Environment, Climate Change and Land Reform Committee

Meeting date: Tuesday, November 5, 2019

Official Report 699KB pdf

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Climate Change Adaptation

Agenda item 2 is to hear from the Committee on Climate Change about Scotland’s climate change adaptation programme. I am delighted to welcome from the CCC Baroness Brown of Cambridge, chair of the adaptation committee; Chris Stark, chief executive; and Kathryn Brown, head of adaptation. Good morning.

Good morning. Thank you for inviting us.

It is very nice to see you all. We have been looking at your comments on the Scottish Government’s previous climate change adaptation strategy, and I have a couple of questions about your methodology and how you came to your recommendations and conclusions on the strategy.

Throughout your comments and recommendations, you refer to issues to do with data gaps. We are interested in that issue and the inability to assess things because of data gaps. What process allowed you to determine the adaptation priorities—the 12 priorities for buildings and infrastructure, the 10 for society and the five for the natural environment?

I will ask Kathryn Brown to take that, because she has been closest to that issue. Of course, the matter is about the climate change risk assessment—CCRA2—and what arises from that in relation to the United Kingdom and particularly in relation to Scotland. It is also about the areas where we can measure adaptation. It is a combination of the two. Kathryn will talk you through the detail.

For the most recent report, which was published in March, we chose the same adaptation priorities as we did for our assessment of the first Scottish climate change adaptation programme—SCCAP—report in 2016. When looking at the first SCCAP, we found that the outcomes and the timeframes relating to how the vision and actions were delivered were a little vague, which made it difficult to put in place a proper measuring process to ascertain whether the outcomes were being met. Therefore, we have come up with our own set of adaptation priorities—we have done the same for the national adaptation programme in England—that are based on the type of climate risk and receptor that we are looking at.

Splitting things by receptor—receptors are things such as people, buildings or wildlife—makes it easier to assess progress towards particular outcomes and to make an assessment in measuring vulnerability. However, we also need to think about how the risks interact in relation to the receptors. By splitting into the 27 priorities, it was easier to come to those outcomes. As I have said, we did that for the England programme, too.

Stewart Stevenson has a question on that.

I want to probe whether you are looking at the issue simply in terms of the effects, or whether you are attempting to baseline where we are, so that you can identify the delta from that baseline. Perhaps you are doing both, which I suspect is what we might want to see, because what I see before me says comparatively little about baselining and quite a lot about the critique.

I ask that question because, throughout the period since the introduction of the Climate Change (Scotland) Act 2009—as you will know, I took through that legislation—the shift in baselining has been a difficulty and has distorted our view of what may be happening. Sometimes, that has led to overexaggeration; at other times, it has led to underreporting of progress.

That baselining issue is a particular challenge when it comes to reducing CO₂ or greenhouse gas emissions, but it is not such a significant issue when we are looking at adaptation priorities. We do not see lots of rebaselining of trends in seabird populations or something like that—we have good data sets running on some of those things.

Our methodology is, first, to consider whether there is a plan. Are we presented with a plan that is actually focused on adaptation and does it take changes in climate into account, such as the kind of things that the Met Office is predicting for a 2°C pathway and for something closer to a 3.5°C or 4°C pathway? Sadly, even though we are all working hard towards 1.5°C—Scotland has achieved real progress in that regard—there is still a significant probability that, globally, we will not be on that pathway. We must take into account the risk of much more significant climate change. Is there a plan and is it based on science? Are actions taking place? Research is good but we need to be moving to action. Is progress being made in managing vulnerability?

Of course, we may see action taking place but not see progress on vulnerability, so we need to ask whether we are taking the right actions. Perhaps we have not fully understood the scientific mechanisms, so the actions may not actually be addressing the vulnerability. Alternatively, there might be a timing issue, so we will not see the impact of the actions until a number of years down the road. We do the assessment according to whether there is a plan, whether actions are taking place and whether we see progress in measuring vulnerability.

I will add a little about indicators. The baseline issue mainly comes in when we are looking at the third of those questions, and to some extent the second. When we are looking at changes in vulnerability as our measure of progress, we have baselines for quite a lot of the indicators. In Scotland, ClimateXChange has done a lot of work for us to populate those indicators. We have baseline numbers for things such as heat-related deaths or trees infected with red band needle blight but, as Baroness Brown says, we are more interested in the direction of change in vulnerabilities. Are we getting more or less vulnerable to climate change risks? That is really what we are trying to look at.

As I mentioned at the start, there are lots of areas throughout your observations and comments where you are unable to make an assessment on progress because of a lack of evidence. What do you recommend can be done to address that?

We believe that some of those are quite straightforward. A number of the gaps in the second SCCAP are where something is about be published or we are about to hear about things, so we hope that, in a year or two, some of those evidence gaps will be covered. Some evidence gaps are just about collecting the evidence. For example, we cannot see any data on progress on the use of sustainable urban drainage systems in Scotland and we have not been able to find evidence about housing developments in potentially flood-prone areas.

Those are just issues about collecting the data and are relatively straightforward. There are some much more challenging areas that the whole of the UK is grappling with, particularly around the natural environment. We are still trying to identify the right indicators for improving the resilience of the natural environment and therefore what data we should collect.

A particularly important issue relates to soils, and farming in particular. One gap that we are a bit concerned about in the second SCCAP relates to the replacement of the common agricultural policy, what sort of environmental land management scheme Scotland will introduce and how that will take into account the need to adapt by improving soil quality, so that agriculture can continue to operate at least as effectively as it does today. There is also a question about how that replacement scheme will take into account things such as the use of land to produce natural flood resilience by appropriate tree planting or by intentionally allowing certain areas of farmland to flood to protect parts of the built environment. Until we see what that replacement will be, we will not know how good progress is in that area. However, doing that will require all sorts of data collection that probably does not go on at the moment.

