The recovery of Scotland’s nature could be beautiful and exciting – if we can find the political will to make it happen, writes Fight for Scotland’s Nature campaign coordinator Miriam Ross.
I was fascinated when I learned that millions of native oysters were once harvested from the Firth of Forth every year, providing a cheap and common source of food, and an Edinburgh old town full of raucous ‘oyster cellars’. It can be hard to imagine the places we live as they once were – and just as hard to imagine a different future for them.
Native oysters virtually disappeared from the Forth due to massive overfishing in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, and similar collapses have played out around most of Scotland’s coastline.
But native oysters, which are distinct from the pacific oysters now found on restaurant menus, are so good for ecosystem health and biodiversity that efforts are being made to start restoring their populations. In one such initiative at Loch Craignish in Argyll, the charity Seawilding has started growing juvenile oysters and returning them to the loch to restore the natural beds. Over the course of five years, it plans to grow up to one million native oysters.
Across Scotland, there are hundreds of inspiring projects underway to help our nature recover. These efforts are incredibly important, and they’re already making many of Scotland’s places better to live in.
But the bigger picture, in Scotland as elsewhere, is one of decline. And it’s not a slow decline. We no longer need to look back centuries to see how things have changed, because Scotland is losing its biodiversity at a rate perceptible within the lifetimes of people alive today. Almost half of our species have decreased in number in the past 50 years, and one in nine is at risk of extinction.
The devastating loss of nature is not inevitable. We can stop the decline, and we can increase Scotland’s wildlife populations and restore habitats, on land and at sea, helping nature to thrive. The many places where nature is recovering are living proof that we can do it if we want to. But we need to do it on a large scale, with action driven by government.
Nicola Sturgeon has said she wants to, writing in 2019, “The challenges facing biodiversity are as important as the challenge of climate change, and I want Scotland to be leading the way in our response.”
Now we need to see action to match those words.
Our neighbours are, on paper at least, moving in the right direction. At the end of June, the Welsh parliament called for legally binding targets to halt and reverse the decline of nature. The European Union has promised to introduce legally binding targets this year with the aim of restoring nature by 2030 – a development the Scottish government should note, having committed to aligning with EU environmental law.
There is no time to lose. The Scottish government must set legally binding targets to stop the loss of our wildlife and to make sure that by the end of this decade Scotland’s nature is on track to recovery. And it must propel the change needed to meet those targets.
Then we can collectively start to imagine, and create, a future in which a rich and diverse natural environment helps to make Scotland the kind of place we want to live in.
The recovery of Scotland’s nature could be beautiful and exciting – if we can find the political will to make it happen, writes Fight for Scotland’s Nature campaign coordinator Miriam Ross.
I was fascinated when I learned that millions of native oysters were once harvested from the Firth of Forth every year, providing a cheap and common source of food, and an Edinburgh old town full of raucous ‘oyster cellars’. It can be hard to imagine the places we live as they once were – and just as hard to imagine a different future for them.
Native oysters virtually disappeared from the Forth due to massive overfishing in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, and similar collapses have played out around most of Scotland’s coastline.
But native oysters, which are distinct from the pacific oysters now found on restaurant menus, are so good for ecosystem health and biodiversity that efforts are being made to start restoring their populations. In one such initiative at Loch Craignish in Argyll, the charity Seawilding has started growing juvenile oysters and returning them to the loch to restore the natural beds. Over the course of five years, it plans to grow up to one million native oysters.
Across Scotland, there are hundreds of inspiring projects underway to help our nature recover. These efforts are incredibly important, and they’re already making many of Scotland’s places better to live in.
But the bigger picture, in Scotland as elsewhere, is one of decline. And it’s not a slow decline. We no longer need to look back centuries to see how things have changed, because Scotland is losing its biodiversity at a rate perceptible within the lifetimes of people alive today. Almost half of our species have decreased in number in the past 50 years, and one in nine is at risk of extinction.
The devastating loss of nature is not inevitable. We can stop the decline, and we can increase Scotland’s wildlife populations and restore habitats, on land and at sea, helping nature to thrive. The many places where nature is recovering are living proof that we can do it if we want to. But we need to do it on a large scale, with action driven by government.
