Official Report 1030KB pdf
The final item of business is a members’ business debate on motion S7M-00976, in the name of Ariane Burgess, on building Scotland’s resilience to wildfires and other climate shocks. The debate will be concluded without any question being put.
Motion debated,
That the Parliament notes with concern reports regarding the growing frequency and severity of extreme weather events due to climate breakdown, including wildfires, droughts, and flooding across Scotland; shares its concern for communities across Scotland that have already faced wildfires this year, including in the Highlands and Islands; commends emergency services, conservation bodies, including rewilding organisations, community groups, gamekeepers, farmers, volunteers and others for coming together to tackle the devastating wildfire in the Cairngorms; notes the belief that there is an urgent need to shift focus from emergency response alone toward long-term landscape-scale prevention and climate resilience; recognises the role that healthy, restored ecosystems, such as rewetted peatlands, restored wetlands and mosaic habitats created by the action of native animals, have alongside human interventions in building resilient landscapes; notes the calls for the UK Government to create a dedicated Climate Shock Fund to cover the costs of preparing for and preventing climate shocks, and further notes the calls for the Scottish Government to convene a Scottish landscape resilience summit to ensure that a cross-sector, multi-stakeholder approach is taken to share knowledge and best practice across Scotland.
18:48
Scotland’s climate is changing, not in some distant future that we can plan for at our leisure but now, in extreme ways, with devastating and destructive impacts with which our smallest rural villages, our towns and, now, our cities are grappling and struggling.
We can take this summer as an example. I saw the impact of a rapidly changing climate during my visit to Nethy Bridge in the Cairngorms, where I saw exhausted people fighting to protect a proud community and the surrounding precious landscape from the flames of a vicious wildfire.
It is clear that relying on a short-term emergency response is no longer enough. Having seen the impact this summer, I emphasise that this debate is not about the good stuff that we are already doing with nature’s help—we all know about the targets to which we have committed on protecting Scotland’s nature by 2030. It is about the scale and the urgency with which we must respond to these intensifying events, putting prevention first.
Although land that is parched from weeks of hot weather and wildfire looks very different from high streets under floodwaters, those problems share a root cause. Decades of urbanisation, intensive farming and human-driven climate change have weakened Scotland’s natural defences to extreme weather. Nature can, and should, be our first line of defence, from peatlands, native woodlands and wetlands that act as natural sponges, soaking up excess water, to sand dunes that form natural flood barriers along coastlines. Healthy land soaks up rain, stores it and releases it slowly.
Sadly, in many communities, those habitats that act as natural buffers have been long neglected or stripped away. While nature is being seen as part of the solution, we must prioritise scaling up to increase our community’s resilience to extreme weather for the long term. A rapid landscape-scale approach is needed, and the Scottish Greens are calling for the Scottish and United Kingdom Governments to deliver a dedicated climate shock fund to cover the costs of preparing for, and preventing, damage from extreme weather. Our existing farming, environmental and flood support schemes fund vital work to tackle the climate and nature crisis, but dedicated funding is needed to ramp up work and remove barriers to implement the nature-based solutions that I mentioned earlier.
Scotland will get that work right only if we bring together groups such as emergency services, conservation and rewilding organisations, gamekeepers, estates, scientists, including ecologists, farmers, community groups and public sector organisations. The profound collective knowledge of those stakeholders is the most powerful tool that we have when it comes to making Scotland more resilient in the face of a changing climate. By sharing knowledge and best practice, we can prevent serious events and ensure that we are up to the challenge of insulating Scotland from climate shocks.
That is why we are also calling on the Scottish Government to demonstrate leadership and convene a landscape resilience summit on to enable a constructive, co-designed approach, such as that which we have seen with the Common Ground Forum on Sustainable Upland Deer Management. That would deliver solutions in the interests of building the most resilient landscape that we can.
Why is that so important? This summer, the Cairngorms were scorched by a wildfire that burned for almost a month; at its peak, Nethy Bridge and nearby campsites were evacuated. Urban areas have also been affected by wildfire, with Arthur’s Seat in central Edinburgh experiencing two major fires this summer. More than 230 severe wildfires were recorded by the Scottish Fire and Rescue Service last year, and the fire at Dava moor in the Highlands was Scotland’s first recorded megafire—in four days, it burned almost as much land as Scotland loses to fires in a typical year. Analysis by the SFRS has suggested that, although wildfires in Scotland are almost always man made—some accidentally and some not—they almost all occur during dry weather.
Scotland is known around the world for its wet weather, but that, too, is changing. This year, several areas in eastern Scotland have experienced significant water scarcity, and 2025 was the driest year on record. Those conditions have been challenging for many sectors, including Scotland’s food producers, as crops have been impacted.
The parched landscape raises the risk of flooding. Today, 400,000 properties in Scotland—roughly one in eight homes and businesses—are at risk of flooding. Responding to flooding costs Scotland around £500 million per year, and that is expected to grow, with the Scottish Environment Protection Agency forecasting
“more frequent, more intense, and more damaging”
flooding in the years ahead. Flooding can have short-term and long-term impacts on people’s mental and physical health as they deal with the practical and financial consequences. The UK National Audit Office has estimated that
“for every £1 spent on protecting communities”
from flooding,
“around £9 in property damages and wider impacts”
can be avoided.
Turning to coastal areas, I note that it is predicted that the risk of flooding from the sea will more than double by the end of the century. In low-lying areas of my region, including South Uist, Orkney and Shetland, natural coastal barriers are giving way; homes are becoming uninsurable; land is losing value; and some communities face the prospect of having to move.
Human-made interventions have their place in some places. However, where they are used, they should work hand in hand with nature in order to keep costs down and support our progress towards climate and nature targets, and, most importantly, because there is no one-size-fits-all solution to improving landscape resilience. We know that nature-based solutions work across whole landscapes and they tackle several problems at once.
Scotland’s 2045 net zero target is among the most ambitious such targets in the world, and we must now see similar levels of ambition in action to increase our climate resilience. The UK Climate Change Committee tracked 33 climate-resilient outcomes for Scotland, but on 32 of them, we are failing to make sufficient progress. That is why I urge the Scottish Government to work with the UK Government to establish a dedicated climate shock fund, and to have ministers convene a Scottish landscape resilience summit. We can no longer stop climate change from impacting Scotland, but by partnering with nature, we can still make sure that we are ready and that no community is left to face it alone. The window to scale up our response is closing fast.