09:45  

You alluded to this earlier, but are you seeing similar gaps or trends throughout the UK in those areas, or are they just in Scotland?

In the natural environment, there are a lot of gaps that are common to the UK as a whole. There is a real opportunity for collaboration. Some of it is straightforward data that just needs to be collected, such as data on SUDS, but other data is much more complex, such as some of the data relating to the natural environment. The latter is more Kathryn Brown’s specialist area, so she may want to comment.

The gaps in natural environment data that are very similar to the gaps UK-wide are metrics around soil health, pest and disease incidence and vulnerability to different pests and diseases. Some of the water quality metrics are also somewhat lacking throughout the UK.

Historically, we have seen more data gaps in Scotland. A particular one that I would draw out is flood risk management. In the past, we have not had good data on the number of properties being built in flood risk areas or future projections of flood risk. The recent update to the national flood risk assessment has helped to plug some of those gaps, which is positive, but gaps remain, particularly, as Baroness Brown said, on uptake of sustainable urban drainage options and the adoption and maintenance of SUDS. We highlighted in one of our recommendations that that is one of the key areas in which we would like more to be done.

We will return to the issue of flooding later. On the theme of the methodology, to what extent do the adaptation priorities overlap and interact? You are putting together the information and categorising it, but am I correct in saying that the priorities all feed into one another?

It would be very nice to compartmentalise everything and say, “You have to look at this, you have to look at that and then you have to look at adaptation.” However, one of the challenges generally that we find with adaptation is that it runs through everything. It relates to how we live in our towns and cities, how we run our health service, how we improve our farming and how we do our forestry, so we cannot take it out and put it on the side.

The fact is that our climate will be changing. Even if we are on track for 1.5°, there is still quite a lot of climate change to come, which means that we have to think about constructing our buildings differently and we have to ensure that our hospitals are prepared to manage highly vulnerable people in what will be much hotter conditions. We have to recognise that, unless people’s homes can be kept at a good temperature in winter and summer, when people are working from home, their productivity could be significantly lower. Adaptation is not a separate thing. If we have the ambition to make our farmland more productive, we must recognise that we have to do that as the soil and weather are changing. Adaptation has to be a thread that runs right through everything and should not be put in a category at one side. That makes it hard to think about sometimes.

As you have probably picked up, adaptation is very broad, and we have attempted to draw together the priorities in as discrete a way as possible. They overlap, but we have made a very good attempt to distil them into meaningful and distinct categories. We are on a journey to make that easier for the committee. Similarly, the policies that flow from the process need to be better aligned to those things in future.

Of the five adaptation priorities in the natural environment overarching theme, three are showing slow progress and two are showing high concern. That is reflected in a significant loss of biodiversity and the biodiversity emergency that we are experiencing in Scotland. I want to ask about the pressures on freshwater habitats, particularly from invasive non-native species. How easily can that be addressed? Is enough being done, considering that there appears to be a reduction in funding for tackling the issue?

In our assessment of freshwater habitats, we put rivers and lochs together. There is quite a difference between loch condition and river condition. In general, loch condition has been quite good over the past five years, but we found that, on river condition, quite a few of the targets that are set out in the water framework directive were not met.

The issue of non-native species is tricky, because we expect new species to come into the UK and to move further north as the climate changes and their invasiveness or otherwise depends on the degree of harm that they cause. Not every non-native species that comes into the UK will be a problem species, but some species are extremely difficult to deal with and are causing a lot of problems. For example, there are certain types of mussels and new types of fish that have come in that are disrupting the food chain. Once those species are established, it is very difficult to eradicate them and control programmes have to be put in place.

As part of our UK-wide work, we have picked up on the way in which climate change is factored into policy on invasive species. Generally speaking, if a new species has come into the UK and we think that that has been caused by climate change, it is not included in the policies for invasive species. From our perspective, that is obviously a problem. What should matter is not what caused the introduction of such a species but the degree of harm that it is causing. We think that there needs to be more join-up between the climate adaptation policy groups and the invasive species groups to prioritise based on which species they think will be most harmful.

A lot of what needs to be done comes down to monitoring and trying to prevent introduction and establishment in the first place because, once invasive species have become established, it is much more costly to carry out eradication programmes.

Given that the water quality in almost half of Scottish rivers is not improving, and given the presence of what could be described as traditional invasive non-native species, such as giant hogweed, Japanese knotweed and rhododendron, to mention a few plant species, can we win this battle? We are not even in the midst of the biggest impact of climate change that we can foresee, and we are failing to address the traditional invasive non-native species. Can we win the battle if we do not start to improve our performance and provide dramatic increases in funding to get rid of such species?

Gosh.

That is a very difficult question, isn’t it?

Of course, there is also the balance that Kathryn Brown drew out, which is to say that some of the non-native species will become the new normal. The issue is the ones that will, for some reason, be damaging. We need to do a lot more thinking about which of the non-native species we are worried about.

We recognise that, as the climate changes, our wildlife will change. We cannot persuade wildlife that likes cooler temperatures to stay if it gets too warm for it, but we can, we hope, maintain or even improve biodiversity, because new wildlife will come and visit or colonise. The same goes for plants. Some of those new species will just become what replaces beech woods, or whatever, in the future. We must recognise that our landscapes will change.

We need to identify the non-native species that we think could be damaging. As Kathryn Brown said, they could dramatically alter the food chain and could affect species that would otherwise have stayed here but will not because they will not be able to find the right things to eat. It is a case of narrowing down the field and finding out which species we think could be dangerous. That may or may not be a large number. If it is a large number, we will have a really difficult time but, if we can narrow it down to a small number, we might have a chance of addressing the issue.

Do you think that the SCCAP adequately addresses the CCC’s concerns in relation to what it identifies as areas of high concern?

