Environment, Climate Change and Land Reform Committee

Meeting date: Wednesday, April 29, 2020

Official Report 585KB pdf

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Climate Change Plan and COP26

Under the final item in the public part of our agenda, we will take evidence from the Scottish Government on the plans for the updated climate change plan and the 26th conference of the parties, or COP26. The committee is pleased to hear from Roseanna Cunningham, the Cabinet Secretary for Environment, Climate Change and Land Reform. I understand that the cabinet secretary would like to make an opening statement before we move to questions.

I seek your guidance, convener. My opening statement is rather longer than would normally be expected at a committee. In a sense, I am treating it as a statement rather than simply as opening remarks. Are you content with that approach?

If you are happy to make your statement, we have the time to allow for that. I think that I speak for all committee members in saying that we would like to hear it.

Thank you for agreeing that I may make my statement.

We are in an extraordinary set of circumstances. Understandably, all the focus is on efforts across Scotland to contain the pandemic. The on-going position with Covid-19 means that we have to continue to prioritise and resource that response across the whole of the Scottish Government. I am grateful to everybody who is directly or indirectly involved in that work, although, to touch on a point that has already been made, it means that changes will be needed to a whole host of other important work.

I have been reflecting that this week is the first anniversary of the First Minister’s declaration of a global climate emergency. In normal circumstances, there would undoubtedly have been a bit of a fanfare as we laid the update to the climate change plan for the Scottish Parliament—members may recall that that was expected on Thursday 30 April. We would have presented a look to the future and discussed COP26 and the green new deal, among all the other things on the horizon.

I need to say at the outset that I and the Government remain committed to Scotland’s world-leading climate change targets and I am proud of what we have achieved, even in the short time since the Climate Change (Emissions Reductions Targets) (Scotland) Act 2019 was passed last year. That means taking real steps towards realising our ambitions. However, it is vital that all our actions over the coming weeks and months, even those in response to other global issues such as climate change, reflect the current situation and are supportive of the national response to it. As we reset and recover from the crisis, we will continue to lead global climate action through the delivery of that sustainable, just and resilient recovery towards net zero emissions. The 2019 act also enshrines in law our commitment to a just transition, in which wellbeing, fair work and social justice are prioritised and no one is left behind. In my view, those principles will also need to be absolutely central to the economic recovery from Covid-19. I will briefly touch on that in a moment.

I turn to other upcoming climate change business. In my recent letter to the committee, I set out that we remain committed to meeting the statutory reporting deadlines in relation to climate change matters, wherever that is appropriate, without compromising the immediate response to Covid-19. That means that we still expect to be laying the following reports in Parliament between now and the end of June: an annual report on progress to the adaptation programme, which is due at the end of May; a report on the annual emissions reduction target for 2018, which is due in mid-June; and an annual report on progress to the land use strategy—the timing on that is to be confirmed. Although the preparation of those reports will obviously be somewhat affected by reorganisation of internal capacity, continued servicing of such reporting represents an element of our continued commitment to climate change goals.

I turn back to the postponement of the update to the climate change plan. We were on track to deliver that report on Thursday 30 April. We had made an absolute commitment to update the climate change plan within six months of the act, which was much discussed during the committee’s deliberations at the time. The planned update would have set out how Scotland would have made the additional effort to bridge the gap between the previous emissions targets and the new, more stringent, targets and to make up for the shortfall in 2017.

As I have written, I have taken the decision to pause the update on the climate change plan. Our agreed deadline was no longer feasible nor appropriate, given the challenges that we are facing. That reflects the need for a bit of time to ensure that the policies and proposals that we put forward will reflect the new economic and social realities post-pandemic. It does not mean that work will stop; the pause allowed work to continue, but in recognition that we are operating in a changed landscape.

Some committee members were privy to the discussions in the cross-party working group that I had set up. As members who were involved in those meetings may recall, analysis by the chief economic adviser and by independent sources such as the UK Committee on Climate Change was pretty stark about the scale of the challenge that we were setting ourselves.