Nicola Sturgeon has said she wants to, writing in 2019, “The challenges facing biodiversity are as important as the challenge of climate change, and I want Scotland to be leading the way in our response.”
Now we need to see action to match those words.
Our neighbours are, on paper at least, moving in the right direction. At the end of June, the Welsh parliament called for legally binding targets to halt and reverse the decline of nature. The European Union has promised to introduce legally binding targets this year with the aim of restoring nature by 2030 – a development the Scottish government should note, having committed to aligning with EU environmental law.
There is no time to lose. The Scottish government must set legally binding targets to stop the loss of our wildlife and to make sure that by the end of this decade Scotland’s nature is on track to recovery. And it must propel the change needed to meet those targets.
Then we can collectively start to imagine, and create, a future in which a rich and diverse natural environment helps to make Scotland the kind of place we want to live in.
On the last day of June, the Welsh Parliament became the first parliament in the world to declare a nature emergency. The Senedd also called for legally binding targets to halt and reverse the decline of nature. Plaid Cymru member, Delyth Jewell, introduced the motion whilst referencing the missed UN Aichi targets on biodiversity: “When you miss a target like that, it doesn’t stand still—that loss, that decline, continues apace. The situation gets worse”. The Scottish Parliament failed to declare a nature emergency in November last year, when a similar motion was tabled by Mark Ruskell MSP which noted the catastrophic collapse in biodiversity globally and in Scotland.
Monica Lennon MSP has lodged a motion which, in light of the Welsh Parliament’s declaration of a nature emergency, calls on the Scottish Parliament to declare a nature emergency and introduce legally binding nature targets to drive nature’s recovery. We are totally dependent upon the natural world. But we are currently damaging it so profoundly that many of its natural systems are now on the verge of breakdown. The recently published Biodiversity Intactness Index places Scotland at 212th out of 240 countries based on how much human activity has impacted nature.
As we begin the UN Decade of Ecosystem Restoration, and as Scotland prepares to welcome the world at COP26 and play its role in Biodiversity COP15, action to reverse biodiversity declines in Scotland has never been more urgent. For over a decade, Scotland has striven to meet bold climate change targets, the same must now be put in place to address the nature crisis.
Time is running out and nature cannot afford another missed opportunity. We need Scotland’s political parties to come together to declare a nature emergency and commit to clear, legally binding targets to stop the loss of Scotland’s nature and set it on a path to recovery by 2030.
Tell your MSP to stand up for nature!
Urge your MSPs to support the motion, lodged by Monica Lennon MSP, calling on the Scottish Parliament to declare a nature emergency and commit to legally binding nature recovery targets. You can find the name, party affiliation and email address for your constituency and list MSPs by entering your postcode into the Scottish Parliament ‘Find MSP by postcode’ search tool. Once you have identified your MSPs, download our template email below, allowing you to contact each MSP individually and speak up for nature in a matter of minutes.
Scottish Environment LINK and Stop Climate Chaos Scotland recently held an event to discuss the role of material use in mitigating climate change. The event was organized as part of LINK’s Circular economy for a fairer footprintproject, which is campaigning for comprehensive and cross-cutting policies to make our economy more circular.
There has been increasing recognition that we really need to turn our minds to the energy that is embodied in materials if we are to address climate change. Eighty two percent of Scotland’s carbon footprint comes from things we use and consume. Life cycle analysis of products, which enables us to identify at what points in a product’s life cycle most of the impacts occur, shows raw material extraction as the most carbon intensive part of the life cycle of most products.
Understanding more about the materials we use and where they come from is vital to enable us to prioritise our action to meet climate change goals. For example, although switching to electric cars cuts our direct emissions in Scotland our global emissions will remain high due to the emissions embedded in the materials cars are made from. More sustainable transport options such as improvements in public transport are needed to address our overall contribution to climate change.
Our event heard from 3 speakers who are at the forefront of using data to explore the impact of the materials we use on GHG emissions at the global, UK and Scottish levels.
