Meeting of the Parliament

Meeting date: Thursday, October 5, 2023

Official Report 1022KB pdf

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Climate Cafés

I ask members of the public who are leaving the gallery to do so as quickly and quietly as possible, and those who are remaining also to be quiet as we resume business.

The next item of business is a members’ business debate on motion S6M-10435, in the name of John Swinney, on welcoming the impact of Climate Cafés. The debate will be concluded without any question being put.

Motion debated,

That the Parliament welcomes the growing number of community-led Climate Cafés emerging across Scotland and around the world; values the role of a Climate Café in creating what it sees as a welcoming, inclusive, safe space within a community that is open to everyone to chat and act on climate; believes that Climate Cafés benefit from being creative, intergenerational spaces, creating space for connections right across a community and leadership from children and young people; considers that local chat and climate action sparked by Climate Cafés has already had significant positive impacts, including, it understands, initiating engaging projects to reduce waste and energy costs, music events, fashion shows, swap shops, films, as well as international engagement, dialogue with local authorities and lots of collaboration across communities; understands that the home of the original Climate Café Dunkeld & Birnam, which was founded in 2015, hosts the Hub to support Climate Cafés to start up and to connect with other Climate Cafés to share ideas, support and learning; values the Climate Cafés across rural and urban Scotland, as more emerge in the Highlands, while established in Aberdeen, with vibrant new Climate Cafés in Inverness and Dundee, and notes that more communities, schools, workplaces and campuses are encouraged to consider establishing pop-up Climate Café spaces to chat and act on climate.

12:49  

This is the first members’ business debate that I have led in nearly 17 years. That is not because I have been twiddling my thumbs for some time but because other obligations have prevented me from doing so.

I am delighted that its topic is the celebration of an initiative that emerged from one of the wonderful communities that I have had the privilege of representing for more than a quarter of a century, Dunkeld and Birnam, and is now spreading across the globe. The Climate Café movement was started in Dunkeld and Birnam in 2015 and, like many great things in Scotland, is anchored in the sharing of tea, coffee and cake. Local residents were involved in action to tackle climate change but increasingly felt that more had to be done. There was a deep concern, which I suspect is now shared even more by people in Scotland today, that individuals felt dwarfed by the scale of the climate crisis and people sought a way to work together to make a greater impact on the issue.

Many people in Dunkeld and Birnam were involved in establishing the Climate Café—a venture that involves people meeting together to plan local action and initiatives—but the leadership to bring it all together was provided by a local community activist, Jess Pepper. Jess has a formidable record on climate action; she made a significant contribution to formulating Scotland’s approach to tackling climate change and has collaborated with The Climate Reality Project, which was founded by former United States Vice-President Al Gore.

Jess’s late father, Simon Pepper, was the founding director of WWF Scotland and a pioneer of climate action. He would be so proud of the pioneering activity that Jess and her family are contributing to this most important of topics. The Climate Café concept has spread throughout Perthshire, with gatherings now held regularly in Blairgowrie and Rattray, Pitlochry, Aberfeldy, Kettins, Crieff and Perth. One of the greatest joys of that development has been the involvement of so many young people in this work, marked by the recent establishment of a Climate Café in Breadalbane academy, an encouraging signal of the commitment of our youngest citizens.

The concept has spread beyond our county boundaries to other parts of Scotland, including Dundee, Kinross-shire, Govan, Lairg, Kelvin, North Berwick and Aberdeen. During the 26th United Nations climate change conference of the parties—COP26—virtual Climate Cafés took place involving people in Benin, Alaska, India and Mexico. The concept is now spreading widely across the globe, with inquiries coming in thick and fast to the hub in Birnam about establishing Climate Cafés from the United States to Australia to Finland.

Positive initiatives to deliver climate action are being taken as a result of that community dialogue. For example, the Dunkeld and Birnam community collaborated with Scottish Water to encourage local residents to reduce water consumption. That involved households being given advice and information about simple measures to reduce water use. The outcome was formidable: the small community of Dunkeld and Birnam reduced its water consumption by 1 million litres.

The Climate Café has now spawned a food-share initiative that involves surplus food being collected from local stores at the end of the day and, with the support of a substantial and expanding list of volunteers, being made available to local residents. The initiative provides assistance to individuals at a time of huge pressure on household incomes, avoids the unnecessary disposal of perfectly good food and also reduces the contribution to landfill. There is also now a repair cafe, perhaps modelled on the much-lauded television programme, that provides a space for the restoration and repair of items that would previously have been replaced with newer versions. The saving of resource and energy is beneficial.