That remains to be seen.

To go back to your earlier question, it is possible to win if we define “winning” properly. It is a case of ensuring that we are well adapted to what is coming and that we have reduced our exposure to those things to which we are particularly vulnerable here in Scotland.

I do not know whether the second SCCAP does that, because we have not made a full assessment of it; I can say that overall, when we look at these issues in the second programme, it is much better brigaded under the right things and it gives me much greater confidence that the Scottish Government has started to put together a proper plan that might allow you to get into the question of whether we are winning. Overall, it looks okay—it looks as though it is heading in the right direction. However, I cannot give a definitive answer to that question.

With regard to freshwater rivers and lochs, there is a mention of beaver protection, which is a great nature-based solution in helping to regulate flow. There is a mention of the river basin management plans; I do not think that that is new, but we have not looked at that in detail. There is also a mention of research on river temperatures, which is important. However, on our first look at SCCAP 2, there is not a huge amount in the area that looks as though it is taking us forward. Again, we have not looked at it in detail, but it looks as though the area needs continued significant focus.

Stewart Stevenson has a question on invasive species.

I have a simple question that might have a complex answer, although I hope not. Is the Scottish Government—and is the UK Government, in so far as you can comment on it—operating with the right international advice? The problem is not geographically constrained to these islands, and strategies that are being adopted elsewhere might be appropriate here. The same invasive species could be moving up due to climate change in Scandinavia, North America and so on. Are we part of an international effort?

We are—just—in the process of producing the third climate change risk assessment for the whole of the UK, and we have particularly asked all our researchers and chapter co-ordinators to look closely at the specific issues for the devolved Administrations. I hope that we will be able to produce a strengthened report for Scotland and that it will bring in international research in all these areas.

You make a good point about whether we are doing enough with, in particular, our northern European neighbours. On flooding, we talk a lot to the Dutch, who have extensive experience in the area and some very good practice. In the forthcoming conference of the parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change in Glasgow in 2020, we might want to have as one of the themes the sharing of information and experience with relevant countries. That could be a useful thing for us to cover.

On the detail of invasive species or other species coming in from Europe, there are very good surveillance programmes in place that are co-ordinated European Union programmes. We know where the species are and how they are moving. Finlay Carson mentioned giant hogweed, which is a health risk. That plant is established, but there are good public awareness programmes on it and an eradication programme is in place. However, other things are coming in. We need to think about different species of mosquitoes and what they are carrying. Tick-borne encephalitis has now arrived in the UK, although that might not be because of climate change. Climate change might be one of the driving factors, but it might be to do with migratory species or there might be other reasons.

Part of the battle is to know where such things are and spot them as soon as they arrive. Across the UK, we have very good processes in place to do that. The problem is probably more that we are not keeping such a close eye on some species that are not on the target list of invasive species. As Baroness Brown said, some of those may be a problem, but some of them may be examples of the natural progression that we will see because of warming temperatures. We strongly highlight that conservation programmes across the UK, including in Scotland, need to start taking those inevitable changes into account. At present, we are trying to protect what is there and keep it as it is, but in many cases that will not be feasible in the future.

10:00  

I want to go back to your comments on agriculture, soil conservation and land management. We talked about that area a lot in relation to mitigation and the climate change bill, and there is a reference in the Climate Change (Emissions Reduction Targets) (Scotland) Act 2019 to agroecology.

What do you see as the way forward? What should be the defining approach? How can we manage soils better so that they can not just lock up carbon, but become more resilient? What does that look like on the ground? For a farmer or someone who is running an agricultural advisory programme, what key approach is needed to tackle the two issues of adaptation and mitigation?

The first thing to say is that everything is about to change and we need to be prepared for that. The point when we leave the CAP will be a really important moment for land managers up and down the UK. We know that plans are afoot to replace it with something else both in Scotland and in England and Wales, but the plans in England and Wales are much better developed than the plans in Scotland.

We must start to consider land as a natural asset and not just as a way of producing food. When we open that up, we get into the discussion about public money for public goods—that is certainly how it is framed at Westminster—and among those public goods, I would list all the things that you mentioned in your question. I do not yet see in Scotland the same commitment to developing a detailed policy on those issues, which causes me some concern. We think about climate change adaptation and mitigation, but when it comes to soil and the use of land in Scotland, I do not think that we could say that we see a fully developed policy prescription in the making. That is one reason why I continue to rank soils and agriculture as being of high concern. We must continue to focus on that.

Soil quality and health is one of the areas of challenge for data. The SCCAP mentions that soil research is to be done to identify metrics and establish a soil health framework. It would be good to see some timescales for that, although I know that it is challenging, because it is one of the fundamentals.

You have some different challenges up here from what we have in East Anglia, for example. In East Anglia we are looking at massive loss of topsoil and the impacts of drought, while up here you are looking at what is already a 27 per cent increase in rainfall since the 1960s. There are some very different challenges for soils in different parts of the country.

The Scottish Government has a plan for transition for agriculture, certainly for the next four years. Have you looked at that? Is your analysis based on current policy or on what you think may be coming after that? Are we moving quickly enough?

We have not made a full assessment of the second SCCAP, but I note that it does not mention what is going to happen with that policy programme. I have looked at the development of this, because it is one of the big areas. When we think about UK-wide climate change issues, it is one of the areas that I am most concerned about. Scotland is a third of the landmass of the UK, so it is a really important issue for Scotland. I see Westminster motoring on and developing a replacement for the CAP—although we could criticise that, too—but I do not yet see the same detailed prescription being laid out in Scotland. I think that we will be badgering the Scottish Government to see that over the coming months and years.