I remind members that there is a four-minute time limit on speeches in the debate, but time will be added for interventions.
18:56
I know that we all, across the chamber, watched on with horror in the summer as the Cairngorms wildfire took hold. Hundreds were evacuated from nearby communities, and eventually an area 16 miles wide was affected by the emergency. The motion highlights the important work that emergency services and others such as farmers, gamekeepers and voluntary organisations played in bringing that emergency under control, and it is right that we commend their efforts in the chamber today.
All of us who love and represent rural Scotland know that our rural communities are exposed to the very real threat of wildfires. That has been very apparent in my region in recent years. In April 2025, a significant wildfire, fuelled by high winds and dry conditions, spread across the Galloway forest park. It took several days for the Scottish Fire and Rescue Service to bring it under control; local properties were evacuated, and several groups of campers and walkers required rescuing, including several via HM Coastguard search and rescue helicopter. That is not to compare and contrast the response to different incidents but to show the very real commonality of the issue of wildfires in rural communities across Scotland, from Galloway in the very south to the Cairngorms in the north and everywhere in between.
The motion highlights and members speaking today will cover a broad range of topics. It is important that we can have a broad, holistic discussion when the issue of wildfires comes to the chamber, because it is a complex and multifaceted issue without one single root cause to address, or one individual solution.
In my comments, I will touch on the crucial issue of the proactive land management that our rural communities, which work and interact with the land every day, can undertake to mitigate the impact of future wildfires through the reduction of fuel loads. A focus on prevention will help us to reduce the need for emergency response in the future, which Ariane Burgess touched on. We all have a shared interest in the prevention of these events.
In recent years, we have seen a reduction in livestock numbers—in particular, in many of our upland and crofting communities, we have seen a decline in sheep numbers. In practice, that means less grazing, with vegetation becoming increasingly unmanaged, and a continued increase in fuel load that drives significant wildfires such as the one that we saw in the Cairngorms national park this summer. If we want to reduce fuel loads and the severity of wildfires, it is crucial that any efforts to reduce livestock numbers are strongly opposed and that any measures that take grazing land out of use are challenged and denied, whenever and wherever possible.
Grazing is, of course, not the only long-standing method of fuel-load reduction and land management that generations of Scots in our rural committees have relied on to reduce the danger of wildfires. The process of muirburn, based on the concept of controlled burns, has been used since time immemorial and is crucial to ensuring that fuel loads are reduced and the impact of large wildfires is mitigated. It is a process that can and should allow and empower local communities to proactively manage their land in an appropriate manner. It is disappointing, therefore, that the Government is pressing ahead with its muirburn licensing scheme from 15 October. That raises significant concerns around whether the practice can continue, with NFU Scotland saying this week that it has concerns—
Will the member take an intervention?
I would be delighted to.
At what point in the muirburn licensing scheme does it say that muirburn cannot take place?
I appreciate the minister’s intervention—it does not say that muirburn cannot take place, but it makes it harder. There is potential for the scheme to make it much harder for smaller-scale farmers and land managers. That is not just my view. NFU Scotland said this week:
“the new muirburn licensing regime in Scotland … is substantially altering how muirburn is undertaken, creating uncertainty regarding licensing, peatland definitions … and practical management. Where muirburn is no longer undertaken, fuel loads may increase unless alternative management is introduced.
It was frustrating, therefore, that when I wrote to the minister in the summer, with the backdrop of the ongoing Cairngorms fire, he would not consider my call for a pause to the new licensing scheme.
To conclude, wildfires are an issue that affects rural communities across Scotland, and although there are a wide range of ways in which they can be addressed, the preventative and well-established bottom-up land management methods of animal grazing and muirburn should be at the very heart of the approach.
19:00
I remind members of my entry in the register of members’ interests—I am a member of the Fire Brigades Union and a shareholder in a crofting common grazings that is involved in peatland restoration.
I thank Ariane Burgess for bringing the debate to the chamber. Along with other members and the Minister for Agriculture, Marine and the Islands, I was at the very well-attended wildfire public meeting in Aviemore earlier this month, which was organised by the Cairngorm Crofters & Farmers Community group. Attendees include farmers, crofters, keepers, land managers and concerned members of the local community. It was a good meeting: although tensions were obviously high, and the minister and the Scottish Fire and Rescue Service quite rightly faced challenging questions from the audience, it was a forward-looking and constructive discussion.
What stood out to me were the land management skills and the knowledge in that room. Those professionals know the land they work and understand how management has changed over the years and, while opinions will vary on how land should be managed, I have absolutely no doubt that those on the ground have much to contribute.
Changes in grazing practices, as we have heard, and less hands-on management have undoubtedly led to landscapes with a higher fuel load that are more at risk from fire. The climate is changing, too—Ariane Burgess has framed the debate to include that aspect, and rightly so. Increasing prolonged periods of dry weather make the risk of significant fire higher. We need to take the causes of climate change seriously and we need to invest in adaption.
The experience of the wildfires in the Cairngorms this summer highlighted how quickly a situation can get out of hand, and the techniques that were used in tackling the incident point to some of the potential solutions. Physical fire breaks were created using heavy plant, which played a crucial role in protecting communities. There is a strong argument for creating and maintaining strategic physical barriers in the landscape to improve resilience. Controlled burning has a role to play in that, too.
However, I agree that nature-based solutions are part of the picture as well. Peatland restoration and raising the water table can help to create a more resilient landscape. As I have said in the chamber before, that does not have to be to the exclusion of other land uses. We can restore peatland and continue to use that land for grazing. There are many examples from around the country that show that that is possible.
Creating resilient landscapes is vital, but it will take us only so far. Every wildfire in Scotland is started, either intentionally or accidentally, by people. Public education is vital to ensure that people understand the dangers of fire and that we see a decrease in the dangerous patterns of behaviour that lead to the type of scenes that we saw this summer.
However, we can take all those steps, and we will still need to deal with wildfire. That is why we cannot ignore the need for investment in our wildfire response. The FBU has long highlighted the danger to our firefighters of fighting wildfires. I served my community as a firefighter before being elected to represent them here, and I have seen at first hand the need for investment in our front-line services. I have attended wildfires myself in structural firefighting personal protective equipment, where it was not long before the heat led to the temptation to remove tunics and helmets, exposing myself and other firefighters to the dangers of that environment. My old station in Shawbost now has dedicated wildfire PPE and the Government must work with the SFRS to ensure the roll-out of that dedicated wildfire gear to all stations across the country.