Professor John Barrett, University of Leeds, presented a study which found that by applying a range of strategies to increase the efficiency of how we use materials, UK consumption based emissions could be reduced by 121 million tonnes (approximately 8 times the annual emissions from all forms of transport in Scotland per year). The potential of material efficiency to reduce carbon emissions from industry is found to be double that of energy efficiency (which is where much of the effort has focused to date). Most of this emissions reduction would occur outside the UK where the materials we use are extracted and processed and many of our goods are manufactured; but, although it is our carbon footprint that would see the biggest reduction, the impact on territorial emissions is also significant.
The research found that in terms of emission reduction in the UK, about half the saving could be made from food-based policies – reducing food waste and changing our diets; other key areas being light-weighting (reducing weight) – particularly in buildings and vehicles, and increasing recycling processing in the UK. To reduce our emissions overseas, using products for longer and switching from the sale of goods to the provision of services would provide added carbon savings.
Research at the global level by the Circularity Gap Initiative was presented by Matthew Frazer from Circle Economy in the Netherlands. This research found that circular economy measures could address the emissions gap – the gap between carbon savings linked to policies already announced and those needed to be on track to meeting the Paris Agreement.
We were shown a Sanky diagram showing the flow of materials, and associated carbon, through the global economy which demonstrated how most of the fossil fuels extracted end up embodied in materials and goods. By looking at how human needs can be met in a more material efficient way, the report identified policy areas that could make the biggest impact on reducing carbon emissions whilst addressing societal needs. The research modelled 21 strategies which had a combined effect of shrinking global material use by 28% and global emissions by 39%. Three of the areas where cross-cutting policies could have the biggest potential were identified as buildings (such as making better use of and improving the design of buildings), mobility (for example, urban design to enable mobility with fewer vehicles), and nutrition (including changes in diets and regenerative farming). Together, these three areas could deliver 70% of the required emissions cut.
Kim Pratt from Zero Waste Scotland presented some of the findings of the Scottish Material Flow Accounts, published on the day of the event.
One key indicator calculated is an estimate of our material footprint – the amount of raw materials each person uses in a year. In 2017, each person in Scotland used 18.4 tonnes of materials, higher than the EU average, at 14.1 tonnes per person per year. The sustainable level is considered to be 8 tonnes per person per year which would enable people to live sustainable and high quality lives. Our 18.4 tonnes per year equates to 50 kg of materials per person per week. Remember most of these materials don’t make it into the final product, for example 25 tonnes of iron ore is required to make 1 tonne of steel.
Kim provided insight from a specific example of greener steel reprocessing and the benefits it could bring. We export 820,000 tonnes of Scottish scrap steel for reprocessing every year with a commodity value of £110m. Traditional steel reprocessing relies on coal and so there are associated carbon emissions. However, a modern electric arc furnace uses electricity instead of coal and if we developed such a furnace in Scotland, where our electricity has a very low carbon intensity, we could be reprocessing some of the greenest steel in the world and also saving materials as they take more scrap. This would lead to material, energy and transport savings – 56% reduction in GHGs; 180 direct and 1000 indirect jobs, and an increase in direct gross value added of £10 – 25m per year.
Some additional thoughts were provided by the speakers:
– Stay focussed on the goal. Quantification is important and we need a sense of scale. We need to think about millions of tonnes of materials flowing through the economy and how to achieve societal goals whilst using considerably less materials.
– We need a government wide approach – it is not just the domain of the environment departments. Resource efficiency must be embedded in all operations – how infrastructure is planned and how money is allocated and spent across departments.
– Many of the strategies needed are about optimising the use of carbon intensive materials, such as those that go into cars. Cars are typically idle for 95% of the time and, when in use, usually only 40% full. We need to find ways to collectively access mobility without the need for individual ownership of cars.
– The opportunities are positive and exciting with a huge amount of potential to create new business models for more sustainable living. New business models create positive stories.
– Resource efficiency will struggle to keep up in terms of throughput of materials and greenhouse gas emissions if we have higher growth rates. We will struggle to reduce overall impact unless we change consumption patterns. We need absolute targets to achieve this goal – we need an absolute target in material use and we also need absolute targets in energy demand.