10:45  

However, all our underlying assumptions must shift. We know that the risk to life and expected economic impact from Covid-19 are unprecedented. The latest state of the economy report shows a potential fall of gross domestic product in Scotland of around 33 per cent during the current period of social distancing; that is similar to estimates from the UK and international bodies. If we assume disruption to business as usual for the next six months, UK GDP could fall by 35 per cent in quarter 2, and by 13 per cent across 2020. Those figures are significant, as is the potential for a rise in unemployment and a significant UK-wide deficit of levels unseen since world war two.

None of us can be blind to the disruption to the economy that has happened; some of our assumptions about attitudes and individual behaviours might also have to shift. It is too soon to say what the long-term impacts or unintended consequences might be, but we cannot proceed as if there will not be those long-term impacts.

All the work that has been done until now is banked and we will repurpose it to inform thinking on the green recovery. As the committee knows, I have formally requested advice from the CCC and I am advised that that is likely to come in the form of a letter in early May. As soon as we receive it, I will share that letter with the committee.

We have to take time to analyse the scale of economic and societal change and think about how policies will need to be updated. We will have to align the climate change plan to the economic recovery strategy and other key strategic documents. Therefore, when the time comes, we will have to allow for sufficient parliamentary scrutiny. I would like to lay an updated plan before the committee towards the end of this year and I would be keen to know whether that reflects the committee’s planning assumptions, too.

I mentioned the cross-party working group, which had provided invaluable external views to the update process. I am considering how best to repurpose that group and other networks, so that we can continue that open and collaborative way of doing things. Therefore, in those circumstances, I welcome future opportunities to engage with the committee on options for that recast update and proposals on how we might work together on it.

The committee is aware of the postponement of COP26. In the circumstances, that was probably inevitable; most of us would have anticipated it. I have received assurances from Alok Sharma that the UK remains committed to hosting COP26 in Glasgow. As yet, there is no indication of that postponed date. However, across Scotland—and particularly in Glasgow—we have a role in ensuring a successful COP26, whenever it might be. There is a logistic issue, because so many big international events have been rolled forward into 2021 that the 2021 calendar might become crowded. I suspect that that is why the organisers have not been able to settle on a future date.

Initial work on the green recovery has started; I reassure the committee that issues such as just transition are key and central to that. The recovery plan must be resilient, protect Scotland from future crises and, explicitly, have net zero at its heart. The committee will be updated on that as we develop various frameworks around decisions in the short, medium and longer term.

In conclusion, this is not where any of us expected to be. Goodness knows, we could hardly have envisaged the scenario that we are now having to work in, the speed with which things change and the uncertainty around that. I hope that the current situation will inspire us to reimagine the challenges that our net zero ambitions have set out and recast them in a sustainable, inclusive economic recovery. That conversation is now being had in a number of other countries and in the European Union as a whole.

Thank you for that comprehensive update. I have an initial question. You have mentioned a green recovery plan as well as an updated climate change plan. Are those two plans one and the same? Is it a case of taking the progress that was made with, and the update to, the climate change plan and embedding those in an economic green recovery plan, as you put it? Are those two separate things or is that now one piece of work?

They are two separate things. The economic recovery group, understandably, has to deal with the immediate, short-term fallout from the situation but it will not take decisions that run counter to net zero: the net zero target is embedded in its work, in order to ensure that we do not inadvertently start to take decisions that simply ignore it.

I am conscious, however, that the climate change plan update needs to be a particular and discrete piece of work, because it is of course set towards a 2030 target, as opposed to the longer-term 2045 net zero target. I will be working with the economic recovery group with the understanding of the slightly different role for each plan. I did not want the notion of the climate change plan update to be completely lost. We will probably not call it the climate change plan update now, because that name no longer fits where we are. I anticipate that those two things, although they run in parallel, will not be exactly the same.

Thank you for that clarification. Members now have some questions.

I thank the cabinet secretary for the update, which is much appreciated. It has already been mentioned that the climate change plan has changed from a whole new plan to an appendix, then to an update. Can you give us a rough indication of the likely format and look of the green recovery plan?

I cannot do that in detail, because we have not set out precisely how the plan will look. We will be moving away from the plan update idea, because we now have to include a different set of issues in that green recovery. We can take some potential opportunities from where we are at the moment. The announcement from the Cabinet Secretary for Transport, Infrastructure and Connectivity yesterday gave examples of some of the significant questions that might begin to emerge; the previous update would not have been couched in that way.