Promotion of the work of the Climate Café is important, and there is no greater symbol of that than the local taxi in Dunkeld and Birnam, run by the formidable Marian Wallace. Known as “Lady Driver”, Marion drives visitors from the station to the hotels and venues in the village in an electric taxi emblazoned with the branding, “Dunkeld and Birnam: Home of the Climate Café”. There is just enough time, I am told, on the journey from the station to the village for visitors to hear the explanation from Marian of the importance of climate action and the steps being taken locally to put it into effect.

The work of the Climate Café in Blairgowrie and Rattray has led to the creation of the HEAT Project, which is now an established organisation that has delivered direct energy saving advice to more than 700 households in north-eastern and highland Perthshire, helping achieve significant savings in energy bills. It is a regular source of free advice for communities across the local area.

The thinking behind Climate Cafés is to create a space in which people with shared interests and common purpose can come together to make community, regional and global connections, and to create the political space in which that action can be emphatic. I suppose that that last component is critical at this moment in time. The political environment in which we all live just now is highly charged and intensely contested. Today, I want to avoid getting bogged down in why we find ourselves where we are. What I want to do is make an appeal for us to find the space to have the essential conversations that we must have to deliver the long-term societal change that is necessary to deliver net zero. Without that realistic and urgent discussion and the necessary action that must follow, we run a very high—if not inevitable—risk of failing in the mission to achieve net zero. If we fail in that endeavour, we will have made the sustainability of our planet and of our communities very precarious.

We must find places where people can be drawn together and barriers can be broken down, and take collective action. We cannot allow ourselves to be dwarfed by the enormity of the challenge, and we cannot think that it is the responsibility of somebody else to act. We all have to be involved.

That is the great strength of the Climate Café initiative. Climate Cafés serve as a welcoming forum for all, irrespective of people’s initial stance on, or knowledge of, climate issues. By cultivating a spirit of unity and building bridges in our communities, the initiative shatters the paralysing belief that, if we cannot do everything, we should do nothing. Instead, it champions the idea that every single step counts and that every individual’s action can accumulate to a powerful collective response to the environmental challenges that we face.

In conclusion, one of the many thought-provoking projects that the Dunkeld and Birnam Climate Café has taken forward was to enlist the community in the creation of bunting to be displayed at COP21 in Paris. Local residents were invited to create images on the theme of love of the planet. One that caught my eye was that of an oak tree accompanied by the message “For the Love of Birnam Oak”, which was a reference to the oak tree in Birnam wood that is celebrated in Shakespeare’s “Macbeth”.

I think that we are entitled to conclude that the Climate Café that was started in Dunkeld and Birnam is a profound example of the old saying “From tiny acorns mighty oaks will grow.”

For what it is worth, Mr Swinney, I think that you coped admirably with your first members’ business debate in 17 years.

12:57  

I congratulate John Swinney on securing his first members’ business debate in a very long time, and I thank him for educating me today. I came into this debate not really knowing what a Climate Café is. I assumed that it is an actual cafe but, of course, it is not. It can be a series of local projects or forums, as Mr Swinney said, that address environmental concerns. I see behind me in the public gallery a number of people who are, I assume, involved in the movement.

Having come into the debate not knowing very much, I thank the Climate Café for sending members a briefing and outlining some of the really good projects that are around. One that struck me was one that Mr Swinney mentioned, which is the HEAT Project in Blairgowrie and Rattray, which gives direct energy-saving advice to more than 700 households in Perthshire. That seems to me to be a really good example of how the Climate Café movement can work.

I accept that the movement started in Perthshire, but it has expanded and has gone beyond there. We had Climate Cafés at COP26 in Glasgow and there is one in Aberdeen. I see from the briefing that there is one in Oregon and that there are others elsewhere in the world.

Having started off as a bit of a sceptic who thought that the idea seemed to be a bit vague and woolly, I find myself warming to it. If the Climate Café movement wants to get in touch with me with a view to doing something in Lanarkshire, I would be glad to hear from it.

13:14  

I thank John Swinney for bringing this debate to the chamber. It is interesting that, as politics becomes increasingly divided, and this Parliament does likewise, I find that these members’ business debates are where we can have more rational discussion of what are serious issues. This morning, I had the pleasure of meeting Jess Pepper and the volunteers who are here today—as well as an old, dear friend of mine—and I learned a lot more about the thinking behind the initiative, and the engagement and involvement that goes on. I also met pupils from Breadalbane academy in Aberfeldy and Dunkeld primary school, and I think that ensuring the involvement of people from that age range, as well as from the rest of the community, is the right way to go forward.

