Scotland's Climate Change Plan – 2026-2040

Climate and Biodiversity Loss

In Scotland, and around the world, we are facing twin crises of climate change and biodiversity loss. There is abundant evidence that these crises are linked and mutually reinforcing. Climate change, caused by greenhouse gases arising from human activity, is a leading driver of global biodiversity loss.

Biodiversity loss, in turn, reduces the capacity of our natural environment to absorb greenhouse gases, exacerbating the climate crisis. This is because healthy ocean and land ecosystems play a fundamental role in sequestering carbon, as well as helping us adapt to the “locked in” effects of climate change.

It is not possible to successfully address these crises by prioritising one over another: they must be tackled together. Our efforts to reduce emissions and reach net zero must be supported and reinforced by actions designed to protect and restore nature. This means focusing on opportunities to deliver joint nature and climate benefits, including nature-based solutions. It also means carefully managing potential tensions that can arise between net zero interventions and biodiversity, to ensure that our actions for climate and nature are mutually supportive and do not work against each other.

Our economy is ‘embedded’ in the natural environment, meaning that it is reliant on the resources and services nature provides and its capacity to absorb our wastes, including greenhouse gases and pollution. In Scotland, industries directly reliant on natural capital support £40 billion of economic output and more than 260,000 jobs.^[20] Our economy is also dependent on global environmental health, given the integrated nature of supply chains and the wider geopolitical volatility that environmental degradation can lead to.

Scotland’s Strategic Framework for Biodiversity sets out our response to tackling the nature emergency in Scotland. It includes:

• The 2024 Biodiversity Strategy, which describes a strategic vision and outcomes for restoring and regenerating Scotland’s biodiversity. The strategy sets targets for halting biodiversity loss by 2030 and restoring and regenerating Scotland’s biodiversity by 2045;
• A series of rolling Delivery Plans, to be reviewed every six years, with cross-sectoral actions for delivering these outcomes; and
• Statutory nature restoration targets, to be set under the Natural Environment Bill, which will drive action and increase accountability for achieving the vision and outcomes.

Complementing this, the draft Environment Strategy also sets out our approach for improving our impact of Scotland’s consumption and production on the natural environment in other countries around the world.