Climate change - public engagement strategy: mid-point review

4. Understand Communicating Climate Change

Strategic Objective

People are aware of the action that all of Scotland is taking to tackle climate change and understand how it relates to their lives

The PES outlines the Scottish Government’s commitment to communicate on climate change policies positively and effectively in a way that is meaningful and inclusive. This includes using a range of communication channels. The PES also outlines an approach to working with a range of external organisations as trusted messengers on climate change, recognising that they are able to reach different groups, including those who are less engaged or have a certain distrust of government messaging. Key programmes and activities designed to help achieve the Understand objective of the PES include:

• Let’s Do Net Zero communications and the Net Zero Nation website
• Scotland’s annual Climate Week
• Climate Engagement Fund
• Climate Action Schools

Summaries of outputs from delivery of these projects and programmes and the outcomes achieved so far are provided below.

4.1 Let’s Do Net Zero communications

4.1.1 Background and summary of delivery

In 2021, the Scottish Government developed a cross-cutting communications approach to ensure all activity, across multiple channels, was coordinated in their invitation to people, communities, and businesses to take climate action. It was designed to engage the public on climate change in the build up to, during and after COP26, hosted in Glasgow in November 2021.

The approach has been sustained over the past few years. Its purpose is to elevate the issue of climate change while encouraging action united by a single communications proposition – Let’s Do Net Zero (LDNZ).

The LDNZ umbrella covered all cross-communications activity aligned to the overarching strategy to:

1. Educate – build understanding of the climate emergency, the challenges and opportunities

2. Motivate – changing attitudes and empowering change

3. Support action – signposting to funding and services that make taking action easier

Paid-for media activity to support these aims ran in two phases in June and October/November 2021, targeting 25 to 54 year olds in higher socio-economic groups (ABC1C2 audiences). Activity ran in Scotland across TV, out of home media (posters), in digital and social channels. Paid-for media marketing has always been supported by Ministerial events, an ongoing programme of media relations, organic digital content and internal communications throughout the year. These aim to increase awareness of key government priorities and announcements across the population of Scotland, as well as delivering behaviour change and social proof messaging in a consistent way and on a continuous basis to prompt climate action.

The LDNZ marketing campaign has used a number of channels to reach audiences across Scotland and empower change including:

• TV ads
• radio ads
• out-of-home billboards
• digital and social media
• newspaper, radio and TV earned coverage
• a website, Net Zero Nation.

To enable change, the Net Zero Nation website is an authoritative ‘one stop shop’ for individuals, communities, and organisations across Scotland seeking information on what action they can take to address the climate emergency. Content is also shared via emails that visitors to the website can subscribe to receive. The website forms the cornerstone of Scottish Government’s climate change communications’ Digital Content Strategy. This supports the PES by seeking to create content that will:

• elevate the issue by educating people that we are living in a climate emergency
• build momentum and tackle feelings of impotence creating a barrier to change by demonstrating that society-wide action is already underway
• build capability and agency by increasing awareness of the individual actions needed to help Scotland reach net zero.

Following 2021, Scottish Government climate change communications continued to be developed and delivered strategically across policy areas and with public sector partners maximising organic content – across social, digital, media and partner channels.

The Net Zero Nation website continued to be developed, and activity was run on social media, focusing bursts of activity around key events such as Scotland's Climate Week and using established partner relationships to widen the reach of communications.

In recent years, paid-for media marketing activity involved some new assets and the re-use of campaign assets developed in 2021, updated in 2024. Annual budget details for spend on marketing is available here.

4.1.2 Summary of outcomes and learning

Independent evaluation research is commissioned to explore the effectiveness of marketing activity. A case study covering the 2021 communications activity was produced as part of Scottish Government’s evaluation of the COP26 activities. This showed that the October 2021 communications activity reached 3,475,000 (75%) of adults in Scotland, who saw the activity on average 9.7 times. Headline findings for the 2021 autumn campaign activity are summarised below. All participants in the research were shown the advertising. “Campaign recognisers” reported having seen it in or on paid-for media channels while the campaign was live while “non-recognisers” said they had not seen it before.

Measure	Target	Delivered
% of campaign recognisers reporting having better awareness of action needed to taking climate change having seen the campaign	73%	Film 1 75%, Film 2 73%
% of campaign recognisers reporting having taken action as a result of seeing the campaign	50%	Film 1 78%, Film 2 78%

There are limitations to the comparisons that can be made between research findings from the 2021, 2023, and 2024 campaigns because the target audience profile changed across campaign bursts. Activity in 2023 targeted people aged 18 to 54 in the ABC1C2 socio-economic category, while activity in 2021 and 2024 targeted 25 to 54 year olds in the same group. This must be kept in mind when reviewing the data. Taking that into account, however, there does appear to have been a positive impact over time in the proportion “campaign recognisers” and that agree there are personal benefits to taking climate action. A consistently high proportion of “campaign recognisers” also report having been motivated to take action having seen the campaign.