On the point about the vision, even over these past weeks, we have seen climate change becoming a dividing issue between political parties—I never thought that that would happen, but, sadly, it has. I often think that the issue is not about my generation; I have children and grandchildren, and it is about their future. How do we tackle the issues that they face?

Listening to what people were saying this morning, I was reminded of my time as a councillor in Fife, when I was proud of the fact that Fife Council had the best recycling rates in the country. I put that down to the work that had been done in schools, which had driven that agenda and done a load of work around why it is important to recycle and have a clean environment. I was convinced that those pupils were going home and saying to their parents that they should do things differently and recycle. That was a bottom-up approach and, eventually, if the successes to date continue, all these politicians can be turfed out and we can put people in their place who will put the issue first, rather than party politics or their personal political careers.

As I say, I am delighted to be able to speak in this debate. The fact that Climate Cafés are community led and are places where, as John Swinney says, local people can have a cup of tea, a biscuit and a chat means that they will be more successful in building a movement to demand action on climate change. Sometimes, people say, “Look at China and India. How are we in Scotland going to make a difference?” My first reply will often be that it is about providing leadership, and that those countries, which are much bigger than us and have massive populations—there are more than 1.5 billion people in China—are making massive investments in renewables, and, when the point comes at which they turn the corner and make progress on the issue, we do not want to still be sitting back and arguing among ourselves about the greatest threat to our future.

Through discussion with the volunteers this morning, I heard about various things that they can do. There can be pop-up Climate Cafés in schools, churches, pubs and so on to generate a discussion around climate change, so that people are less sceptical and more willing to see that they can take action.

I have also looked at Grow West Fife, which is similar to some of the projects that are described in the briefing that members received. It has talked about having a climate garden where people can grow food. That kind of initiative, which is similar to the allotment movement, can have an influence on local authorities.

In my view, local authorities and the Scottish Government could do a lot more on initiatives such as allotments. However, taking a bottom-up approach and getting resources into communities so that they can lead will be helpful. This week, I highlighted the postcode lottery around Scotland for electric car chargers: some places have more than others. In highlighting that, I was making the point that we should involve communities in the process, as they will know best where chargers should be, as well as what kind of chargers, and how they should be operated and run for the benefit of the community. Models such as the Climate Café will lead to that kind of approach, as it talks about swap shops, reducing food costs and supporting people in that way.

In conclusion, I am very pleased that we are having this debate. There needs to be a bottom-up approach. I congratulate everyone who has come to the chamber and everyone who is involved in those projects. I wish them the best for the future.

13:06  

I congratulate John Swinney on securing the debate. The motion recognises the role of his constituents in establishing the first Climate Café in Scotland, the role that Climate Cafés play in facilitating conversations and action on climate, and how their reach has grown. Having spent much of my childhood living in Perthshire with my grandparents in Stanley, I am delighted that the Dunkeld and Birnam Climate Café is leading the way.

As the motion describes it, Climate Café’s create a

“welcoming, inclusive, safe space within a community that is open to everyone to chat and act on climate”.

I do not need to tell anyone that the north-east is home to a shifting energy industry. Therefore, the narrative on climate can often be framed within an industrial context, through discussions about opportunities in green jobs, green industrial development or new infrastructure supporting the energy transition. I do not need to tell anyone about the impact of those changes and how, often, they are most keenly felt in communities and businesses, and in employment, as well as through changes to the nature and structure of neighbourhoods.

A just transition seeks to ensure that all voices are included in the process of change. Just last week, the Minister for Energy and the Environment updated the Parliament on the forthcoming energy strategy and just transition plan. She stated:

“The views of local communities are of the utmost importance. It is vital that everyone has the opportunity to engage in decisions about future development.”—[Official Report, 28 September 2023; c 59.]

Climate Cafés are an important and accessible vehicle to make that happen. I acknowledge the commitment of the North East Scotland Climate Action Network and Aberdeen Climate Action in bringing people in the north-east together to talk about climate and supporting local action groups and projects. Earlier this week, with help from Jess Pepper, who has been mentioned already, I had the pleasure of joining the Aberdeen Climate Café, where members heard from the Minister for Green Skills, Circular Economy and Biodiversity, Lorna Slater, as well as from Skills Development Scotland and Borders College. Participants asked a wide range of questions, covering everything from hydrogen to skills passports, women in science, technology, engineering and mathematics, and what a circular economy is.

I cannot talk about community participation in the context of climate without acknowledging Professor Tavis Potts, the dean for environmental sustainability at the University of Aberdeen, for his work on the social dimensions of climate and energy, as well as his commitment to deepening social participation in the transition in the north-east through climate assemblies and participatory engagement.