We also need to ensure that the right equipment is available in the right places. That means investing in new wildfire units that are strategically placed in the highest-risk areas and, importantly, ensuring that more firefighters are trained in wildfire techniques. The events of the summer must be a warning for us. We need to listen to the voices on the ground, invest in more resilient landscapes and properly resource our fire service.
19:05
I thank my colleague Ariane Burgess for bringing forward this timely motion. We are in the age of a climate emergency. Last year, we had the worst year in recorded history in the UK for wildfires, so there is a sense of urgency. It is important that everyone in this Parliament gets across this issue. Last week, we had a really positive debate in the chamber, with cross-party agreement on how we can deal with flooding and support small communities to address that threat.
It is important that the committees of this Parliament work on this issue as well. I am convener of the Rural Affairs Committee. This week, we launched an inquiry into the access code. There is a key question about whether the access code is effective in helping to prevent wildfires and change the behaviour of people. I have also had a constructive meeting this week with the conveners of the Criminal Justice Committee and the Climate Action Committee. Together, we are looking at how we might work together to shine a light on this issue in the months ahead.
The Scottish Parliament first held an inquiry into climate change 21 years ago. I will quote from that committee report that was produced at the time. It said:
“The longer adaptation”
to climate change
“is delayed, the more costly and difficult it can get … Adaptation efforts need to move up a gear.”
That is the voice from 2005. We are now two decades on from that. I am not saying that no progress has been made, but progress has been too slow, and the climate impacts are now accelerating. We are starting to see extremes: heat waves and wildfires happening in the summer and wet and stormy winters, landscapes that are both wetter and drier at the same time. There are complex problems to resolve.
I think back to that 2005 inquiry. It heard evidence from SEPA, which predicted—20 years ago—that Scotland was going to have a wetter west coast and a drier east coast. That is exactly what has now come to pass. Last year, in the east of Scotland—in Fife, in my region—we saw areas being declared as water scarce. That is becoming the new normal. We need to consider multiple climate impacts and move beyond the emergency response to look at how we put in place long-term prevention, mitigation and preparedness for our communities. As we are seeing, many vulnerable people in our communities can be hit by climate impacts.
The motion talks about a climate shock fund. I am sure that the minister will reflect on some of the speeches that were heard in last week’s debate on flooding, and on what the Government said at that time in relation to the money that is now available to communities to support climate impacts around flooding. However, I would say to the minister that, in relation to climate change, we need something that is much more overarching. There are multiple problems to address—drought problems, flooding problems and wildfire problems—and they often occur within the same catchment. We need a fund that is available to support all those communities. The concept of a landscape resilience summit that can bring people together and draw on the experience of deer management is a brilliant idea.
To Jamie Langan and Donald MacKinnon, I say that we need to move away from the polarised debate. I urge a bit of caution here. If we argue for the removal of fuel load from landscapes, people could read into that that we want to shut down the commercial forestry sector in Scotland, which has the biggest and most flammable fuel load in our landscape. We have to be careful about that. We need to have a sensitive debate about the issue. I know that the forestry sector is talking about fire breaks, and we need to look at how we bring more water into our landscape and retain water in our landscape as well.
The reality is that all forms of land use are threatened by climate change and wildfire, including farming and attempts to rewild our landscapes, so it is a combined problem. One of the positive conclusions from last week’s debate on flooding is that we need catchment-wide co-ordination. That is a thorny problem. I do not think that local authorities have the capacity to do that, but it is something that I would ask the Government to consider. On all of these issues, a catchment-wide approach is needed. We are seeing multiple climate impacts, and we need to get communities involved.
Again, I thank Ariane Burgess for bringing this issue to the chamber. We need to keep this conversation going in the chamber and in committees. We cannot look away. Climate change is real. We need to take action.
19:09
I thank Ariane Burgess for bringing this motion to the chamber. I cannot say that I agree with everything in it, but I actually quite like members’ business debates, and I think that it is important to come and speak in them.
I thought that Mark Ruskell gave quite a good speech, until he came to his point about forestry. I cannot speak for Labour or Reform members, but I do not think that anybody who is talking about the new muirburn rules is suggesting that we suddenly shut down the entire forestry industry. We are, of course, not doing that; that is a silly thing to say. What we are talking about is making sure that fuel load is not too high in some areas.
I say to the member that, if he looks logically at where the fuel load is in the landscape, he will see that it is not in upland montane scrub, and that it is in commercial forest blocks of flammable pine. If the logic leads us to reduce fuel load in the landscape, he cannot direct his comments towards one form of land use without ignoring the form of land use that has the most fuel load. That is why I am urging caution, because that is a sector that needs investment. We need investment in forestry, and we need a sensible, measured conversation about fuel load.
I agree that we need a measured conversation, and we need more firebreaks on our landscape to make sure that we do not have a situation in which fire can spread rapidly. The point that I wanted to make is that other parties appear to be suggesting that we are saying that we should get rid of forestry in Scotland. We are absolutely not doing that. It is a very important industry for us.
Donald MacKinnon talked about the important meeting that we had in Aviemore a couple of weeks ago, which the minister attended. Hundreds of people came out, and they discussed some of what they had learned from what went on during the recent wildfire in the Cairngorms. One of the critically important points that I thought about for quite a while afterwards was aerial firefighting capability. There is a lot that we could discuss today, and a lot more that I would like to discuss with Ariane Burgess around the issues of droughts, flooding, rewilding, farming, landscape-scale prevention and so on, but I really want to address the issue of aerial firefighting, because I worry that, if we do not, we will not have the aerial firefighting capability that we will need next year.
Neil Gray, the Cabinet Secretary for Justice, came to the chamber not long ago and gave an update on aerial firefighting. However, to be honest, despite submitting parliamentary questions following that statement, I still do not fully understand what it is that has changed. My understanding is that, prior to what happened this year in the Cairngorms, the situation was that a fire would be reported, a helicopter would be requested, then we would have to try to find that aircraft and arrange for its deployment and so on. What seems to have changed is that the Scottish Fire and Rescue Service, in a period of high wildfire risk, will put a helicopter on standby and arrange its deployment if necessary. However, that will still be a commercial helicopter. That does not seem to suggest that we would get any priority access to that helicopter if it was firefighting somewhere else.