A lot hinges on what advice we get from the CCC, which will be advising not only us but the UK Government. It is about how we can best see the way forward, and about making a decision on how that will look, given the timescale that I am indicating as an appropriate one for us to do that piece of work.

With regard to Mr Carson’s question, I cannot say to him that the plan will comprise 10 chapters or cover the following things, or that we will do it in this or that way. That work still needs to be done.

Will there be any impact on what the CCC has always recommended, which is that we need to go further and faster in order to tackle climate change? Will Covid-19 put that ambition at risk?

Finally, we have seen clear skies over cities worldwide. Do you believe that the Covid-19 shutdown will have any long-term significant impact on the climate, in the UK or globally? That question might be a bit unfair, but I would like to hear your opinion.

There is no doubt that, in a very immediate sense, global emissions have probably decreased significantly. Images of the impact of clean air in huge parts of the world are striking. The speed at which wildlife has moved back into areas of human habitation in a very short space of time also provides striking images that people are enjoying on social media. I want to be a little careful—and I caution others to be careful, too. We need a sensible analysis of where we are. We can point to some things that look like pluses, and we have talked about some of those already, but there will be other slightly more complicated issues that we have to deal with.

A case in point is transport, which I referred to by commending the decision that the transport secretary made yesterday. That is on the plus side, but I have significant concerns about the impact on public transport as we try to get back to some semblance of normality. If people do not want to go back to using mass public transport, we are not quite sure what things might look like. That is where the potential for making a difference is a bit more complicated than simply saying things like, “It is great that there are no cars on the road; look how clear it is. It is nice to get all this walking and cycling done.” We need to think about the role of public transport, because there could be some very unintended consequences. To be crystal clear and honest, that is where I find things not as easy and straightforward as we might imagine. The same considerations apply across a range of issues.

I want to hold on to some aspects of what we have decided. The commitment to nature-based solutions is still hugely important and I do not want to let go of important things such as peatland restoration and tree cover. We should not imagine that that will somehow not continue to be part of our approach. That is why I said that the considerable work that has already been done has been banked and will still be relevant. Thinking about the slightly more complicated issues, however, is what will give us a sense of what we need to do in future.

I welcome your statement, and the clarity that you have given on the way forward on many of the issues that we are dealing with, in this committee and beyond it.

I am concerned about changing the name of the plan. We all recognise that the climate change plan and its update result from the Climate Change (Emissions Reduction Targets) (Scotland) Act 2019. That is something to consider.

How do you see the interim report and on-going work of the just transition commission feeding into the update of the climate change plan and into the green economic recovery, to contribute to equity being at the core of both?

The just transition commission, particularly its principles, is integral to the work of the economic recovery group and the green economic recovery. The issue is how practical it is to re-task the just transition commission in the current circumstances. Like us all, the commission will be challenged by what has happened, but it has an absolutely integral role, perhaps beyond anything that was envisaged for it initially. Its work will be critical to much of our thinking.

11:00  

I have another short question on the plan and then a question on COP26.

You have already touched on this, but I wonder whether you see lessons that could be built on from the reduced air pollution and greenhouse gas emissions and the return of nature, which will obviously help our health and that of the planet. Can the Scottish Government highlight those in its public awareness raising, and might the situation lead to behaviour change? For example, people might walk their children to school rather than go by car or people might work at home where possible, to cut congestion and stress levels. Of course, there are also the benefits of virtual meetings such as this one.

Significant things may come out of the current situation. We are all embedding new habits. I suspect that a considerable number of us are a good deal fitter than we were at the start of it, because we are all taking our mandated exercise every day. I suspect that that is becoming a habit that most of us will not want to let go of. I think that some aspects of the behaviour change will become embedded and that people will be reluctant to let go of them.

However, as I alluded to earlier, there is a slight concern about other outcomes that might emerge. We need to be careful about seeing only silver linings, because there will be real conversations about some aspects of what may become the new normal, and how those will help us. There is no doubt that many people will see the much-reduced aviation emissions as a plus. I am not an expert on the aviation industry, so I do not know what the likelihood is of it attempting to return to the status quo ante. There will be lots of conversations on that.