One issue that we identify is that adaptation has to run through everything. The fact that the environmental land management scheme is not even mentioned in the second SCCAP shows that somebody somewhere did not grasp that adaptation is going to be critical. The programme may well contain some important elements of adaptation, but it did not get thought about when the SCCAP was being put together. It is slightly worrying that the idea that we must think about adaptation is not yet entirely cultural, if you know what I mean—it does not come entirely naturally.

We have to say well done to Scotland on peatland restoration. You have already beaten your peatland restoration targets. They were not terribly taxing, but you have now set some much stronger ones. That is really positive to see, because we all know that the functioning of peat is critical to things such as wildlife, water quality and adaptation. Globally, peat is the single best store of carbon that we have. Well done on being really ambitious on peat. We need the rest of the UK to take on that ambition.

It appears that there is not much linkage on soil conservation, but is there enough linkage into the work on freshwater ecology? We have had some worrying evidence that there may be a scaling back on river basin management plans. Are those plans a way to drive catchment-level work on soil conservation? How do we ensure that we are taking an ecological approach to dealing with soil and water together?

I think that RBMPs have been useful in allowing us to think about things in a more spatial way at a catchment scale, as you say, and to look at the interactions with what is happening on farms, either with diffuse pollution into river courses or, in the case of peat, with washing of peat into watercourses. We have tended to find that water companies are key players in the issue. Treating water can be expensive, particularly if there is discolouration because of peat loss into it. Millions of pounds are spent on water treatment, so a really good road into funding peatland restoration projects has been to do them through water companies.

What we would really like to see through future environmental land management schemes is a much more holistic approach, and making payments for public goods rather than for areas of land or anything else that is used as a metric is a very good mechanism to achieve that. However, as Chris Stark said, we have not yet seen any of the detail for Scotland on how that programme might work or where adaptation features. It is still challenging to understand soil health and get the metrics to show what it is like across the country. That is the fundamental issue that we need to look at.

Is anybody doing that work anywhere in the UK? Is there a consistent analysis of the metrics of soil health? Who should be leading on that?

The Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs started a programme to do just that, and we can just about envisage that it could be turned into a meaningful policy in the timeframe that is available. That is the point, really—we will run out of time to do that properly unless it starts in Scotland, too.

I am curious about why there is insufficient data, because farmers have been soil testing for years. I suppose that the problem is that data gathering has not been mandatory. I used to be an agronomist and I know that soil is a fundamental natural asset that is potentially the basis for decisions about world food production and food security, so I find it absolutely astonishing that there is insufficient data. I do not know whether I have touched on why that is the case. Do you have any comments on that?

We agree about the fundamental importance of soil. Soil and water are obviously the two key assets. If people are doing agriculture in a changed climate in future, it will have to be underpinned by good soil quality and good water availability and quality. Even if we change what we grow or change from agriculture to forestry, we will have to have good soil and water quality.

We are surprised that there is not a national soil survey. In England, the most recent national survey was done in 2007. I have not seen evidence of a national soil survey in Scotland. In SCCAP2, there are actions to improve the research, including actions on what we are measuring in relation to soil health from a climate change point of view. Part of that is about carbon, both in relation to the mitigation benefits and as a proxy indicator for overall soil health. There are also the issues of the potential for soil erosion and the amount of soil that we have left.

To be honest, we are not sure why it has been such a problem, but it is a UK-wide problem and not just a Scottish one.

I will briefly run through the issues that have arisen from our high-level assessment of the second SCCAP, which is all that we have been able to do. As far as we can see, it does not include a high-level commitment to addressing soil health. It mentions the farming for a better climate programme, which is good, but we do not see the development of a detailed policy programme, such as the ELMS programme in England, to go alongside that. Soil risk maps will be available, which is good, and there is a commitment to more research on soil, but no timescales are attached to those things. It is a half-baked, half-finished programme.

This is an area where Scotland can make huge progress. The optimistic take is that, as the bar is pretty low, it could be raised quite quickly. However, as Rachael Hamilton said, it is a strange state of affairs, especially given the academic excellence in agriculture in Scotland.

I want us to move on to talk about buildings and infrastructure. I said that I would—[Interruption.] Before we do that, Claudia Beamish wants to come in.

Thank you, convener. The panel have already covered a lot of this, but there are some areas of the natural environment where the Committee on Climate Change highlights that “Mixed progress” has been made. They are terrestrial species and habitats; forestry; and marine and coastal ecosystems, all of which are fundamental.

Baroness Brown, you mentioned peatlands. Do you have any comments to make about the fact that some peat extraction is still going on in Scotland? That seems to be in conflict with the positive action that is being taken on peatlands.

We are very keen for peat extraction to stop and for the use of peat in compost to be banned, particularly in the compost that you and I can buy in the garden centre. It is appalling that that can contain peat. I recognise that commercial growers need to have a phase-out plan and to understand what they can use to replace peat, but there is absolutely no excuse for the fact that, these days, it is hard to discover whether the bag of compost in the garden centre has peat in it. None of us needs to use peat in our garden or on our pot plants. I absolutely agree that we should be phasing out its use. Some communities’ livelihoods are dependent on such things, and they need plans. As with all such things, we need a just transition in adaptation as well as mitigation.

We have touched on forest cover. I was interested to hear your comments about beech woods, Baroness Brown. Where would they go? I am puzzled about that. We talk about species moving north, and in response to questions from my colleague Fin Carson, you said that some things will move and that we need to consider whether they are harmful. However, in the context of the food chain and the ecosystems that you have highlighted, it seems to me that we lose our robust native beech woodlands at our peril. Will you say a bit more about that?

On Wednesday, I will talk to the National Trust down in England, and one of the iconic English landscapes is beech woods. The drought that is being experienced in parts of England is such that some of those woods will not be sustainable. That is the context in which I made that remark. I am sorry—it was not meant to be a comment on the situation in Scotland. Perhaps Kathryn Brown has an equivalent Scottish example.