Will the member give way?
I am happy to let the minister intervene if he can confirm right here, right now, that we can get priority access to that standby helicopter and it will be where it is needed at a moment’s notice when the Scottish Fire and Rescue Service calls it in.
I will answer that point on the basis that I am not going to come back to it during my speech.
The difference is that the cabinet secretary has managed to ensure that the SFRS can put a standby call in to commercial helicopter providers who will be aware that there is a likelihood that they will be called out. I understand that that is not a perfect solution, but it is the best solution that we have at the moment. The commercial operators have a very good relationship with the Scottish Fire and Rescue Service and will respond as quickly as they can.
That is important, because that is what happened this year. We have a great relationship with the providers but, when we asked for the helicopters to come, it took 36 hours for them to be provided, by which point the fire was massive.
It is about being properly prepared beforehand. If we know that the wildfire risk is up, the SFRS will put that request in sooner to make sure that the private companies have helicopter capability on standby for us.
I still do not think that that answers my point. I am conscious of time, so I will need to move on, but the point is that, although you might have a helicopter on standby with a commercial company, you do not have an agreement that says that, when a wildfire happens, that helicopter, regardless of what it is doing, will be on site immediately. We need to have that in place for next year. It is a critically important point that must be resolved soon.
I understand that European countries are currently working through procurement for next year’s wildfire season. Therefore, our procurement of helicopters and aircraft that are around the country—taking a pan-UK approach might be the right thing to do—must happen now. We cannot wait any longer. We need clarity about the issue. Our communities need clarity, and the Government needs to respond to that.
19:15
I thank Ariane Burgess for securing this debate.
In the past few years, we have watched in horror as some of our most precious landscapes have been consumed by flames, from Dava moor to the heart of Cairngorms national park and even right here on our doorstep on Arthur’s Seat. The emergency services tell us the brutal truth that Scotland’s wildfire season is extending. Driven by climate change, our summers are becoming hotter and drier.
These fires are no longer rare incidents; they are a predictable symptom of a warming planet, and they have the potential to escalate beyond our current capacity to deal with them. When a wildfire rips through a landscape, the ecological toll is catastrophic. These blazes affect entire ecosystems. They incinerate native plants, destroy nesting habitats and kill vulnerable wildlife. In a matter of hours, a single wildfire can completely wipe out decades of hard-won nature conservation progress. It is heartbreaking to see years of meticulous restoration go up in smoke.
We are, of course, grateful for the heroic efforts of the firefighters and community volunteers who fought this summer’s blazes. At the same time, we must recognise that fighting fires on the ground is only treating the symptom. We are failing to treat the cause, and we are failing to protect ourselves. If we want to protect communities such as Nethy Bridge, we have to start by protecting the land that surrounds them. We need to do more to make Scotland’s landscapes resilient to extreme weather. That is where nature-based solutions come in.
Degraded, dried-out landscapes are a tinderbox waiting to spark, but a healthy, restored landscape is a natural shield. Healthy peatlands naturally retain moisture. They serve as literal living firebreaks that block the spread of flames. That is why we need to see an increase in public investment as well as incentivised private investment in large-scale peatland restoration.
We must also look at our forestry practices. I would like to see a higher proportion of forestry grants directed towards the planting of new native woodlands. Native forests are structurally more resilient, healthier and better adapted to withstand climate pressures. Making sure that conditions are right for natural regeneration is another important aspect of what must be done.
Of course, we must protect and fund our emergency services and learn the lessons from the Cairngorms fire, but fundamentally, our climate defence strategy must be rooted in nature. We cannot just rely on fire services when the crisis hits. We must build a landscape that can defend itself. Let us invest in our peatlands, restore our native woods and safeguard Scotland’s breathtaking biodiversity.
19:17
I refer members to my entry in the register of members’ interests, which states that I am a councillor and a hydrologist.
I also thank Ariane Burgess for securing this members’ business debate.
We often think about climate adaptation in terms of individual hazards: we have a flood problem, so we develop a flood intervention; we have a wildfire problem, so we develop a wildfire intervention. However, what we need to do is to start thinking more about the economics of resilience. Governments across the world have competing financial priorities. If we are going to invest in climate adaptation—I think that we should—we should be looking for interventions that deliver multiple benefits: what we might call resilience dividends.
Take peatland restoration, which I think that everyone else has spoken about. It is an area in which I have some experience. It is often talked about through the lens of carbon and net zero, but, as we know, it also reduces flood risk by slowing the movement of water through the catchment. It retains water during peaks and during periods of drought and water scarcity. It creates wetter conditions that can reduce the risk of wildfire, and it delivers biodiversity benefits, on top of, of course, protecting carbon stores. That is a lot of public benefit for one intervention. In economic terms, it is a lot of bang for our buck.
Another example of that could be as simple as developing a network of ponds and wetlands. They can provide temporary storage during heavy rainfall, retain water during dry periods, create valuable habitats for wildlife and, in the context of this debate, provide an accessible source of water for fighting fires.
Good land management can, therefore, deliver multiple benefits, and that principle should be at the heart of how we approach climate adaptation. There is not necessarily a single intervention that works everywhere. What we need to ask is what combination of interventions makes a given landscape more resilient.
That is where having a climate shock fund could be particularly valuable. Prevention is almost always cheaper than responding to failure and relying on the emergency services alone is not financially sustainable. We need landscape and scale adaptation and that wider economic point should be clear.
Tomorrow—and this is a shameless plug—I am co-sponsoring a screening in Parliament of “The People’s Emergency Briefing”. I have seen that film four times now and one thing that strikes me is the economic case for acting early. The argument is not simply that we must spend more money because climate change is happening; it is that we must spend money more intelligently, earlier and in ways that mitigate multiple risks at the same time.
Climate adaptation should not be about building resilience to individual hazards; it should be about building resilience into the landscape. If we can reduce flood risk, improve water scarcity, reduce the risk of wildfires, restore biodiversity and protect our natural carbon stores all at the same time, we will not simply be responding to climate change; we will get far greater value for every pound that we invest in preparing Scotland for that.
If it is all “net stupid zero” and climate change turns out to be a massive hoax, at least we will have made ourselves a bit more biodiverse and a bit less prone to wildfires, flooding and drought.