The reach of Climate Cafés goes much further than just local communities. In that regard, I thank one of John Swinney’s constituents—a member of Blairgowrie Climate Café—who kindly sent me beautiful photos of St Fittick’s park, which is a green space in the heart of my constituency that is under threat from industrial development linked to the energy sector. That lovely gesture reflected the wider investment that Climate Café members have in our world, beyond their communities and neighbourhoods.

Given the choices that we face about how we live and the legacy that we want to leave our children and grandchildren, Climate Cafés will continue to play their part in important community conversations, engagement and action, and I look forward to seeing them develop and expand across Scotland. I thank John Swinney again for bringing forward the debate.

13:10  

I thank John Swinney for bringing forward this members’ business debate, which I gather is his first in 17 years. I was trying to remember what the previous debate was about—I might even have spoken in it. It is clear that he has been a strong advocate for the communities in his constituency and for community action in his constituency for many years. I am delighted that he chose Climate Cafés as the topic for the debate, because they are a Perthshire success story that has spread around the world.

I notice that many people who have been involved in Climate Cafés in Scotland are with us in the chamber. I have met a number of those wonderful people, who do fantastic work in their communities. I pay tribute to Jess Pepper, who has been an astonishing climate leader in Scotland for many years, following on from her father’s work, and a fantastic community activist in Dunkeld and Birnam.

I would like to mention a young woman called Ruby Flatley—a young activist who came through Dunkeld and Birnam Climate Café. At the age of 13, she led and spoke at the huge climate march that took place here in Edinburgh just ahead of the Paris conference of the parties. At that time, she was running a series of youth projects through Dunkeld and Birnam Climate Café. I am pleased to say that I understand that she is still involved in the Climate Café movement today. I welcomed her to the Parliament in 2016, when she was my nominated local hero at the opening ceremony. It is wonderful to see the movement nurture and empower young people.

It is clear that communities need to be at the heart of climate action. Over the past couple of weeks, we have seen climate action undermined and we have seen conspiracy theories being given a platform at the highest level of United Kingdom politics. The need for public discussion, education, awareness and empowerment is so important.

We can never take it for granted that some kind of implicit social licence comes with climate action. The conversation will change over the years. I notice that the conversation in Dunkeld and Birnam about the A9 dualling project, for example, is very different and has changed over the years.

Climate Cafés are important for education and as a laboratory of ideas for action. I do not know whether Mr Swinney remembers the first agreement between the Scottish Greens and the Scottish National Party, which was back in 2007. It was quite thin, but we did agree to establish a climate challenge fund to provide effective funding and seed action in communities. That fund was successful and ran for more than a decade. The Government is now investing in climate action hubs to take action up to the next level and pull together initiatives on the ground. Last week in Stirling, the minister, Lorna Slater, announced a range of hubs.

Such hubs can build only on what is established on the ground. The role of Climate Cafés is to incubate new ideas and get the conversation going to build the innovation. An excellent example of that, which Mr Swinney mentioned, comes from the HEAT Project in Blairgowrie, which emerged from a Climate Café conversation that recognised that those of us who live in properties in rural Scotland that are hard to heat need support and bespoke advice. That is exactly what the HEAT Project has been providing.

Perhaps the cabinet secretary can respond to the following points in her concluding remarks. I urge the Government to look at how we can make room within that community climate funding to support that kind of initiative because, important as it is to scale up initiatives that are already there on the ground, even mighty Perthshire oaks have to grow from acorns. The important role of the Climate Cafés is to seed those ideas around Scotland and around the world, so that they can be built on and scaled up and really deliver the action that we need to tackle the climate emergency. I hope that the Government can find ways to support and to grow that movement and to inspire future generations of people such as Ruby.

I invite Màiri McAllan to respond to the debate.

13:15  

It is a pleasure to do so. The discussion today has demonstrated that, even in the face of the magnitude of the global climate emergency, our people and communities can have a substantial impact when they get the opportunity to come together and act.

I thank John Swinney for bringing forward this debate, which is centred on the people, places and issues that he is so passionate about. After 17 years of Mr Swinney’s doing one or two other things, it is great to have the debate today, and I know how thrilled he was to be able to bring the debate and his constituents to the Scottish Parliament. I am grateful to them for all the work that they have been doing to date and I very much look forward to seeing them all when I visit Dunkeld and Birnam Climate Café later this month.

Moving towards becoming a net zero nation will require all aspects of Scottish society to embrace significant change. Imposing a one-size-fits-all approach will never create the desired outcomes and nor will it secure people’s buy-in to the net zero transition. Instead, it is essential that, as we change, we empower people to develop solutions that are appropriate for them and their local circumstances. That is why I warmly welcome the commitment of those who are involved in Climate Cafés to provide that safe space for people from all backgrounds and across generations to come together—we know that great things happen when people get the opportunity to do that.

