The Environment Strategy for Scotland

1 Introduction

This Environment Strategy is designed to create an integrated framework for achieving Scotland’s role in tackling the global crises of nature loss, climate change and pollution. It focuses on approaches that will help to transform our country for the better – by improving people’s health and wellbeing, promoting social justice and strengthening our economy, helping us to become a fairer, more prosperous and resilient nation. In this way, the Strategy is designed to help deliver all four of the government’s priorities, as outlined by the First Minister:^[1]

• 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.

The Strategy begins by describing our 2045 vision for fulfilling our role in tackling the nature, climate and pollution crises in ways that create wider benefits for people and communities across Scotland and our economy. It presents a set of outcomes that will support the delivery of this vision. It outlines the next steps we will take across the breadth of government to achieve these outcomes – including pathways for driving progress towards the outcomes; and an integrated approach that addresses the interconnections between them. Lastly, the Strategy sets out arrangements for monitoring and reporting progress towards the outcomes and for overseeing delivery. Key messages from the Strategy for future policy making are set out in Box A.

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

• Scotland must play its full role in tackling 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 the overall impact of our consumption as a nation does not exceed our fair share of what our 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.
    • Working with business to understand and manage their nature-related impacts and risks and to embrace net zero, circular economy business models, harnessing the benefits this transition will create for business innovation, business resilience, attractiveness to customers, 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.
  • Enable and empower people to experience the benefits from shifting towards healthy, sustainable lifestyles in ways that avoid unfair cost burdens, help to reduce inequalities and improve people’s lives.
• Strengthening our connection with nature can be a deep lever for positive change. We will promote this by creating nature-rich places for communities, 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 the system changes that will ensure sustainable options are more affordable and practical for people and businesses, including support for community-led action and public participation.
• These transformations create a wealth of opportunities for improving the health and wellbeing of people across Scotland – from rural and island to urban communities – 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 and intergenerational equity.

1.1 What the Environment Strategy is designed to achieve

This Environment Strategy aims to support Scotland’s role in tackling the nature, climate and pollution crises in ways that enhance people’s lives, empower communities and create a stronger, more resilient economy. It will help to achieve this by:

1.1.1 Creating an integrated framework for Scotland’s environment policies

The Strategy brings together, in a single framework, outcomes for restoring Scotland’s nature, ending our contribution to climate change and minimising pollution and waste. These linked crises stem from the same fundamental problem of stretching the planet’s natural systems beyond sustainable limits (see Box B). The outcomes on nature, climate and pollution are accompanied by an additional outcome, ‘Scotland’s global environmental impact is sustainable’ – recognising that our consumption and production in Scotland, alongside other industrialised nations, has profound impacts on the natural environment in countries around the world. Pathways summarising our approach to achieving these four outcomes are set out in Annex A.

Importantly, given the intrinsic links between these outcomes, the Strategy also explains how we will support an integrated approach to achieving them (Section 4.1). In particular, it outlines key synergies and potential tensions between the outcomes and sets out next steps for addressing these.

1.1.2 Strengthening our whole-of-government approach

The Strategy recognises the growing international evidence that tackling the nature, climate and pollution crises will depend on positive changes across our society and economy.^[2] It describes outcomes for these social and economic changes (Section 2.2) and pathways for achieving them, identifying priorities for delivery and next steps across the breadth of government (Annex A). These pathways have been designed to maximise wider benefits for people, communities and businesses across Scotland. For example, they aim to capture the wealth of opportunities for Scotland’s wellbeing and prosperity that will be created by transitioning to a green economy, and enabling people to shift towards healthy, sustainable lifestyles – improving people’s health, tackling poverty, promoting social justice and boosting a wide range of green jobs and industries. The Strategy also sets out pathways to explain how we will support these changes through a just transition; and how we will take action to build Scotland’s resilience to the impacts of these global crises.

Given the deep interconnections across these pathways, joined-up action is vital. The Strategy therefore sets out how we will support an integrated approach to achieve multiple environmental, social and economic benefits and avoid unintended impacts (Section 4.2). This includes working in partnership with people and businesses and empowering local, place-based and community-led action to achieve our vision.

1.1.3 Promoting alignment between environmental and economic policies

The Strategy demonstrates that our environmental and economic ambitions can go hand in hand. As described by Dasgupta^[3] and Raworth,^[4] our economy is ‘embedded’ in nature (Figure 10). It underpins our economic success, including key sectors in our economy – from food and drink to tourism. Delivering the Strategy will support thriving businesses and position Scotland to lead in the economy of the future. For example:

• Protecting and restoring Scotland’s natural environment will strengthen the foundations of our economy and secure the long-term productivity and competitiveness of many sectors, including key exports.
• Expanding Scotland’s net zero industries, including renewable energy, will continue to create well-paid jobs and unlock significant economic and investment opportunities, guided by our Green Industrial Strategy.
• Growing our circular economy will create new opportunities for innovation and businesses across Scotland, as well as many high-quality, local jobs.^[5]
• These economic transformations will reduce Scotland’s exposure to the profound economic risks^[6] from climate change, nature loss and pollution. They will make our economy more resilient to global supply chain shocks and reduce financial pressure on public services (e.g. by improving people’s health).

We will work in partnership with Scotland’s businesses to support our just transition to a net zero, nature positive, circular economy and to harness the economic opportunities this creates (Annex A, Section 6.2). Many businesses are already leading the way, with programmes such as B CorpTM demonstrating how businesses can be both profitable and sustainable.^[7] By helping to unlock this enormous economic potential, while also tackling inequalities and empowering communities, the Strategy will play a key role in delivering the vision of our National Strategy for Economic Transformation and our ambitions for a wellbeing economy.

1.2 The statutory basis for the Environment Strategy

The Strategy responds 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.^[8] In particular, that section states 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 in Section 2.2. Policies and proposals for achieving them are described in the outcome pathways in Annex A, and arrangements for monitoring progress are summarised in Section 5. The Act also introduces a new statutory duty for Scottish Ministers to have due regard to the Strategy when developing policies across government. Guidance will be developed to support the implementation of this duty.

Box B: The global nature, climate and pollution crises

As a result of human activities, the average global temperature over the past three years (2023–2025) has been 1.47°C above pre-industrial levels, and this is set to increase further.^[9] At the same time, the health of the planet’s ecosystems is deteriorating faster than at any point in human history^[10] and wildlife populations have, on average, declined by 73% since 1970.^[11] 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.^[12]

Figure 1: Global temperature change and biodiversity decline 1970-2020^[13]

The top image in this figure illustrates the increase in average global temperatures between 1970 and 2020. The bottom image illustrates a 73% decline in global biodiversity over the same period.

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.^[14] 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. Seven of nine boundaries are now thought to have been crossed.^[15] 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.^[16]