Pretty serious conversations and discussions will be had about some aspects. I have focused mostly on transport issues because, at the moment, those are the ones that have real question marks over them. However, there is a reconnection with nature arising out of the new habits that are being formed and the places where people are taking their exercise, which might make some messages that Government and campaigners try to get across land among a more receptive audience, although we shall have to wait and see whether that is the case.

In view of the delay to COP26, will you outline how it might be possible for the Scottish Government and us all to keep up and support the momentum of community and non-governmental organisations, and union involvement and connections, here and beyond Scotland?

The delay has resulted in a certain number of moves. A question was asked earlier about staff resources being directed to different places. Some of the work around COP26 continues, but a degree of it does not. The postponement impacts on many third sector bodies—environmental NGOs and all the rest of it—that were thinking, planning and targeting for November.

I think that most of them are committed enough to want to keep that momentum going, but until we have some sense of when the rescheduled date is, it will be hard to keep that in focus. Once we know which date in 2021 is being considered for COP26, that will recharge all the batteries and get it all going again. The date depends entirely on the management of the pandemic and it is extremely difficult to know at this stage what that will look like. We are continually reminded that life will not go back to the previous normal any time soon. That may have other impacts on some of the bigger events that have been pushed into 2021.

Michael Russell said in the chamber yesterday that the new Covid bill that will be brought to Parliament will include a change to the Climate Change (Emissions Reduction Targets) (Scotland) Act 2019, to change the deadline by which the climate citizens assembly will report.

I understand some of the reasons for that, but I am concerned that the work done in involving citizens in questions of green recovery and climate change might slow down during this period. In France, the climate citizens assembly is continuing to work and to develop new proposals, although it is working differently and is doing so online.

I would like some clarity about the Government’s proposals for how the assembly will function, and particularly about the decisions that the stewarding group will be making about the assembly’s remit.

The stewarding group is still working; they have another meeting this week. I assure the member that that work is on-going.

In Scotland, we have chosen to embed a lot of those things in legislation. Because the dates for certain things were set in legislation, we had to consider whether it was achievable to do things in the timescales that had been laid out. The citizens assembly on climate change was designed to operate and then to have its final meeting to coincide with COP26 in November. It was clear that that goal was unachievable, so we had to change it because it was set in primary legislation.

There is a deal of work that can be done online. We are all becoming accustomed to this way of working; we are all using Zoom and other video-conferencing platforms. A considerable amount of the citizens assembly’s work could be done in that way. The reason for including the provision in the next emergency bill is so that we do not breach a statutory regulation. It is not about not doing the work; it is about understanding that, in the current circumstances, the work could not be done in the timescale that was originally envisaged and legislated for. We must adjust that legal target to avoid breaching it.

There is a question over the original intention to have the final meeting of the citizens assembly at the November COP. Depending on when COP26 is postponed to, there might be a conversation about whether or not they still want the climate change citizens assembly to dovetail with the COP, or whether the assembly’s final meeting will happen earlier. Those conversations are on-going. The stewarding group is meeting again this week and those are live discussions.

Mark, are you happy to move on?

I have another question. That was a useful response from the cabinet secretary. Part of the context of the citizens assembly’s work is the climate change plan, and you indicated that the Government’s intention is to finalise the update by the end of the year. I would like to ask about the nature of that update.

In section 35 of the Climate Change (Emissions Reduction Targets) (Scotland) Act 2019—I am looking at it now—Parliament added a lot of new areas for the Government to focus on in the climate change plan. Those include agroecology, home energy efficiency, electric vehicles, policy statements on oil and gas, district heating, the just transition and climate justice.

We felt the need to bootstrap the bill in a number of priority areas on which we took evidence, and those areas are now in the bill. There is nothing in the bill to commit you to the update, to working on those areas or to bringing forward specific policies on them. However, surely you would agree that it is in the spirit of the bill to be working on those areas right now and to bring in new policies that can improve our ability to tackle climate change and meet the targets, and to include those in the climate change plan update by the end of the year.

I want to get your views on that. Will the priority areas that we identified in section 35 be not just formal requirements for a new climate plan, but priority areas for the update?