Climate Cafés in Scotland are led by a network of dedicated volunteers. I am grateful for their hard work and for John Swinney’s continued support of them, which has enabled the network to grow in all the ways that we have heard about today. For my part, I would like the Scottish Government to provide more practical support, and I have asked my officials to explore with the leaders of the Climate Cafés ways in which we can do that, including through providing funding. I will discuss more of that with them when I visit them in the coming weeks.

Last week, during Scotland’s climate week, I got the chance to spend time with the Fountainbridge Canalside Community Trust and I was also fortunate enough to visit the incredible children of St Bernard’s primary school in Glasgow, which is one of the many schools that is supported by our climate action schools programme and which runs its own Climate Café in partnership with the local community. As well as those groups and Dunkeld and Birnam Climate Café, I am privileged to work alongside groups in my constituency, including Climate Action Strathaven, the One Carluke Area Network, WATIF—the Woolfords, Auchengray and Tarbrax Improvement Foundation—and Biggar Area Climate Care.

The passion of the individuals who give up their time and come together to work on these matters is a real inspiration for us all. In Scotland, that demonstrates that our communities are uniquely placed to play that critical role in shaping and driving action, which is why we are putting considerable support behind them.

Mark Ruskell was absolutely right to mention the climate action hubs. The programme is designed to enable that essential collaborative approach to driving the behavioural change that we know needs to come, and which is not always easy. Mark Ruskell mentioned that we are expanding the network. Last week, a further four climate action hubs were commenced, for Forth valley, Dumfries and Galloway, Inverclyde and Dundee. That brings us to 10 hubs across the country, with more proposals currently being assessed. We have committed to delivering a national network of climate hubs in this year’s programme for government. I believe very strongly—this is particularly reinforced by my experience of working with them—that those hubs, which are designed by and for our communities, will be one of the significant drivers of progress on the climate front in the coming years.

Beyond the hub programme, we are supporting action in a number of other ways. Our climate action towns initiative, which is led by Architecture and Design Scotland, is supporting nine small towns, which were selected because they had, historically, been less engaged in climate action and are at particular risk from the impacts of a changing climate.

The communities in those towns are being supported to develop local plans that focus on climate action, give them a voice and help to ensure that the transition, as they make it locally, is most suited to their needs and lived experiences. The initiative, now in its third year, has provided learnings that we in Government—as well as local authorities, as Alex Rowley rightly identified—and other public bodies can draw on in the way that we create our policy pathways.

We are also supporting partners to build capacity for collective action at local level. For example, the Scottish Communities Climate Action Network has been supported to lead conversations about climate change in its local areas. In the past financial year alone, 54 new climate conversations facilitators have been trained, and conversations have been held with 400 people across Scotland. That is backed up in many ways by the Scottish Government’s plans on public engagement for climate change. Our public engagement strategy clearly sets out three core aims that we hope to enable the people of Scotland to achieve. First, we want them to understand how climate change relates to their lives. Secondly, it is important that they actively participate in shaping a fair, just and inclusive approach. Lastly, we want them to take action.

It is in line with those objectives that, as members will be aware, the Government recently launched the climate engagement fund, which is a £0.5 million pot to support trusted messengers to engage directly with their audiences on the climate emergency. The fund has received a huge amount of interest, as I am sure members can imagine, and we will shortly publish details of how we plan to allocate that funding.

The reason why we are here—the reason why the volunteers at our Climate Cafés do this work—is that the recent United Nations stocktake report underlined the urgency of what it called

“a systemic transformation of every aspect of society”,

if we are to avoid the worst impacts of climate change. We must be committed to responding to that need and to ensuring that we support households and communities to embrace the quite rapid change that is now required. On that point, I echo John Swinney’s appeal that we continue, very proactively and determinedly, to find space for those realistic and urgent discussions and the requisite action that will help us to combat climate change.

There can be no greater task than helping to foster a safe, secure and green future for generations to come. The truth is that Government and business must do the heavy lifting in this regard, but no one person is too small to make a difference in and of themselves. Equally, we are far greater when we come together in our communities and in our cafes, and when we work together to make a difference. I will certainly continue to give all my support in this role, which I am fortunate to occupy, to our Climate Café network in Scotland.

Thank you, cabinet secretary. That concludes the debate. I encourage Mr Swinney not to wait a further 17 years before bringing his next one.

13:23 Meeting suspended.  

14:30 On resuming—