We know that some of the northern forests, which contain very cold-tolerant species, are under threat. Given what is predicted in some of the higher climate change scenarios, some of the fantastic ancient forests in the north of Scotland will probably go and be replaced by something else. Proper analysis needs to be done to work that through and find out the chances of that happening and whether pockets of those forests might remain. That is what we are talking about when we say that conservation needs to shift and be more flexible. In some cases nothing can be done and species will be lost because their climate space, as it is called, is running out.

Beech is an interesting example from a climate change point of view because it is quite a drought-prone species. Beech trees do not do well in dry conditions, whereas some of the other native English species are a bit more robust when it comes to drought. Beech woodlands and bluebell woodlands are examples of the things that we are particularly concerned about given what the projections are telling us.

10:15  

You will know that there was a debate in the Parliament last week on 100 years of the Forestry Commission, in which we celebrated our forests and woodlands, including our community woodlands. There is a very positive view in Scotland on continuing to preserve and enhance our native ancient pine forests—I just put that on the record.

We have talked about freshwater rivers and lochs, but can we focus our minds on estuaries, the coastal environment and marine ecosystems? I understand that the ecological status of estuaries is not showing signs of improvement, and everyone will know about the decline in seabirds. I will not quote the figures on that because of the time, but they give cause for concern. To what degree does the ecological status of estuaries rely on the health of freshwater rivers and lochs? Do you have any broader comments on estuaries and the marine environment?

In that area, we have lumped together a few things that are quite different, as you point out. We put the marine environment in with estuaries and coastal waters. As you say, there is a good amount of protection on the marine side. Many marine protected areas have come on in the past few years, and that is looking quite good, but we are seeing big declines in some seabird populations—particularly those that rely on food such as sand eels. We are starting to see those populations decline, which is probably one of the impacts of climate change. Again, it is quite tricky to see what we can do about that apart from getting the habitats into good condition.

We have not done a lot of work to look at the causes of the poorer condition of estuaries. As you suggest, it might be to do with some of the upstream effects. Estuaries are complex ecosystems, as I am sure you are well aware, and when there are upstream and downstream effects, it can be tricky to preserve what we have. The point that we have made about flexibility is key to the condition of estuaries. It partly depends on how the condition is measured. Sometimes, it is measured according to the presence or absence of a particular species. If such species are moving because of climate change, we might need to change the condition metrics that we use. However, we would need to do more analysis to be able to give you a full answer.

Thank you. That is helpful.

I apologise for getting ahead of myself earlier. We will now move on to buildings and infrastructure networks.

Two things have struck me. First, you said that it is difficult to assess flooding adaptation because it is difficult to collate the existing information on how flooding has been taken into account when things have been planned and built. What is the difficulty with that? Secondly, given that people go through processes to get planning permission from local authorities and that large infrastructure projects are built more centrally, the data must exist. What is not being done but should be done in order to build the issue of flooding into that and enable us to assess whether that has been done?

I will say a few words on data collection. Flooding is a huge issue, particularly in Scotland, and many factors are involved. As I mentioned, the national flood risk assessment now gives us much better data on the number of buildings that are located in risk areas. The gaps are to do with development on fluvial and coastal flood plains.

The issue falls under the remit of the Scottish Environment Protection Agency, and we have had lots of discussions with it about the data gaps. Part of the problem is that getting the numbers requires local authority resourcing and data collection and the collation of that nationally, which can be an expensive task. It is not that it is not measurable; it is more a cost and resourcing issue for local authorities. The conversations that we have had with SEPA suggest that it feels that it is not resourced to bring all that data together. However, I cannot tell you whether that is the full reason.

We have talked about a culture change. In relation to factoring flooding into all these decisions, is the potential impact of climate change on flooding foremost in the minds of the people who are planning developments? Do you think that they are looking to the future?

Sometimes, people have conflicting priorities. I apologise for quoting an example from England, but Homes England has a priority of getting hundreds of thousands of new homes into the south-east of England. The challenge is that many of the areas where those homes could be built are flood plains. Also, they need to be affordable homes, so the challenge is then one of explaining that they must not be on the gas grid and that they need to be prepared for significantly hotter summer temperatures, with extra insulation, triple-glazed windows and proper ventilation systems to avoid damp and discomfort.

Those things cannot be done for free, and it is much cheaper to do them when new homes are being built. However, that adds to the cost and to the challenge in relation to the building skills that are needed to make sure that those homes are built to the high standards that might be specified, and more houses will need to be tested when they are built to check that they are meeting those higher standards.

There is a real and urgent need to build new houses, to meet targets on the number of new houses that are being built and to get the building industry to respond by building houses fast enough and to a high enough quality. There is therefore a temptation to put them in places where, in 50 to 100 years, we will really regret having developed communities, given that we could be facing a 1m sea-level rise. Those are the tensions that people are faced, with so we need people to be thinking that adaptation is really, truly important and must be a significant part of that decision making.

Committee members will all have examples of constituents who have been flooded and have been told, “That was a one-in-200-year event; it’s not going to happen again while you’re here.” However, the damage is already done—there is psychological damage as well—and the onus is being put on homeowners to be ready for flooding as opposed to there being any kind of mitigation.

In 20 years, it will not be a one-in-200-year event; it will be a much more common event.

Exactly.

Of course, we always have the probability that we are seeing the tail of the distribution—we cannot ignore that either.

It is true of every area. I do not think that, in any sense, the fundamental and inevitable impacts of climate change are really being factored in. There is a temptation and a tendency—you see it in the SCCAP as well as in many of the Government’s approaches to these issues—to jump to acute care in relation to some of these things. However, some of this is utterly fundamental. We need to see a real change in how we develop policy generally, right across the piece. That is true in the commercial world as well. Flooding is probably the most obvious case where that needs to be done, yet we look to SEPA to do a new flood plan. That will not solve in any real sense the underlying issues with the inevitable flooding that comes with climate change.