19:21
In the storytelling sessions that happen at a local bookstore called Lighthouse, we often discuss with our young ones the story of the Cailleach, who raised mountains, unleashed storms and held the fighting seasons, as a story that shows that the power of the land is real and that ignoring it comes at a serious cost.
Arthur’s Seat burned in 2019, 2020, 2022, August 2025, and in May and July this year and Scotland recorded 238 wildfires in 2025, compared to 55 the year before, which is a 330 per cent increase in a single year. The number of wildfire warnings has also risen, from one in 2020 to 14 last year, before we even think of this year. Arthur’s Seat, as many members have noted, sits just a few hundred metres away from where we are now. In July, after a fire broke out on Salisbury Crags, a 24-year-old student, who was asthmatic, told me about how she had watched it from her window and was uncertain about whether it would reach her street. The fire burned holes in a 2,000-year-old hillfort and the ruin of a fifteenth century chapel. That is what loss in our capital city looks like: it is domestic anxiety as our heritage and ecology burn in the same afternoon, visible from a wee tenement window.
East Lothian’s climate shocks are no different. They may be less visible in some ways, but they are no less structural. A recent SEPA water scarcity report shows the Tyne catchment at moderate scarcity and the Firth of Forth at alert level, following what the agency described as
“the driest hydrological year … in eastern Scotland since 1976”
and the National Farmers Union recorded the driest spring in 132 years and the hottest summer on record, with measurable reductions in arable yield and quality and real pressure on farm cash flows. East Lothian proudly markets itself as the garden of Scotland, but that identity is built on a soil and water system that is now under documented strain and on a coastline about which the council is now consulting residents, recognising erosion that it cannot yet fully model.
Today’s motion asks us to think properly about resilience and I am grateful to my colleague Ariane Burgess for bringing it to the chamber. As many others have said, that requires precision about what is actually being lost. The research tells us that, remarkably, no one in Scotland has yet died in wildfires, but that is simply untrue. There is no measurement in the statistics of the lives lost to respiratory illness, cancer, lead or mercury poisoning, or heat stroke. That is not there. There is a cost of £3.1 million for damage to firefighting equipment owned by land managers and used to fight the Dava wildfire alone. The cost also shows up in the story of a 79-year-old gamekeeper who spent three days fighting that fire and 22 more digging out burning peat by hand, despite having broken his back a few years earlier. It shows up in farmers making planting decisions for next year without knowing whether they will have water, or how much. That is what climate shock really costs the people who are closest to the land.
I am happy to talk about cost every time that it comes up, as long as whoever is offering those conversations can also tell us the cost of the Dava or Cairngorms fires, or what it costs to replace topsoil on Arthur’s Seat for a third time in this decade alone. Those costs will not end, which is why the motion’s emphasis matters. It talks about shifting from emergency response towards landscape-scale prevention, such as rewetted peatland and restored wetlands—it is about healthy catchments, really.
East Lothian already has the beginnings of that in the new River Esk partnership and its 2025 to 2030 climate change strategy. Edinburgh has the national park authorities’ evolving wildfire bylaws. However, neither has, on its own, the resourcing to do this at landscape scale rather than site by site. That is precisely why the motion’s calls for a dedicated climate shock fund and for a Scottish landscape resilience summit matter immensely and are urgent.
Resilience will not be built in the next emergency response; it will be built, or not, through how seriously we fund the work before and between fires on soil and water catchments, with the people who truly know the land. I support the motion whole-heartedly.
19:25
When we talk about climate shocks, it is easy to think of individual events in isolation, such as a wildfire in the Cairngorms, flooding in Brechin, coastal erosion in Montrose or water scarcity affecting communities across the north-east.
However those challenges are connected and are becoming more frequent and severe as our climate changes, as has already been illustrated by colleagues. The recent wildfire in the Cairngorms highlighted the scale of the challenge and the strength of the response. Emergency services, conservation organisations, gamekeepers, farmers, land managers and volunteers work together in difficult circumstances, and they deserve our sincere thanks.
Across Angus North and Mearns, we have seen at first hand the impacts of extreme weather. Storm Babet devastated Brechin and, three years on, the community is still living with the consequences. Just last week, difficult decisions were made on the demolition of 154 homes and on how best to protect the town from future flooding. Montrose continues to face the growing threat of coastal erosion, while changing weather patterns are creating new pressures on water resources and land management.
That is why resilience must be about more than responding when emergencies happen; it must be about preparation, adaptation and prevention. We need to recognise that healthy peatlands, wetlands and woodlands are not simply environmental assets. Restored peatlands are less susceptible to fire and, alongside wetlands and woodlands, help to build the resilience of our landscapes by reducing risks of wildfire, drought and flooding. Investing in nature restoration is not only good for biodiversity; it is also a practical way to protect communities from the growing impacts of climate change. Like Mark Ruskell, I support the proposal for a Scottish landscape resilience summit, because there is much to be gained from a more holistic approach that brings together wildfire prevention, nature restoration and long-term climate resilience.
Prevention and restoration are fundamentally linked. As Scottish Land & Estates has highlighted, we need a coherent plan for managing wildfire risk and responding when fires occur. However if the summit is to proceed, it must not become a talking shop. The challenge is too urgent for that. Any summit must lead to practical action and long-term collaboration, and we must continue to focus on wildfire prevention.
In a previous debate, I highlighted the risks that disposable barbecues can present during periods of warm and dry weather. Part of becoming more resilient must involve reducing avoidable ignition risks wherever possible. Although I would like a complete ban on their sale, I acknowledge the Scottish Government’s recent commitment to raise with the UK Government the case for further consideration of a more permanent approach to restricting disposable barbecues, at least during periods of heightened wildfire risk. However a complete ban would give more clarity to the public.
Community resilience is equally important. Time and again, whether during floods, wildfires or severe storms, residents, farmers, land managers and volunteers have stepped forward to support one another. In Brechin, the Crickety served as a vital community hub for people whose lives had been turned upside down by storm Babet, and the communities of Stonehaven and around Aberdeenshire and Angus stepped up in the aftermath of storm Arwen in 2021, during the 10 days of blackouts that we experienced.
We need to work more closely with communities and make better use of their knowledge and expertise because, when climate shocks hit, it is local people who will always be the first on the scene and the first to respond, as they did in Nethy Bridge this summer.