I do not think that anything that I have said so far would suggest that I want to move away from the spirit of what we have all agreed is necessary. I have indicated that we need to do some serious analysis of where we are. My intention at the moment is to include the things that we have previously discussed in committee, but obviously we are in very strange circumstances and, right now, the Government’s focus is pretty much on combating this pandemic and its immediate impacts on public health and the economy.

Our work on the update—I will call it “the update”, although we probably will not badge it as such when we do it—will begin to tease out some of the new realities that we are in and their implications for many of the areas that the committee was keen to ensure were included in the 2019 act. However, clearly we are in a completely different fiscal and economic scenario from the one that we were in prior to this happening, which is why I felt that the work had to be paused at the point that it had reached; it is also why, before we make absolutely final decisions about things, we need to make sure that we understand all the issues and all the consequences that there might be.

All that has to be kept under the umbrella of our absolutely wanting to keep within the spirit of what the committee had previously discussed. I remind us all that, notwithstanding what has happened, we still have legislative commitments to get to 75 per cent emissions reductions by 2030. They have not gone away; they are still the overriding issue for us, and everything that we do will still need to be targeted towards that.

If the update—or whatever it is due to be titled—is due towards the end of the year, how will the Scottish Government take into account the Committee on Climate Change’s advice on the target of a 75 per cent reduction by 2030? That advice is now due in December, as part of the CCC’s sixth carbon budget.

11:15  

That is one of the questions that we will have to juggle. Timetables across the board have been thrown out. I feel that, by producing the new update, plan or whatever we want to call it by the end of the year, we will help committees to think about the issue in the context of the budget and will therefore encourage alignment with that. I am conscious that there are other pieces of advice that might come in a little late in relation to where we want to be, but I am afraid that it is ever thus. No matter when we make a decision to do something, there will be a continued and rolling set of reports that could impact on it. There will never be a fixed point at which we can simply put in a full stop and move on. It is a constantly changing world. We must try to think, to the best of our ability, what is needed at the time when we draw up the update.

I remind members that the climate change plan itself will have to be redone a couple of years later, so anything that does not come out in time for the update will still be relevant for the next version of the plan, the production of which is a statutory requirement.

Given that the proposed circular economy bill has been delayed because of the global pandemic, will any of the policies that might have been implemented as part of that bill now appear in the climate change plan?

There will obviously be references to the circular economy in the climate change plan, and the circular economy will form a key part of the update to that plan and what will now be the green economic recovery. That does not take the place of legislation, which deals with things that require to be legislated for. It is necessary to be clear about the differences between those two things. However, the circular economy mindset will be part of any green economic recovery.

The facilities in Glasgow for the COP will be in high demand next year and possibly for some time to come, as the backlog of events is renegotiated. Has the Scottish Government secured early commitments from the owners of facilities there to work with the Government to make sure that we continue to have the facilities that we will require for the COP?

Such conversations are rather difficult in the absence of any indication of even a rough timetable for the COP. I anticipate that many of the venues that were already being secured for COP26-related events will know that they are likely to be in scope for a rescheduled COP, but until we are absolutely clear about when the rescheduled COP will take place, it is very difficult to have anything other than an extraordinarily general discussion.

There will obviously be timing issues on a variety of levels—globally, UK wide, Scotland wide and in Glasgow—which will all need to be factored in. We are not having specific conversations about the potential COP26, but the venues that were already being secured will undoubtedly be well aware that they will be the first in line for conversations the minute we know when we are likely to have the rescheduled date.

I thank the cabinet secretary for giving us that update. It is very useful to remind us that, in the background of the current crisis, we still have a global climate emergency to deal with.

That completes our questions and concludes the evidence session with the cabinet secretary. I thank her, her officials and members for taking part in our meeting. It has run very smoothly, which is a great relief to me.

The committee’s next meeting will be scheduled at an appropriate date, and that will be notified in the business bulletin and via the committee’s social media. The committee will report on the regulations that we dealt with today on 10 May. Any follow-up scrutiny issues that arise from the discussion on Scottish Government priorities will be dealt with primarily by correspondence, which will be published on our website.

11:21 Meeting continued in private until 12:15.