I do not blame the Scottish Government any more than I blame any other Government around the world. As we lift the bonnet on this, we understand that more and more of these things are fundamental, and it is difficult to grasp that. Part of what we are here to do is to raise, in a non-alarmist way, the genuine risk that comes with climate change if we do not address it properly.

We need to factor it in to all the decisions that we are making.

That is right.

We should probably throw out expressions such as, “This is a one-in-200-year event,” because things are changing too fast.

We would very much like to see all Government departments and all businesses thinking about the possible implications of being on a 1.5°C to 2°C trajectory, because we absolutely have to be looking at the risks that are associated with that. Even with a 1.5°C trajectory, the climate will go on changing beyond the end of the century. People should also be looking at what would happen under a 3.5°C to 4°C trajectory, because that is still a significant probability.

For every decision that could be affected by a climate change impact, which could cover almost anything, those two assessments ought to have been done. People need to have faced up to what the weather and the world could look like and to have asked whether what they are doing is robust against that backdrop. That is the kind of logical risk assessment that everybody should be doing, but not everybody is looking at the 2°C trajectory, let alone thinking about the 4°C one.

Does the new document that we are looking at have the necessary teeth? Is it fit for purpose? It might include policies, but is it fit for purpose from the point of view of delivering new laws, whether on planning or the protection of biodiversity? Will it enable those to be delivered in a timely way, such that we can address the issue?

I think that we would give the SCCAP a tick for making good progress and taking significant steps in the right direction in the area of health and social care, but I would say that there are several other areas where it really does not have the teeth that are needed.

It is a much more elegant—if I can use that word—programme. It is coherent, it makes sense and it is well laid out, but it still looks like a mapping exercise. I say that as someone who has had experience of doing mapping exercises, which are really hard to do. It is a good place to have begun, at least, but the jury is out on whether we can say, in truth, that it will drive new policy, new ambition and new activity.

I am happy that the framework has been established and that it links with the national outcomes and the United Nations sustainable development goals—that is definite progress. However, it still looks as though policies have been slotted into a framework, rather than that process being reversed. In future, I would like to see the framework being used in anger.

We have just talked about flooding resilience—or, rather, adaptation, so that we avoid the situation in which people have to be taken out of their homes at 3 in the morning by boat, which I have seen happening. Is there anything in the Scottish Government’s adaptation programme that gives you any comfort that that is being addressed?

There are certainly some steps forward to map. We look forward to the production by SEPA of the plan on flooding that I mentioned. That will probably be the point at which we can make a better assessment. At this point, it is difficult for us to say clearly whether the programme addresses the issue.

We are expecting a code of practice on the property-level flood resilience measures, which is due about now. We have not seen that yet, have we?

No.

There are some things coming. When those come, it will be easier to assess whether the issue is starting to be addressed.

There is no mention of shoreline management plans in the second SCCAP, even though only 10 per cent of the Scottish coast is covered by them and 19 per cent of the Scottish coast is deemed to be erodible; parts of the Scottish coast could be eroding quite quickly. On top of that are the issues of how much of the Scottish coast is inhabited and how much of it has critical wildlife around it. All of that needs to be mapped together to enable us to tell whether there is a gap there or whether Scotland is reasonably well covered. We do not have the evidence on that.

Flooding has a very visual impact. When it happens, everybody knows and it is easy to see the impacts on people and the aftermath, which we can measure. However, there are other risks to people and buildings that we are equally concerned about, such the risk of overheating, which is a very hidden risk. At the moment, the summer set temperature for heatwaves in Scotland is about 25°, but some of the work that Climate Ready Clyde has done suggests that that could go up to 35° or even 40° by 2070 under some of the scenarios.

The committee might want to discuss overheating separately, but I wanted to raise the fact that we see flooding and overheating as equal risks.

One of my colleagues might pick up that point. We have half an hour left with this panel, so I ask members to keep their questions succinct.

10:30  

I want to ask about digital infrastructure resilience, which is listed as an area of high concern. Given that paragraph C10 in part II of schedule 5 to the Scotland Act 1998 specifically reserves telecommunications and wireless telegraphy and internet services to the Westminster Government, rather than those being devolved to the Scottish Government, what role is there for the Scottish Government in telecoms resilience? More to the point, given that it matters to us but is a reserved matter, what is the Westminster Government doing to promote resilience in Scotland?

That is an area that we are concerned about nationally. To some extent, better connectivity will deliver better resilience and increased reconfigurability of the infrastructure in Scotland, but our big concern nationally is infrastructure interdependencies. Digital is a particularly important part of that because when there is an emergency we all rely heavily on being able to communicate. There have been several instances where the digital infrastructure has failed because of an interdependency that people were not aware of, such as a dependency on a particular electricity substation where the fact that it affected the digital network was not even clear. We are pushing the Government in Westminster very strongly on that.

We are very disappointed that the Westminster Government has not chosen to make the next round of adaptation reporting mandatory. We would like it to be mandatory for all critical infrastructure providers to report on their progress and risk reviewing against their planning for adaptation and consideration of interdependencies.

We hit a bit of a wall with the Cabinet Office because of some of our national security issues around some interdependencies—things that, for good reasons, are not in the public domain. However, we still have a concern around this area of infrastructure interdependencies. It is extremely complex and we want greater assurance from the UK Government that it is being thoroughly reviewed. We would like to see adaptation reporting being made—as is allowed for under the Climate Change Act 2008—a mandatory requirement for all the critical industries so that we can see what they are doing about those issues and the information is made public.