Measure	Target (2023)	Delivered (2023)	Target (2024)	Delivered (2024)
% of campaign recognisers reporting having taken action as a result of seeing the campaign	50%	86%	60%	80%
% of campaign recognisers reporting that they understand actions needed to tackle climate change	N/A	77%	N/A	78%

It is also clear that seeing messaging relating to the need to take action to tackle climate change has a positive impact on the target audience’s commitment to taking action.

Measure	December 2023		November 2024
% reporting that they are much or slightly more motivated to take action to cut their emissions having seen the advertising	Recognisers	Non-recognisers	Recognisers	Non-recognisers
	75%	43%	76%	49%

Net Zero social media channels have continued to grow, with engagement increasing year on year since their launch in June 2021. Total followers have increased by 24.9% overall, from 44,952 in November 2021 to 56,127 in December 2024, across all channels (Instagram, Facebook, LinkedIn and X).

Ongoing engagement with partners has been a fundamental part of the Net Zero communications strategy. This has resulted in (from 2023-24 figures):

• A database of 600+ contacts who regularly receive Net Zero resources and campaign updates
• An average partner email engagement rate of 33%
• An average of 414 partner asset downloads per campaign.

Finally, summary indicators of Net Zero Nation website performance to date include:

• Since its launch in June 2021, the Net Zero Nation website has attracted between 80,000 – 100,000 visitors annually.
• Over 7,500 people have subscribed to the Net Zero Nation email to date.
• The majority of the traffic to the site in 2024 has been driven through people naturally searching on Google, demonstrating the relevance of the site’s content and importance outside of the LDNZ marketing campaign.
• The percentage of return visitors doubled in 2024 (compared to 2023), further indicating people’s interest in the content.
• The percentage of referral traffic has increased to 11% in 2024 (7% in 2023), suggesting partners and other messengers are including a link to the website in their communications, indicating the value of the content.

4.2 Climate Week

4.2.1 Background and summary of delivery

Scotland’s Climate Week is a Scottish Government-led annual series of events that highlights the importance and urgency of tackling climate change and celebrates all the positive climate action being taken across the country to help inspire further collective, transformative change.

Established in 2016, Climate Week in support of the PES has grown from being an internally facing Scottish Government initiative to involving engagement from a wide range of stakeholders including local government, public bodies, the third and private sectors, as well as individuals and communities.

Climate Week has also expanded to become a cross-government initiative, incorporating policy areas such as health, culture and transport, that face decarbonisation and climate resilience challenges. External activity is increasingly wide ranging, involving such organisations as the Scottish Fire and Rescue Service, Caledonian Macbrayne and the Scotch Whisky Association. In addition, since their inception Community Climate Action Hubs have increasingly become engaged with the Week helping their local communities to participate.

Each year Climate Week has a different theme designed to inspire and engage the public. In advance and during Climate Week the Scottish Government delivers a marketing campaign to generate activity around the theme from individuals and organisations. The marketing programme encourages social media activity from partners using #ScotClimateWeek to showcase action from across the country on climate change. Marketing materials also include toolkits to assist engagement by trusted messengers such as schools, libraries, and third-sector organisations. Budget is typically spent on paid-for marketing to amplify this activity. Climate Week has also occasionally involved engagement events directly delivered by Scottish Government.

A summary of Climate Week activities for the past 3 years since the launch of the PES, and the associated budgets spent, is at Annex A.

First Minister John Swinney announces the new Scottish National Adaptation Plan at Fife Renewables Centre during Climate Week 2024

4.2.2 Summary of outcomes and learning

Scotland’s Climate Week 2024 proved to be the most successful yet, exceeding several of the engagement targets set:

Delivered	Target
Across the week, 4,489 unique visits were recorded to the Net Zero Nation website	3,500
396 downloads were made of the Climate Week toolkits	200
3,588 uses of the campaign hashtag	2000
2,417 new followers on social media (Instagram, Facebook and LinkedIn)	680

A key aim of Climate Week is to encourage external organisations to participate and amplify messages via social media and other platforms. Through experience of delivery Scottish Government has learned that wider themes on climate stories and conversations have typically resulted in more partner activity than narrower sector-specific themes such as transport and heating. Increased partner activity and interest can support a virtuous circle, as they provide early support to improve marketing resources the following year.

