Welcome to the 28th meeting of the Environment, Climate Change and Land Reform Committee in 2018. We have received apologies from John Scott, so I welcome his substitute, Maurice Golden, to the committee.
I remind everyone present to switch off their mobile phones, because they might interfere with the broadcasting system.
The first item on the agenda is an evidence-taking session on the Climate Change (Emissions Reductions Targets) (Scotland) Bill; it is the first evidence session with stakeholders. We are delighted to be hearing from representatives of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, ClimateXChange and the Committee on Climate Change. Their important contributions will provide an excellent foundation for our evidence sessions in the coming weeks, which I will say a little bit about now.
The committee intends to hear from witnesses from other countries that are setting emissions targets and responding to the commitments that were made in Paris. We will consider the behaviour changes that are required on the part of individuals and communities in order to achieve the targets that are proposed in the bill, and we will hear about the governance arrangements that are in place to support and motivate the public and private sectors.
In turning our attention to specific sectors, we will hear from panels on agriculture and transport—two sectors in which most progress is still to be made. Innovation and creativity will be important parts of developing the technologies that will be required to achieve climate change targets, so we will hear from a panel about what is already happening in Scotland to progress that.
We will also consider the detail of the bill with two panels of stakeholders who represent people working in environmental and climate change fields, as well as with representatives of different sectors. We will conclude by hearing from the Cabinet Secretary for Environment, Climate Change and Land Reform.
The committee will consider its draft report in December and January, and anticipates publishing the report in January 2019.
We have a busy but fascinating few weeks ahead of us. Anyone who is interested in the committee’s work on the bill and would like details of our evidence sessions can visit our website or contact the clerks. Although we hosted a call for views throughout the summer, if people wish to make further contributions ahead of specific evidence sessions, they should contact the clerks, who will let them know when those would be most usefully received.
On behalf of the committee, I thank everyone who took the time to send us submissions on the bill. We received more than 90; they will be invaluable to our scrutiny. We also invited our Twitter followers to let us know what changes they would make to their lives in order to help in achieving more challenging targets, and we received lots of helpful insights. People can still join in and let us know what they would do by tweeting us using #myclimatechanges.
On our first panel this morning, we have Andy Kerr, who is a co-director of ClimateXChange, and Jim Skea, who is a co-chair of the IPCC working group 3, who joins us via videolink from London.
We will start with some questions on the IPCC’s recent special report entitled “Global Warming of 1.5°C”, which will mainly be for Jim Skea.