What are our next steps? It is clear that we need a fundamental shift in how we use resources – it is not OK to tinker around the edges, we need transformative change to enable people to do things differently.
There is further work to do to examine the new Scottish material flow data to really pinpoint the material related policies that will have the biggest impact on reducing Scotland’s contribution to climate change emissions. We also need to think about the impact that material use has on biodiversity and start an equivalent analysis to determine key material policies to reduce our impact on land use and biodiversity – remember, 80 – 90% of global biodiversity loss is caused by the extraction and growing of raw materials and their processing.
In parallel, we need to put pressure on decision makers. More analysis is useful, but we already know that decisive action is needed and some of the key areas. Please sign our petition and share our film.
Slides from the event are available here: Prof. John Barrett, University of Leeds: slides ; Matthew Fraser, Lead, Circularity Gap Reporting Initiative: slides; Kim Pratt, Zero Waste Scotland: slides
Lastly, if you want to watch a short clip highlighting the issue, see this clip by the Ellen MacArthur Foundation.
Scotland’s coastline is rich with marine wildlife and is a fantastic place to connect with nature, slow down and soak up some vitamin sea. Over a quarter of all species of whale, dolphin, and porpoise, have been recorded here, and that’s not all… Scotland is one of the best destinations in the world to see basking sharks, a species that is classified by the IUCN as endangered.
This month saw this parliamentary session’s first debate on the nature and climate emergency, centered on a motion put forward by Cabinet Secretary for Net Zero, Energy and Transport Michael Matheson. After an election campaign in which nature and climate featured prominently – through discourse around the climate and nature emergencies, but not least through the need for a green recovery from the pandemic – the debate was a key opportunity for the government and the opposition to lay out their plans on climate action and nature restoration for the next five years. The debate showed a very welcomed understanding from all parties of a need for urgent action. However, it unfortunately also continued a trend in which the nature crisis is put second to the climate emergency.
The Cabinet Secretary opened the debate by highlighting the way in which ‘Scotland has taken a world-leading, distinctive and ambitious approach to tackling the twin crisis of climate change and ecological decline by putting in place legislation, targets and governance for reducing emissions, building our climate resilience and protecting our environment.’ It was encouraging to see wide ranging support to bring a revised Climate Change Plan forward early in this session, support which hopeful reflects an understanding of the severity of the challenges ahead.
However, debating MSPs gave significantly less attention to the nature emergency. The climate crisis is intrinsically linked to solving the nature emergency, meaning neither of the twin crisis can be solved by reducing greenhouse gas emissions alone. Just as ‘we are already seeing the impact of the global climate crisis’ in Scotland, as Mr. Matheson drew attention to in his opening remarks, we are also seeing the impacts of the biodiversity crisis. The State of Nature Scotland 2019 report finds that one out of nine species in Scotland are at the risk of distinction. The importance of restoring nature to our efforts to tackle climate change was drawn attention to by Alex Cole-Hamilton of the Liberal Democrats. In doing so, he supported the earlier statement on the importance of peatland by the Cabinet Secretary, SNP’s Emma Harper and Green’s Lorna Slater. These crucial contributions to the debate suggest there is no lack of knowledge in the parliament on the need to restore our nature. Now we need to see the equal importance of the nature crisis be reflected across the work of our MSPs in the next five years. A crucial next step in the fight to restore nature is adopting Nature Targets. Nature Targets would ensure that efforts to tackle the nature crisis, just like the climate crisis, is steered by world leading legislation.
More promising was the overall focus of MSPs across the political spectrum on the need for action. Conservatives’ Liam Kerr stated that ‘it is way beyond time that we focus on delivery.’ Stressing that delivery must also relate to the nature recovery, Mr. Kerr drew attention to Scotland’s failure to reach the Aichi biodiversity targets. The 5th Global Biodiversity Outlook report revealed that these targets, which 194 countries signed up to in 2010, have been spectacularly missed across the world. As such, Mr. Kerr’s statement is a welcome reminder of the scale of the action needed in the years ahead. Additionally, Labour’s Monica Lennon stressed the need for urgent action to bring forward a Circular Economy Bill and Green’s Lorna Slater urged for action on the 166 cross-party recommendations on alterations to the Climate Change Plan agreed in the last session, showcasing the breath of action needed to tackle the twin crisis. Together, the focus on action provided the hopeful prospect of a parliamentary session in which we see more action and less unmet promises.
