all ages and including decision-makers. All actions need to be adequately backed by resources and skills training.

However, bigger picture issues were also raised, such as the need for stronger representation in democratic processes and the importance of strengthening local democracy to tackle biodiversity losses.

The importance of achieving deeper, transformative change was highlighted, as well as recognition of the complexities and limited levers of the Scottish Government given the wider systemic power relations inevitably involved. Although it may not be possible to implement all proposed changes, it is possible to lay the foundations for transformative change by creating the right conditions for it.

The Wellbeing Economy Alliance was seen in the workshop as an important existing movement within Scotland, attempting to address sustainable economies.

In particular, participants discussed the need for a compelling vision of a new sustainable future needs to be made to attract people and build support. This should acknowledge the grief and fear experienced currently, and resistance to change, but set out a new exciting future to work towards. This new framing should not be as uniform or bland as before, but they should show how society could be organized differently. Illustrative examples could help to articulate such a vision.

Several participants asked if the proposed recommendations were sufficient, given that the technical solutions to many environmental challenges are well known. Why has more progress not been made on sustainability challenges? Questions were raised about how to achieve transformative change, given that this involves fundamental changes to growth-based economies, and a need to address planetary wellbeing agendas.

The Transformative Change Report was not discussed in the workshop, but it was noted that this, and the upcoming IPBES assessment on Transformative Change, have potential content that could help guide the Scottish Government in exploring a new, compelling framing that can stimulate buy-in and action. This includes foregrounding the way in which humans and nature are entangled and interdependent; all play a role in creating life, and recognizing these interdependencies can create values of care, reciprocity and solidarity. This involves moving away from an understanding of ‘nature’ as external to humans, a way of thinking that justifies its use as a resource for human benefit, and sidelines other ways of living with and as nature. The framing should address how power inequalities foreground certain sustainability futures, and obscure others. In fact, academic literature is pointing to the fact that there are multiple ways in which sustainability futures can be defined, and this will always (need to) be contested. Some futures are possible that look quite different from the present and may offer escape routes from current lock-ins and path dependencies. More effort is needed to explore and speculate upon a broader range of collective (human-nature) wellbeing alternative futures than at present, beyond technical scenario development. Giving space to plural forms of knowledge – including positivist environmental sciences, but also embracing the arts, critical social sciences and humanities and community perspectives is key. Giving voice to human communities is important, but we note that thinking can extend to recognize the agency, sentience, labours and value of plants, animals and other phenomena, such as rivers, all of which work to create life. By speculating and perhaps prefiguring such futures in practice, this can inform broader governmental and other actors’ strategies and actions for flourishing earthly life. Practical actions can be generated or reviewed in more participatory, democratic processes, guided by this understanding of the underlying need to shift values towards ethics of care.

Figure 1: Plural sustainability futures are possible based on ethics of care to support flourishing earthly life

Sustainability: collective wellbeing for flourishing earthly life

Transformation processes and outcomes

• multiple pathways to sustainability are possible, plural forms of knowledge should be engaged to expand world-building possibilities
• deep shifts in ways of being and knowing are needed, guided by ethics of care, to challenge dominant onto-epistemologies and make space for marginal ones
• recognizing the interdependencies and entanglements between humans and nature in webs of life
• greater political autonomy at local and territorial levels and support for commons-based options could create more space for just transformations

Source: Drawing Upon, Nelson, V et al (2024)^[2].