Although it is true to say that powers over digital communications are reserved and that Westminster needs to have a policy in place and plans to manage the digital infrastructure, it would run counter to the devolved policy of expanding connectivity in Scotland if the new infrastructure were not resilient. Although we can take a narrow outlook in that discussion and say that it is a reserved matter, it is absolutely the case that there is a devolved competence and an issue that the Scottish Government should care about it.

However, the devolved competence is in respect of economic development, rather than communication.

I completely agree, but that means that the Scottish Government has a stake in ensuring that there is that national strategy.

Yes, it has a stake.

However, I am not aware that there is an active campaign by the Scottish Government to ensure that the digital infrastructure that is installed is resilient. That would be a good example of where the Scottish Government’s devolved competence in respect of economic development played through into a clear position on what it demands from Westminster.

Does the Scottish Government not play into that through the joint working on the critical national infrastructure definitions?

I hope so, but I do not know.

I can speak with some degree of certainty. In my previous life, I used to be visited annually by GCHQ, to see whether my computer centre—

I am going to move on so that we can talk about other forms of infrastructure, such as energy supply.

My question is on the energy networks and the resilience of their infrastructure. I also hope to discuss ports, airports, ferry services and infrastructure dependency.

Starting with electricity supply disruption due to severe weather—other than flooding—who should be responsible for collecting, collating and analysing data in relation to such disruption?

I will hand that one to Chris Stark.

The straightforward answer is that I do not know. However, I was once responsible for those issues in the Scottish Government. A very good service is provided by the utilities in Scotland—by SSE and Scottish Power. When it comes to the energy networks, I would look to them to provide that data.

So you would be content that they have the capacity to do that.

They certainly have a very active programme of managing extreme weather, and I think that the service that they provide now is absolutely excellent, although that has come from a history of that not being the case. I am afraid that I do not know what data is collected from the utilities, but I would look to the asset owners themselves.

Would you say that the Scottish Government’s electricity and gas networks vision statement adequately addresses resilience and adaptation concerns in relation to energy supply?

I do not think that it addresses them. I would be happy to consider that further after the meeting but, from my reading of the statement, I do not recall such a section being in the networks plan that has been put together.

On ports, airports and ferry services, we know that work is continuing on a national transport strategy that is to be completed this session. What steps are necessary to manage climate risk in relation to port, airport and ferry infrastructure?

The area is pretty straightforward. The new national transport strategy just needs to acknowledge the risks and put a plan around them. With that infrastructure class, we can put together good plans. To echo something that Baroness Brown said, I would say that those plans should look well into the future and should be capable of managing temperature increases and the changes in weather that come with those increases—going much beyond 2°C, up to 3 or 4°C. In the lifetime of the assets that we are discussing—an airport, for instance—that is absolutely something that should be in the national transport strategy.

I think that the plan for the national transport strategy is for there to be a 20-year look ahead. Over those 20 years, there are pretty predictable changes in the climate, which we will need to accommodate.

A 20-year look ahead is great, but we are thinking of assets that have a longer lifetime than that. There should be some recognition of that and a further look ahead to ensure that the things that are done over the 20 years can be enhanced to deal with climate resilience over a 40-year or 50-year period, rather than going down dead ends with work that will need to be redone or starting again when we consider the weather and climatic conditions beyond 20 years.

We should ensure that steps are being taken on a pathway. We might not need 50-year resilience on day 1, but we need to ensure that the steps that are taken are part of the pathway to resilience that reflects the life of the asset.

Work is on-going to that effect.

Would you say that the SCCAP adequately addresses the CCC’s concerns in relation to areas of “high concern”?

Digital infrastructure is clearly an area of high concern, but it is a high concern across the country, for reasons that we have talked about. I am trying to remember the other specific ones. Certainly in the area of infrastructure, digital infrastructure was the only area of high concern.

Yes. The other one that I would flag up is infrastructure interdependencies, mainly because there is a gap. Our quick reading of SCCAP2 to date suggests that there is not really anything substantive in SCCAP2 at the moment that examines the interdependencies issue. It is a very difficult one to get into, to model and to come up with actions for.

We are looking at that as part of the third UK climate change risk assessment. From 2021 there will be updated evidence for the Scottish Government to use, but we would obviously like to have a few more discussions on how to get into that area, as a follow-through from SCCAP2.

I want to focus our minds on society and adaptation, an area on which there has been mixed progress, as you know. What are the key barriers to improving performance in relation to societal adaptation? The acid question is who will pay for that; have you been exploring that in your policy work? Do you have a view? We will have somebody from Scottish Water in front of us next; is it the consumer, the taxpayer or businesses—which obviously have a part to play—who should pay for such adaptation? How does all that get put together?

It is not for us to say who should pay; those are political decisions. It is for us to point out the things that need to be done and the metrics that can be measured to see whether we are progressing and making things happen. The question of who pays is a political decision.

Okay, fair enough. Can I ask part of the question again? What are the main barriers to moving forward?

Quite often, the question of who pays is one of the main barriers to moving forward. Conventional cost-benefit analyses often do not work in areas in relation to which we are planning for a 20 or 50-year horizon, and actions that we take now affect a problem that is going to be with us in earnest, perhaps in 50 years’ time.

Kathryn Brown mentioned a study that shows that temperatures in the centre of Glasgow could potentially reach 40°C. Given that things that you do in the centre of a historic city now could well still be around in 2070, you need to be thinking over the very long term, which is not a very natural timescale for an elected Government’s thinking, because we might not see for an awfully long time that an investment was a brilliant thing to do. Lots of issues around cost are certainly a barrier, because this is quite often about investing now for long-term benefits.

You used the phrase “just transition”, which is in the Climate Change (Emissions Reduction Targets) (Scotland) Act 2019, in the context of mitigation. Do any members of the panel have comments on the societal changes that are needed? How can the people who are the most vulnerable to climate change in Scotland be identified and supported? How can they become engaged and empowered to be able to adapt?