Concluding the debate, the Minister for Environment, Biodiversity and Land reform Mairi McAllan provided a stark reminder of why urgent action is needed. Saying that ‘it is not only for Scotland’s future generations that we need to act; we need also to demonstrate leadership throughout the world’, Ms. McAllan showed an understanding of how what we do in the next five years will not only affect those of us who were able to vote in this latest election, but also young people and people across the globe. Now, we need our newly elected MSPs to act on the promise of action. Future generations cannot wait. Neither can nature.
This blog is from LINK’s Advocacy Officer Anne Funnemark.
Land use and land ownership is a live issue in Scotland. Debate around who owns Scotland and what they do with that land has never gone away. How land is managed is coming into sharper focus now in the face of climate and nature emergencies. Land management is fundamental to how Scotland can meet our climate targets plus reduce the ongoing loss of biodiversity and improve the wellbeing of Scotland’s people.
Who benefits from land use is also key. We all benefit from land use; those who work the land, who live on it and in communities supported by it, those who visit and those who depend on the services it provides, like clean water, healthy food, flood control, health and wellbeing through contact with nature.
Taken together, this all points in a direction of a much wider set of goals for the farming sector than those relating purely to food production and carries a clear implication that a much wider range of interests and voices should be involved in shaping its future.
There is distinct acknowledgement at the highest levels of Government that the climate and environment emergencies require a radical change in approach to the way we manage and use our land, to address the challenges we face: The challenges facing biodiversity are as important as the challenge of climate change, and I want Scotland to be leading the way in our response. Nicola Sturgeon, Scotland’s First Minister, July 2019.
In early 2019, the Scottish Parliament debated future rural policy in light of the UK voting to leave the EU. As a result, the Farming and Food Production – Future Policy Group (FFP-FPG) was established by the then Cabinet Secretary for Rural Economy, to develop and make recommendations for policy from 2024 onwards. This group, launched in June 2019, has so far not been able to publish its findings.
While the Future Policy Group has been unable to publish their report to date (June 2021), farmer led groups have also been tasked with identifying ways forwards for each farming sector in response to climate change. They have all published reports.
The gap that remains is the original remit of the Future Policy Group to map out the current context and the future direction of policy travel needed. Without this strategic overview, the sector led plans will need to come together to identify and fill gaps and eliminate overlaps. Farms in Scotland need clear pathways towards farm profitability in a net zero and nature positive future.
To this end there are a number of principles that would guide the direction of travel for Scotland, would cover cross sectoral concerns and would provide the context for sector led actions. These include the following:
1: Ambitious, coherent, clear and measurable objectives: able to contribute to meeting Scotland’s net zero obligations and biodiversity targets, meet local food needs and reflect the need to sustain and enhance natural resources and the services our land provides.
2: Payments and interventions: must deliver clear outcomes that meet policy objectives for society, economy and the environment.
3: Effective ambition: food, farming and other Scottish Government policy goals must be aligned. These include meeting local food needs and increasing the availability and accessibility of healthy sustainable food.
4: Investment in research, knowledge transfer and innovation: to support and facilitate the rapid transition to a sustainable rural economy, with pilot projects and demonstrations and a fit for purpose advisory service enabling all to benefit.
5: Protection, restoration and investment in biodiversity and natural capital: to ensure future generations have access to fully functioning ecosystems and services, including healthy soil, clean water and air, species diversity from genes to pollinators. Agroecological principles are key.
6: Fair and proportionate policy creation: the costs of implementation and regulation must be shared fairly and proportionate to environmental, societal and economic benefits
7: Wide collaboration and buy in: must be central to future land use decisions. National ambitions, priorities and targets should match with local realities, knowledge and aspirations
8: Just Transition principles must be central: transformation has far-reaching implications for people across Scotland.