Close collaboration across climate engagement, policy, communications and marketing activities, including strengthening connections between Climate Week and the Let’s Do Net Zero campaign, has improved efficiency and established Climate Week as a strong cross-government effort.

The aim of encouraging a wide range of engagement during Climate Week is not only to build understanding of the changes needed to become a net zero, climate ready nation, but to demonstrate the action the Scottish Government is already taking and the collective action taking place across public sector, business, local government, communities and individuals. This spectrum of activity, within and outwith government, can serve to ease climate anxiety and motivate further individual and collective action.

4.3 Climate Engagement Fund

4.3.1 Background and summary of delivery

Due to the importance placed on the role of trusted messengers within the PES, the Scottish Government re-considered its approach to awarding climate engagement grants in order to increase innovation in approaches, reach new audiences and drive value for money. This involved the development of a competitive annual funding programme, the Climate Engagement Fund (CEF), which launched with a pilot in 2023.

Whilst the CEF was in development , two trusted messenger organisations, Eco-Congregations Scotland and Climate 2050 Group, received grant funding under the PES in 2021 and 2022 to engage their audiences on climate change. Summary of their activities and impacts are at Annex B.

The Climate Engagement Fund (CEF) supports external organisations to lead engagement programmes with specific groups and communities that they have an established and trusted relationship with. The Fund seeks to deliver against the PES commitment to maintain an inclusive and accessible approach to climate engagement, including working with these trusted messengers to reach people not currently engaged on the topic.

In 2023-24 the initial pilot of the Fund was launched with a budget of £550,000. 8 projects were selected from 129 applications received, with grants between £50,000 and £80,000.

In 2024 the total budget was £272,000. 8 projects were selected for funding from a total of 173 applications. Awards ranged from £26,730 to £47,111 with projects to be delivered between June 2024 and March 2025. A list of the funded projects across both rounds is at Annex C.

4.3.2 Summary of outcomes & learning

Since its inception, the CEF has funded 16 climate engagement projects, reaching over 8,000 people in 2023-24, and over 7,000 people between June and December 2024 (with 2024 projects still live at the time of writing). The projects have covered a diverse geographical spread of communities, including coastal, island, rural and urban areas, and have reached a huge range of audiences including children and young people in areas of deprivation, and scientists and academics leading the conversation on climate communication.

Following the pilot, a review considered the reporting provided by each project on their delivered activities in 2023-24. It concluded that all 8 organisations had a positive impact on communities across Scotland by engaging new audiences, increasing understanding of the climate emergency, and encouraging climate action.

Across the 8 projects, 6,000 people were informed about the action that Scotland is taking to tackle climate change and how it relates to their lives. The projects sought to improve understanding of climate change among diverse audiences using a range of engagement methods, from interactive arts exhibitions to social media.

The review also indicated that, as a result of the 8 CEF projects, over 8,000 people were encouraged to take, or did take, action on climate change. This was often achieved through projects that included practical workshops (for example on improving sustainability of historic buildings) or that highlighted the economic opportunities of the net zero transition (such as promoting green skills and careers to young people). Participants in Edinburgh Science’s Climate Leadership Courses for community leaders and teachers reported feeling more motivated, inspired, positive and ready to talk about climate action, and to take action themselves.

“My confidence has increased around climate change now. I know how to talk about it and how to get other people interested in making small changes”

Feedback from ‘Out of the Box’ project participant

Some projects reported impacts on achieving climate action would be felt beyond the lifetime of the project, for example where projects facilitated or inspired future collaboration at an organisational level between sectors and agencies in an area.

The use of the arts and other creative methods to engage and communicate on climate change was a recommendation of the People’s Panel (which also called for more face-to face engagement), and was also highlighted by Millar et al (2025). There are examples of such approaches being used in the CEF projects. These could be built upon in future years to engage new audiences and ensure broad understanding of how climate change relates to people’s lives in Scotland, in line with the Strategic Objectives in the PES.

Children enjoying the quilting exhibit (left) and the behaviour change pledge booth (right) at the National Museum in Edinburgh during CEF delivery 2023-24

4.4 Climate Action Schools

4.4.1 Background and summary of delivery

The PES outlines Scottish Government’s commitment to embedding climate change education within Scotland’s schools. This has been done through supporting and promoting the cross-cutting curriculum theme of Learning for Sustainability. The PES committed that Scottish Government would continue to support climate change education, empowering teachers, learners, and their wider school communities to take environmental action.

