Scottish Blue Carbon action plan: islands communities impact assessment

Step one – Develop a clear understanding of your objectives

Scotland’s coastal and marine environments have been recognised for many years for their biodiversity value. There is now a growing understanding of the role of some habitats as natural carbon stores and for their potential contribution to climate change mitigation. In Scottish waters, these blue carbon habitats include saltmarsh and seagrass, with a growing focus on the large stores of carbon in seabed sediments and the importance of kelp and other seaweeds for carbon uptake. Blue carbon habitats are important natural stores of organic carbon that have built up over long time periods, in some cases up to thousands of years or longer.

The Scottish Blue Carbon Action Plan (BCAP) sets out how the Scottish Government will work to integrate the latest evidence on blue carbon into nature conservation and climate change policies and actions that will be taken to address key evidence gaps. In doing so, this action plan sets out the Scottish Government’s position on blue carbon, outlines the policy landscape, and provides details on each habitat, including on the current state of scientific understanding and where there are gaps that need to be addressed. Addressing these evidence gaps means that blue carbon habitats can be supported effectively and with the right tools, so that they can form part of the broader Government strategy to tackle the climate crisis.

The action plan contains two objectives:

1 ensure the latest evidence on blue carbon is integrated into upcoming Scottish Government policy initiatives, where appropriate

2 continue to build the evidence base for blue carbon habitats to address key knowledge gaps and support policy development, implementation, and evaluation.

The specific new actions in the action plan relate to objective 2 (build the evidence base), and consist of research projects and other survey or data gathering work. Objective 1 will be met through internal work as part of the policy development process for the relevant upcoming initiatives, for example National Marine Plan 2, MPA fisheries management measures, and the Marine Restoration Plan. These initiatives have already been committed to by Scottish Government, for example in the Scottish Biodiversity Strategy Delivery Plan and the Scottish National Adaptation Plan and each involve their own impact assessment processes, including the impact on island communities.