With CoP15 in October and CoP26 in November and the need to act within this Decade of Ecosystem Restoration to achieve change, Scotland must act now. We need to be ambitious, given the opportunity we have to learn lessons and step outside the constraints of the Common Agricultural Policy. We need to offer a clear direction of travel. Farmers, land managers and food producers need to know where Scotland’s future rural policy is heading in order to prepare for the future and target their investment and activity effectively and efficiently.
Scottish Environment LINK first launched its Species Champions initiative in 2013. Since then, it has far outstripped the success we thought it might have had and not just in Scotland. It has inspired similar programmes in Wales, Northern Ireland and England. Conceived in the wildlife garden at Balallan House in Stirling, the idea was enthusiastically taken up by LINK members and Members of the Scottish Parliament (MSP) from all Parties and has resulted in some strong relations between eNGOS and MSPs, between MSPs and their constituents and MSPs and some iconic species. Some of the evidence is in the images of Liam MacArthur, MSP, towering over the Scottish primrose, Stewart Stevenson, MSP, crouched next to a spiny lobster or Andy Wightman, MSP, grinning over an unfeasibly large golden eagle chick.
The first films we made when we invited MSPs to tell us why they had chosen their species, included poetry about sparrows, laughter over tongue twister species names, reminiscences about wildlife sightings with children and even childhood memories of marching for whales. You can see one example, from 2013, here. This has forged a strong relationship between MSPs and nature in Scotland.
This relationship has been to everyone’s benefit. Nature has benefited – not just through the frequent references to particular species in the Chamber but through MSP constituency engagement in schools and green spaces. MSPs have learnt more about the amazing species we live amongst: the natterer bat’s booming voice, the brown hare’s land speed records are just two examples. Each nugget of information revealed to the adopting MSP how amazing the nature in Scotland is and gave them a personal reason for engaging regularly with it in policy matters.
Our new short film celebrates some of what has happened amongst species and MSP Champions over the last Parliament. You will certainly spot faces you recognise, human, feathered, petalled, leaved and furry. Watch it here.
I don’t want to bamboozle you with numbers but here are just a few:
111 MSPs have championed a species, from Shetland to Galloway, Outer Hebrides to East Lothian. And from all political parties.
We’ve had champions for mammals, insects, birds, trees and plants, jellyfish and whales, slow worms and newts, lobsters and sea fans. And a host more.
Species Champions have lodged Parliamentary motions, declared their interest as a species champions in debates, with some amusing asides, asked parliamentary questions, held field and site visits and created videos, and of course seen press coverage in local and national papers, BBC and lots of social media action, including facebook films, tweets and instagram imagery.
100 day challenge in 2018 to celebrate reaching 100 Species Champions: had species champions all doing something for nature in those 100 days, resulting in 180,000 social media engagements
In 2021, 2,044 people from right across Scotland signed up to call on their candidates to sign our Pledge for Nature. And 68 candidates did so. It is still running and we hope you’ll be able to support it if you haven’t already. Details are here.
And now, 7 years on, we are relaunching the initiative, this time as Nature Champions. With >80% of MSPs engaged in the last Parliament, we ‘re looking to top the level of engagement this time round and are giving even more choice of species and habitat for MSPs to visit, learn about, engage personally with and champion in Parliament. We have charismatic species, diminutive species with amazing stories to tell, common but declining species and vitally important habitats that all need championing so we can make sure today’s generations and future generations can share in our wonder.
This is now even more important than ever. It would have been fantastic to have been able to say, that 7 years after we first launched it, species and habitats are in a better state now than they were then. This isn’t the case. The State of Nature Scotland reports in 2016 and 2019 show continuing decline. Scotland, and the other UK countries, is near the bottom of the international Biodiversity Intactness Index, which measures the resilience of our nature through assessing how much nature is left from a pristine state. Nature needs our help more than ever – ironically at a time when we’ve leaned on nature more than ever and the joy and comfort it has provided over the last 15 months.
I hope you are inspired to take part in our new initiative. More information is here.