It is tempting in these moments to hand out lots of criticism, but one of the areas on which Scotland and the Scottish Government are very good is the raising of public understanding of what is happening with climate change. That is one of the areas on which we have noted positive progress. We are far from done on that, but it is really important that it happens.

However, I think that that is not enough. To answer your question about vulnerability: when it comes to climate change adaptation, one of the issues is how hidden some of the impacts are. In the context of health and social care services, for example, there is the issue of overheating in nursing homes. I do not think that just telling people what is coming is enough to fix that issue; we need something much more fundamental.

That is where the Government and the state come in: Government’s role is to understand those risks and not just to improve public understanding but to make proper provision, through decent policy, for what we know is coming. That is where we will find the answer to the question on what we do with the most vulnerable. The Government needs to protect those people; it is not just a question of raising public awareness. There is lots to say on that, but I think that, in general, the Scottish Government has appropriately raised the profile of climate risks, internally. Now we need to see that play out and manifest itself in better policy making.

Thank you.

I want to ask about the key recommendations that the adaptation sub-committee has made. You have a number of ranked recommendations: the first is that we

“improve the measurement of vulnerability to climate change”,

which seems to wrap in a lot of what we have discussed around infrastructure and soils. Will you explain your thinking around the ranking of your recommendations?

10:45  

They were ranked in order of importance. As you said, to some extent the first recommendation was a bit of a catch-all that picked up on some of the later ones. Its aim is to ensure that we have metrics and measures and are collecting data in key areas. The first element of that is about overheating risks in buildings and monitoring internal temperatures in hospitals and care homes. We think that Scotland has taken some good steps in the right direction on that one.

The next recommendation was on soil erosion. As we have discussed, we think that that should not be difficult to implement, but it is a critical one and Scotland has the possibility of bringing it in as part of the environmental land management system that will replace the CAP.

We have talked about the challenges to infrastructure networks from severe weather. However, we have not covered what business is doing to prepare for those. We are pleased that you still have climate-ready business advice, which is very good. We would very much like to see all businesses focusing on preparations for rises of both 2° and 4°. Clearly, preparing for 4° might not be so important to very small businesses, but it would be good for larger ones, and those that are important in their communities, to be seen to be doing such long-term planning. In our quick look at SCCAP2, we did not see a response on what research is being done on whether Scottish businesses are actually preparing for climate change.

I will add a comment on the ranking. We have some overarching recommendations, which are about what we want to see in SCCAP2, and then recommendation 1 is about the monitoring and data, as Baroness Brown has just explained. The rest of the recommendations are not necessarily ranked in any order of priority.

The sector-specific recommendations that we have made on heat and cold, SUDs, dothistroma needle blight and so on are all on areas that we picked out because they are of great concern. However, we are not necessarily suggesting that recommendation 6 is of greater importance than recommendation 9, for example.

I thank Kathryn Brown for reminding me of that point.

So there is a bit of a stepped process here. If we were to improve the baseline on vulnerability, that might drive suggestions for further action, the extent of which would depend on the data that was available.

That is right.

How do you see that process evolving in relation to the plan, updates to it and the emerging picture? Are we being sufficiently fleet of foot? Will the plan be responsive enough to the changing data that might have come to us by 12 months, 18 months or two years from now?

We would say that Scotland has a good framework. We think that the framework and the outcome focus as set out in SCCAP2 are positive and represent good practice, which we like very much. We could use that in our work with DEFRA, highlighting that it is a great framework for understanding what the key policies are. However, we have not yet seen some of the policies listed in the framework properly incorporating adaptation.

Although the framework looks very good and could be adaptable, it is clear that we also need to be sensitive to new science. One of the reasons for our doing the climate change risk assessment for the UK every five years is that it is a reasonable timescale in which to pick up developments. Of course, we all need to be responsive to new science in all areas of climate change: if science should change, our plans would need to change, too. We might have to recognise that the steps that we took previously represented our best judgment at the time. That is great, but as science changes so should our actions. Scotland has put together a framework that could be responsive. Of course, time will tell—but it looks good now.

Is the CCC planning to publish a review of the Scottish climate change adaptation programme?

If the Scottish Government were to ask for that, we would do so. Of course, we will return to some of the assessments in any case. The way in which the act works is such that we would first need to have a review publication request from the Government, but we would be pleased to act on that if it were to come to us.

Do members have any other questions? Do panel members think that we have missed anything that they might want to point out to us before we wind up?

I want to make a general point. As I said earlier, it is very pleasing to see SCCAP2 laid out like this. On even a cursory look, it is clear that there has been a big step forward between the last programme and this one. I very much hope that, now that the framework has been established, we will stick with SCCAP2 and begin a process of progressively improving our understanding of the metrics and the data. However, it is crucial that the programme becomes not just a repository for things that we are already doing but a way of catalysing proper action on such issues. When it comes to climate change, nothing is more serious than the matters that we have just been talking about.

No—and everything that we have talked about today will have an impact on every single citizen of Scotland.

Our first look at SCCAP suggests that although we are seeing positive progress, there is still a lot to do. That first look was more positive than our review of the second national adaption programme in England. It is useful to have that comparison to encourage our colleagues in England to higher aspirations.

I guess that all Governments and all countries are running to stand still on the massive issue of climate change, but it is in our faces more and more.

Absolutely. I would like to mention that our Scottish colleague Cara Labuschagne supported us in pulling together our second review of the first SCCAP. She is currently enjoying her maternity leave, but I would like to recognise publicly the very good job that she did for us.

I thank our witnesses very much for their time. I now suspend the meeting briefly.

10:51 Meeting suspended.  

10:58 On resuming—