Scottish Government high level action plan in response to the Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights

4: Climate Change

Thematic Tags

Climate Change; Right to a healthy environment; NetZero

Concluding Observation 13

The Committee recommends that the State Party take all measures necessary to meet its nationally determined contribution under the Paris Agreement and implement its net-zero strategy, particularly in the energy, transport, land use, agriculture and building sectors. It further encourages the State Party to enhance its decarbonization policy for dwelling stock.

Context

We remain fully committed to our ambition and duty to reach net zero by 2045. We are now more than halfway to net zero and continue to be ahead of the UK as a whole in delivering long term emissions reductions. We are determined to achieve net zero in a way that distributes the costs and benefits fairly, and which tackles inequality and injustice.

Scotland was the first country in the UK to establish a Just Transition Commission providing independent scrutiny and advice on how to put justice at the heart of climate action in Scotland. Based on the Commission’s advice, we developed a National Just Transition Planning Framework, which is designed to ensure a strategic, consistent approach to planning for a just transition across our economy and society.

Since the publication of our last Climate Change Plan, we have introduced a ban on the supply and manufacturing of certain problematic single use plastic items; fully allocated the £30 million Electric Vehicle Infrastructure Fund; created over 15,000 hectares of new woodland; brought the New Build Heat Standard into force; and launched an Emerging Energy Technologies Fund committing £80 million of funding to support the development of carbon capture storage and negative emissions technologies in Scotland.

We continue to build on our legally binding commitment to a just transition, as set out in the Climate Change (Scotland) Act 2009, with a focus on people and equity. We published our annual Climate Change Plan Monitoring Report in May 2025. Of the 43 indicators, 26 are on track.

Key Actions

We are considering how to recognise the right to a healthy environment (RTHE) in the proposed Human Rights Bill to reinforce the importance of the environment. We are also working to develop the strength, scope and application of a duty for the RTHE which could require duty bearers to proactively consider the right to a healthy environment in their decision making processes. The domestic articulation of the right is being developed using the work of the UN Special Rapporteur on the human right to a healthy environment and consists of six substantive elements which includes a safe climate.

We published our updated Climate Change Plan on 06 November 2025 covering the policies and proposals we will take to reduce emissions in Scotland during the period 2026-2040.

We are proposing to amend the Climate Change (Emissions Reduction Targets) (Scotland) Act 2024 to introduce multi-year ‘carbon budgets’ to replace linear annual targets and better reflect the reality of how emissions change. If approved by the Scottish Parliament, the first carbon budget (2026–30) aims for an average 57% reduction in emissions compared to 1990 levels, increasing to 94% by 2041–45.

We are developing Just Transition Plans to help businesses and investors realise economic opportunities related to net zero. We published a consultation on the Land Use and Agriculture Just Transition Plan in August 2025, which focuses on maintaining and supporting thriving rural and island communities, and the draft Transport Just Transition Plan in February 2025.

We are providing £25 million to the Just Transition Fund for Grangemouth, bringing our total commitment and investment in the Grangemouth and Falkirk area to £87 million. The Grangemouth Just Transition Plan was published in June 2025.

We will invest a further £8.5 million in capital funding through the Just Transition Fund in 2025-26 to support new projects in the north east and Moray, with a focus on projects that support jobs, skills and economic opportunities. We have allocated more than £75 million to the fund so far to support workers and communities in the heartlands of our oil and gas sector as we transition from fossil fuels. In its first two years, projects supported through the fund have created and safeguarded 230 jobs and opened up over 750 training places.

We are continuing to work on the delivery of our Green Industrial Strategy which we published in September 2024. The strategy aims to harness Scotland’s strengths to secure economic growth from the global transition to net zero by focusing investment and policy on key opportunity areas such as wind, hydrogen, carbon capture, green financial services, and clean industries.

In 2025-26 we are committing £4.9 billion in capital and resource spend for activities that will have a positive impact on delivery of our climate change goals. This means that 40% of total capital budget is being targeted towards programmes that will tackle the climate emergency and respond to climate change.

We are also committing £936 million in 2025-26 to climate adaptation. This is supported by our third National Adaption Plan which sets out the actions that we and partners will take from 2024-29. This was published in September 2024 alongside an Adaptation Monitoring Framework making Scotland the first UK nation to publish both policy and monitoring frameworks together.

We will invest over £188 million to support high quality active travel and bus infrastructure, sustainable travel integration, and behaviour change activity to promote walking, wheeling and cycling for everyday shorter journeys and other sustainable journeys.

We will also invest £263 million to put more zero emission buses on Scotland’s roads, to help local authorities leverage more private investment for electric vehicle charging.

In 2025-26 we will increase funding for low carbon and climate positive activities to £54.4 million supporting the switch to zero emission vehicles and decarbonisation of the bus sector.

We are also providing a further £4.5 million to expand public charging in rural and islands communities.

We are developing a fleet decarbonisation action plan that reflects the current fiscal operational environment and the scale of emission reduction required.

We will invest in woodland creation on Scotland’s national forests and land. Forestry and Land Scotland will deliver an annual contribution towards the overall woodland creation target by creating new sustainable woodland on Scotland’s national forests and land, including through partnerships with external organisations to scale carbon capture opportunities.