I welcome the Scottish Government’s commitment to review and deliver the wildfires strategic action plan, but I urge ministers to complete that work and implement any necessary changes before next summer.
The lesson is clear: resilience cannot be built after disaster strikes. Whether through restoring peatlands, empowering communities or reducing wildfire risks, prevention must become as much of a priority as the response. If we are serious about protecting our communities, resilience must be our first line of defence.
Due to the number of members who wish to speak in the debate I am minded to accept a motion without notice, under rule 8.14.3 of standing orders, to extend the debate by up to 30 minutes. I call Ariane Burgess to move such a motion.
Motion moved,
That, under rule 8.14.3, the debate be extended by up to 30 minutes.—[Ariane Burgess]
Motion agreed to.
19:30
I refer to my entry in the register of members’ interests, as I am a sitting councillor on Glasgow City Council.
Over the past few years, Scotland has seen one extreme weather event after another, from record storms and severe rainfall to devastating wildfires. Those extreme events reflect the harsh reality of climate change, putting lives directly in danger.
Our emergency service workers bear the brunt of that reality. NHS staff drive to work when red, danger-to-life weather warnings have been issued to keep our health service running. As we have heard, the Scottish Fire and Rescue Service attends blaze after blaze to stop wildfires from spreading and keep our communities safe. Homes and businesses have been destroyed and thousands of residents have been evacuated. Scotland’s economy is already suffering severe harm. WWF Scotland found that, in just one single year, Scottish agriculture lost more than £161 million in production due to climate driven weather.
It is clear that relying on short-term emergency responses to standalone incidents is no longer good enough. I am proud to support my colleague Ariane Burgess in calling for a climate shock fund to cover the cost of preparing for, and preventing the damage from, extreme weather.
We can see what proactive adaptation looks like in Glasgow. Initiatives such as rain gardens show how we can build resilience and learn to live with excessive rain, much like the practical urban nature interventions championed by local lecturer Andrew Hooligan at the University of Glasgow. A dedicated climate shock fund would scale up those vital green adaptation measures right across Scotland—in urban areas, too.
However, preparation is only half the battle. We must stop making the crisis worse. Earlier today, we heard the Conservatives calling for ever more climate-wrecking fossil fuels. Just hours later, we are debating the real world harm caused by their continued use. That is a jarring shift, to say the least. Burning fossil fuels is the number one driver of climate change. As long as we continue to burn them, extreme weather will become more frequent, severe and dangerous.
I must note that, right now, the UK Government is still considering approving the massive Rosebank oil field. Both the UK and Scottish Governments have signed the Paris accord and must act to limit global temperature rise. The research is clear. Rosebank will take us beyond those commitments.
The First Minister has recently reiterated his commitment to tackling climate change as a political priority. I would like to challenge how tackling climate change can be considered a political priority, when the Scottish Government has not taken a stand against Rosebank and Jackdaw. We hear so often the response that it is a reserved matter and, therefore, that it is not our responsibility to comment. However, that misses the point entirely. Campaigners across Scotland have so clearly asked us, time and again, to stand up on the matter and tell Westminster that we do not want those fossil fuel projects.
Nonetheless, to focus on the matters that are devolved, the Government has also stalled progress on the heat in buildings bill, which can help us to substantially reduce the amount of fossil fuels we use when it comes to heating, as well as cooling, our homes. Public support for bold action is already here. Polls consistently show that people across Scotland and the UK feel deep climate anxiety. They are also overwhelmingly supportive of strong decisive climate action.
I was recently reminded of what is at stake while watching the play “The Trials” by Dawn King at the Tron theatre in Glasgow. In that production, children and young people sit as a jury holding older generations accountable for their failure to act on climate change. That play reflects our actual reality. Children and young people are our jury.
This Parliament must focus not only on adapting to the harm already caused but on minimising further damage. Anything less is an absolute abdication of our responsibility to future generations.
19:35
I commend and thank Ms Burgess for securing the debate. I will confine my remarks solely to the Scottish Fire and Rescue Service, which I am interested in as the convener of the Criminal Justice Committee, which, as Ms Burgess will know, has oversight of that service. That is not to say that I do not agree with many other aspects of the motion.
Before I go any further, I pay tribute to the firefighters who, when all of us run away from such incidents, run towards them. The importance of that is not lost on me. In that regard, I pay tribute to Mr MacKinnon, who was based in Shawbost, on the west side of Lewis. I appreciate his work. I struggled to disagree with many of his remarks about wildfire units, and I am sure that Scottish Government ministers will take note of what he said.
Recently, I met the Fire Brigades Union to discuss the issue of wildfires. It is important that we understand the context: most wildfires in Scotland are started by human activities, such as unattended barbecues, campfires and discarded glass bottles, which act as a magnifying glass. It is thought that the Dava megafire was set off by a flare from a search and rescue team helicopter during a training exercise. When we have conversations about wildfires, it is important that we are mindful of how they are being started.
Mr Eagle of the Conservative Party made points about aerial firefighting, and I do not find myself a million miles away from his views. It was unacceptable that it took 36 hours for the helicopter to be deployed in the Cairngorms. I think that the cabinet secretary has recognised that, but I accept the point that the minister made about the commercial contract that is in place.
The fundamental point that members must recognise is that we will see more such incidents in the future, and the Scottish Fire and Rescue Service’s current capacity to respond to multiple significant incidents is very limited. That might not win me plaudits from my whips or members of the Government front bench, but the reality is that the service is struggling. There are resource issues, some of which will be teased out. I welcome the meeting that I had with Mr Ruskell and Mr McMillan earlier, because I think that there is a role for our three committees to come together in that regard.
There are capacity and resource issues, some of which were highlighted regarding the Cairngorms fire. When such incidents take place, we must consider setting up hillside facilities so that showers and rest areas are in place, because the overtime bill that will arise as a result of the Cairngorms fire will be significant. I am sure that some of those issues will be teased out as the Government learns the lessons from the fire. The overwhelming point that I want the Government to consider relates to the capacity of the Scottish Fire and Rescue Service to respond to major incidents.
David Linden has talked about the Fire and Rescue Service needing to tackle wildfires, but does he agree that it is also the first line of support and rescue when it comes to flooding?