During the PES period, Curriculum and Climate Engagement policy have continued to co-fund the national Eco-Schools and Climate Ready Classrooms project run by Keep Scotland Beautiful (KSB), now named Climate Action Schools. The Climate Action Schools framework of education initiatives is designed to support Scotland’s educators, young people and children to progress Learning for Sustainability and climate change education. It includes a wide range of activities for pupils, schools and educators including opportunities to share learning with schools across Scotland and internationally; professional learning and training; and engagement through arts and heritage.

4.4.2 Summary of impacts and learning

To date, achievements include:

• during the launch year 2019-20, the Climate Ready Classroom initiative was delivered to 798 young people across 44 schools. This grew to 1,129 pupils by 2020-23 and by 2023-24 over 6,990 pupils participated in the initiative. To date, over 10,500 pupils have taken part in Climate Ready Classrooms Primary or Secondary
• ‘Train the Trainer’ sessions, which qualify teachers to reteach materials to their students, has grown from 5 sessions in 2019-20 to 195 teachers trained in 2020-22.
• 21,125 pupils across all 32 local authorities attended live lessons (29 delivered) in 2023-24
• in 2023-24 1,160 schools were involved in at least one Climate Action Schools activity.

Keep Scotland Beautiful’s annual impact reports also include qualitative evidence from participants of Climate Action Schools, to demonstrate the positive impact of the programme on pupils, educators and local communities:

“I have learnt that taking care of our planet doesn’t only mean helping to sustain the natural environment, but also means helping to ensure all people have equality [and a better standard of living].”

High school pupil, Glasgow City, 2023-24

“Liked that [Climate Ready Classrooms for Primary] taught us something that is important to the world, and that change needs to happen now. Gave us the tools to solve the climate change problems in our school.” Educator, Loudon-Montgomery Primary School, 2022-23

Climate Action Schools has delivered continuous, national and impactful activities in support of climate education and action, to help children, young people and educators develop their climate literacy and identify opportunities to take positive climate action.

4.5 Understand: reflections and implications

The evidence presented above indicates that the Scottish Government has delivered on its commitments as outlined in the PES to communicate on climate change in a way that is positive and accessible, and to work through trusted messengers to reach wider audiences. The activities delivered under this pillar represent a mixed approach to achieving the PES objective. The approach combines mass communications with more in-depth work via trusted messengers to smaller, target audiences.

Available evidence on effective climate change public engagement indicates that this mixed approach is appropriate when seeking to communicate on and improve public understanding about climate change. The challenge, however, is determining the extent to which the activities undertaken represent the optimal way to deliver this approach. There is evidence to suggest there are some areas which could be further developed in the remainder of this PES delivery period and beyond.

The stakeholder survey, public engagement evidence review, and People’s Panel report all suggest that the public want to see more mass communication and more visible leadership on climate change from the Scottish Government. People want clearer communication on the practical actions and local opportunities they can take to tackle climate change.

While the survey sample is not representative of the public, it is notable that the Let’s Do Net Zero marketing campaign and Net Zero Nation website had low levels of recognition among the 67 respondents to the stakeholder survey, with around a third reporting having never heard of them. This suggests more could be done to improve the reach and frequency of Scottish Government communications on climate change particularly amongst trusted messengers who can refer to and share these with their audiences. This would strengthen the multiplier effect of the mixed approach taken under the PES.

On the types of messaging that help achieve the PES objective, evidence suggests that while positive messaging and success stories are seen as important, people want to hear more on the urgency of the situation from Government. In their public engagement evidence review, Millar et al. (2025) also suggests that this honesty about the climate crisis needs to be balanced with communication on the practical actions people can take, and the co-benefits of those. Close consideration of the findings of this review when developing the next phase of the communications strategy (including future marketing campaigns) will be important.

Working through trusted messengers as a means of communicating on climate change is supported by stakeholders and members of the public who participated in the research used for this review. Many see the value of engaging at a very local level to make messages relatable, particularly focusing on co-benefits and how climate action can impact poverty and inequality. Stakeholders however highlighted the need for more support, training and funding for trusted messenger organisations to provide meaningful leadership on climate change among their audiences. Scottish Government could do more to share resources and evidence, and communicate directly with trusted messengers on policy priorities and direction to help ensure engagement delivery is well-informed.

It is important to acknowledge that the scale of activity delivered through both marketing and trusted messenger funding was much reduced from the level initially envisaged. While evidence on improving public understanding on climate change at the national level is limited, and difficult to attribute to specific interventions, budget constraints are clearly likely to have limited what could be achieved.