At the start of this Decade for Ecosystem Restoration, now is the time for Nature’s voice in the Scottish Parliament to be strong, loud and well informed. This initiative is all about making that happen. As an individual, ask your MSP to become a Nature Champion and make your voice heard by adding it to our campaign here: tell us why and how nature matters to you.
Last week, First Minister Nicola Sturgeon of the SNP and Scottish Green Party co-leaders Patrick Harvie and Lorna Slater announced that their respective parties would hold ‘formal talks’ on a potential cooperation agreement. The SNP-Green Party talks represent an exciting opportunity for the new government to prioritise nature’s recovery by adopting statutory Nature Recovery Targets – but it won’t happen without your help.
The SNP manifesto makes a welcome commitment to introduce a new Biodiversity Strategy for Scotland by autumn 2022. However, the ultimate success of that strategy will depend heavily on whether the government adopts legally binding Nature Recovery Targets – commonly referred to as statutory targets. While the SNP manifesto makes no public commitment to statutory targets, the Scottish Labour, Liberal Democrat and Green manifestos back legally binding targets. With cross-party support already evident in parliament, this is the ideal opportunity for the new government to demonstrate real commitment to delivering for Scotland’s nature by agreeing to statutory targets. By writing to your SNP and Green MSPs, asking that they recognise the emerging consensus and commit to statutory Nature Recovery Targets in their negotiations, we can revive nature in Scotland and make an important contribution to global restoration.
You can find the name, party affiliation and email address for your constituency and list MSPs by entering your postcode into the Scottish Parliament ‘Find MSP by postcode’ search tool. Almost everyone is represented by a Green or SNP MSP in their constituency or on the regional list. Once you’ve identified your Green and SNP MSPs, download our template email below, allowing you to contact each MSP individually and speak up for nature in a matter of minutes.
We are living through a mass extinction. Since 1970, our world has seen a drop of almost 70 per cent in the average population of mammals, birds, amphibians, reptiles and fish, and over a quarter of assessed species are now threatened by extinction. While developing countries in sub-Sahara Africa and South Asia repeatedly suffer first and worst, wealth isn’t a shield. Scotland is a wealthy nation, yet half of all our species are in decline, with 1 in 9 at risk of extinction, and two-thirds of our peatlands – vital natural infrastructure in the battle against climate change – are degraded. Time is running out, by setting ambitious, legally binding nature recovery targets, the new Scottish Government can revive nature in Scotland and make an important contribution to global restoration.
A natural starting point
When we want to achieve something, setting a target is a natural starting point, whether in our personal lives, in business or in government. Targets allow us to monitor our rate of improvement against a clear objective, meaning we can adjust our approach accordingly to stay on goal. When we’re open and honest about our plans with others, it helps us feel accountable and motivates us to keep on track. To achieve that sense of accountability with government, Nature Recovery Targets must be statutory, with regular progress reports. It means citizens can hold the government to account on overall progress and hold industry to account on sectoral-specific targets.
The Scottish Government already measures progress against agreed targets on issues as diverse as child poverty, social housing, and climate change. If we want to restore nature in Scotland, adopting legally binding Nature Recovery Targets is a logical first step. Effective targets would measure species abundance, distribution and extinction risk; the quality, extent and connectivity of habitats, and contributions towards our collective goal, with sectoral-specific targets.
Scotland cannot be left behind
This year, at the beginning of the UN Decade of Ecosystem Restoration, the UK Government and the EU Commission are on course to set legally binding Nature Recovery Targets for England and the European Union, respectively. Scotland cannot be left behind. We need our own statutory Nature Recovery Targets, committing our government to revive Scotland’s species and habitats, with communities, businesses, local authorities, and government agencies all playing their part.
By inviting the Scottish Green Party to participate in formal talks, First Minister Nicola Sturgeon has shown that her new government is open to a more consensus-based politics. With three out of five parties in the Scottish Parliament already supporting statutory Nature Recovery Targets, there is a clear opportunity for the Scottish Government to embrace genuine cross-party consensus while keeping pace with the rest of the UK and the EU. Statutory Nature Recovery Targets is an idea whose time has come.
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