Absolutely—that is the point that I am making. The FBU put the blunt reality to me: given the number of appliances and officers available on the night of the Union Street fire, if the excrement had hit the fan anywhere else in Scotland that night, we would have been in trouble. Ms Burgess’s point about flooding backs up the point that the Scottish Fire and Rescue Service is being called to work on multiple fronts.
As somebody who believes in climate change—I think that Comrade Langan, on the Bolshevik benches over there, does now believe in climate change, too—I recognise that we will see more and more such events, so our public services must be given the resources to be able to respond to them.
19:39
As my colleagues Mark Ruskell and Ariane Burgess have already pointed out, climate breakdown is no longer a distant future threat. Across Scotland, communities are already experiencing its impacts through flooding, drought, storm damage and pressure on our rural economy. We often think of these as separate challenges, but they share a common cause: landscapes that have become less resilient over time, combined with a rapidly changing climate that is making extreme weather more frequent and severe. Communities have repeatedly faced flooding, while farmers and land managers are increasingly dealing with both prolonged dry periods and intense rainfall.
The London School of Economics and Political Science states that climate-related damage currently drains about 1.1 per cent of the UK’s gross domestic product. If we see the predicted 2°C of warming, that will rise to around 5 per cent of GDP.
We cannot keep paying to clean up after every climate shock. We need to invest in preventing the damage in the first place. That means recognising that nature is part of our infrastructure and every bit as valuable as our railways, energy grid, schools and hospitals. Healthy peatlands store water and continually sequester carbon. Native woodlands slow run-off. Wetlands absorb floodwater and release it gradually during dry periods. These natural systems make communities safer while also supporting biodiversity.
As Parliament’s Eurasian beaver champion, I want to highlight the role that beavers can play in climate resilience and restoring those landscapes. At Argaty in Perthshire, beavers have enabled an additional million litres of water to be stored within a wetland system, and that water is held back during heavy rainfall and is available in dry periods. It is a practical example of nature-based climate adaptation working on the ground.
Increasingly, communities are developing their own proposals for landscape-scale nature restoration. Groups such as Beavers on Tweed are asking how their community, working with nature rather than against it, can make an entire river catchment more resilient to flooding, drought and biodiversity loss. The River Tweed faces many of the same pressures that we see across Scotland: increasing flood risk, stressed river systems and the growing impacts of climate change. The groups are bringing together communities, farmers, fisheries interests, conservation organisations and public bodies to consider every tool available to build resilience. That is why I support my colleagues’ call for a Scottish landscape resilience summit.
South Scotland already offers inspiring examples of what can be achieved when communities lead. At the community-owned Tarras Valley nature reserve, woodland regeneration and peatland restoration are helping to restore nature while reducing flood risk downstream. The wildwood project at Carrifran has transformed a barren, unproductive valley into a mature woodland and biodiverse habitat that withstood this summer’s heat and will slow this autumn’s water run-off, reducing downstream flood peaks as climate risks and extreme weather events continue to increase.
Restoring nature and tackling climate change are not just about wildlife and biodiversity, though. They are about protecting people, homes and livelihoods. Pioneering farmers have been working for decades to show, not tell, the impact that regenerative farming can have on climate resilience. The Ethical Dairy, which is located just down the road from me, has decades of open-source data showing that its regenerative, organic dairy has increased the carbon held by the land to 5 tonnes per hectare annually, increased biodiversity by 50 per cent and reduced the dairy’s external costs during the price fluctuations that we have seen.
If climate shocks are becoming the new normal, our response cannot be business as usual. We need a dedicated climate shock fund to invest in prevention, not just recovery, and we need the ambition to work with nature at a landscape scale to build the resilience that our communities need, because the best defence against many of the climate challenges that we face is often what nature has provided all along.
19:44
Globally, our climate is the most extreme and unpredictable that it has ever been. It is also the most stable and predictable that it will ever be again in our lifetimes. That is why I am so pleased to speak in support of Ariane Burgess’s motion this evening, and why this debate on giving our communities the tools that they need to build resilience is so important.
The timing of the debate is interesting. It is Scotland’s climate week, after all. However, as Holly Bruce alluded to, we had a debate earlier today about what the Conservatives, Reform, and some in the Scottish National Party say is the absolute necessity of more drilling for oil and gas in the Jackdaw and Rosebank oil fields. MSPs from parties that spoke earlier in favour of drilling have spoken in this evening’s debate, with all sincerity and concern for the people whom they represent, about the impact of wildfires and other climate shocks on their constituents’ homes and businesses. They have to accept that wildfires, flooding, and other climate shocks, which are happening ever more, are the price that we are paying for continuing to extract fossil fuels.
That price is being paid by communities that have been devastated by flooding, such as in Brechin in Angus, where, it was announced last week, 300 homes that were damaged by storm Babet in 2023 will be demolished.
The price is paid, too, by the wildlife that is lost to fires. As the Scottish Wildlife Trust has told us, wildfires often happen at the same time as animals are preparing and maintaining nesting sites. Thousands of animals died in the this year’s and last year’s fires.
Those Tory, Reform and other MSPs have to accept that, the more oil and gas we drill, the greater the risk of climate shocks and the greater the risk to human and animal life.
However, we can both tackle the climate crisis that causes climate shocks and build human and natural resilience to those shocks. The Kirrie rifflers, part of the fantastic Sustainable Kirriemuir in my region, are doing great work to monitor and look after the health of local waterways. The more we understand what is happening in our rivers—such as siltation levels, which the rifflers check regularly—the more we can do to prevent flooding and to prepare local communities if the worst happens.
Robert Gordon University is rewilding 55 acres of land on campus, including restoring long-lost wetlands, which can help to reduce flooding by holding on to water and taking the pressure off flood defences.
Those and other projects to help us fight climate change and climate shocks need to be supported. The nature restoration fund, which was introduced by then Scottish Green minister Lorna Slater, has provided more than £65 million to hundreds of projects that are helping to build climate resilience. The fund is supporting the reviving the Leuchar Burn project, which is renaturalising that burn and associated flood plains—in the process, creating new pools and wetlands, which will help to manage flooding risk.
The fund has been a game changer, but more support is needed. Scottish Greens stood on a manifesto to increase the fund to £200 million, which will take us closer—albeit not all the way—to what is needed to restore 30 per cent of habitats on land and sea, which we aim to achieve as part of United Nations nature restoration targets. That is what makes Ariane Burgess’s call for a climate shock fund so important, so that we can help communities genuinely build resilience.
Nature is, so often, the first line of defence against the effects of climate change, but we must give nature a helping hand by taking the climate emergency seriously and making a full and rapid response at landscape scale. If we do not, every supporter of fossil fuel extraction who is in the chamber today will need to explain to their constituents who are affected by wildfires, floods, droughts and many other extreme weather events why we have failed to take the climate action that is needed to keep them safe. We can and must act.
I call Jim Fairlie to respond to the debate.
19:48
I very much welcome today’s debate on wildfires. It is not the first that we have had, and I am absolutely sure that it will not be the last, because the issue is not going to go away.
I will try to address much that has been raised by members across parties, because everyone in the chamber recognises the increasing risk that is posed by wildfires, as a result of our changing climate and changing landscapes but also because of human activity. As Donald MacKinnon and David Linden have both stated, a lot of the fires have been started deliberately or accidentally by people who are in the countryside. We have to message much better to the public that they have to be responsible when accessing the countryside. There is no such thing as the right to roam. There is the right of responsible access. We need to continue to make that point.
The events of the summer have absolutely reminded us that, as Ariane Burgess said, climate change is not a future threat but a present reality, and its effects are felt across our natural environment, our rural economy and our public services—and, most importantly, by the people in the communities that we serve. That is why the Government is looking at all the causes and effects, so that we can better plan for current events and future resilience.
I will take a moment to reflect on the fire in the Cairngorms this year. First, I put on record yet again my personal respect and admiration for those who helped to extinguish, support and co-ordinate as events rapidly unfolded. I also convey the Government’s thanks for the community spirit that was so demonstrable during the period of the fire. Firefighters, keepers, land managers, volunteers, farmers, shepherds, environmental organisations and others did a remarkable job in really difficult circumstances. It got fraught at times, which is understandable, but that collective effort was fabulous to hear about. As I said, from a governmental and a personal perspective, I want to be clear about how thankful we are to every individual.
The fire demonstrated the vulnerabilities in our landscapes and the lessons that we must continue to learn. My colleague Siobhian Brown, with whom I worked in the Dava fire last year and who was brought up in Australia, pointed out that, there, they know about wildfire. Everyone from a young age is aware of the risks and knows how to avoid them. It is part of their culture and their societal understanding. Unfortunately, it is now going to be part of ours as well, because wildfire can be viewed no longer as a one-off event but as something that we will have to be prepared for every year.
With that in mind, there are lessons to be learned, and we are committed to ensuring that there is a full and comprehensive debrief, which will inform our future response and preparedness and add to the learnings that we have had from previous events.
We all know that the most effective way to manage the threat of wildfires is to prevent them from happening in the first place. We have created the ability for local authorities to take local action, but we will still review what might be needed for a national approach. The strategic action plan on wildfires, which we published in March, sets out 18 priority actions to improve the prevention of, preparedness for and response to fires. The Cabinet Secretary for Justice has commissioned a review of the previous action plan, which is under way. We will carefully consider its outcomes as we continue to work on what we already know.
I do not disagree with the minister’s focus on wildfires, but will he recognise that the motion and the debate are much broader? We are in danger of looking at just one issue, which is at the top of our minds because of what happened in the summer. However, for genuine community resilience, we have to look not just at wildfires but at our responses in agriculture and across all other portfolios. We cannot just rest on our response and strategic approach to wildfires.
I will continue to focus on the motion that was lodged. That does not at all diminish the member’s points about what we are doing on nature and climate, but those are longer debates. For the purpose of this evening, I will continue to focus on the areas that were brought forward by Ariane Burgess.
Our current plan recognises that healthy ecosystems have an important role to play in resilience. How we manage land is important to being able to reduce the fuel load for future fires. The work that we are doing will contribute to landscapes that are better able to cope with climate change, while delivering benefits for nature and biodiversity.
As has been mentioned by a number of members, the restoring and rewetting of degraded peatlands will help us to store carbon and improve water management. Just as important, it will create landscapes that are more resilient to drought and wildfire risk. By investing now in resilient landscapes and in resilient communities, and using the tools that are available to us just now, which include muirburn, we can reduce future risks to those communities and landscapes while creating wider benefits for nature, climate and rural Scotland as a whole.
I appreciate that the minister is choosing to focus on wildfires, but what I was trying to get at with my motion is not just wildfires but flooding, droughts, coastal erosion and soil erosion. As I said earlier, we have to acknowledge that the Scottish Fire and Rescue Service will also face flooding. The whole point of the debate is much broader than wildfires. That is the starting point, but we have to address all those issues. That is why I am calling for a climate shock fund and for the minister to bring forward a resilient landscape summit.
I will address that point, to try to help Ariane Burgess get out of the debate something that she is looking for. She is looking for a landscape resilience summit. The Cabinet Secretary for Climate Action and Rural Affairs has already set up a new land, agriculture and nature delivery—LAND—group to specifically look at all the actions that are being taken across the landscapes in Scotland. That will include farming, nature and our resilience to all the issues that Ariane Burgess has talked about. In response to her, I say that we are focused on wildfire because that was the debate that she brought; however, we have already done a huge amount of work across all those areas, and will continue to do so.
To go back to the wildfire issue, the planning and preparedness activity—because of the risk that we have talked about, which was in the motion—are guided by national and local risk assessments, to ensure that the efforts are proportionate to the risks that Scotland faces, including the emerging likelihood of far more intense and frequent wildfires. What is clear and has been demonstrated time and again, particularly over the past few years, is that we will achieve those outcomes better through bringing together different expertise and experience, rather than viewing the issues through a single lens. We recognise that the challenges that are posed by climate change and land use are complex and evolving, and that they require co-operation across not just Scotland but the four nations.
We must stop polarising the debate on cause and prevention; I would really like to take that out of the discussion, because we cannot keep saying that one thing does one thing and another thing will be the silver bullet, because there is no silver bullet to any of this.
With that in mind, I thank all members for taking part in the debate, and I give an assurance that the Government and all the agencies on which we rely to work with us in partnership and co-operation are taking the issue very seriously. We will continue to find the best solutions through the collaborative and co-operative way that we have already started out on, because we want to ensure that we become a nation that is ready and prepared for the possibility of having to respond to such significant events, now and in the future.
That concludes the debate.
Meeting closed at 19:57.
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