Cabinet Secretary for Rural Affairs and Environment
Richard Lochhead
Scottish Parliament
June 13, 2007
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Scotland's environment is vital if we are to have a healthy and sustainable existence. Today's debate is therefore about how we can create a greener Scotland and deal with the fact that we are living beyond our environmental means, and about the fact that we need a greener Scotland so that we can become a wealthier, fairer, healthier, safer and stronger Scotland.
The debate is about how we in Government can use the levers that are at our disposal - funding, guidance, legislation and example - to support and build on the efforts of the many people in Scotland who care about our environment and who are taking early action to protect it; for example by volunteering, recycling or buying locally.
We want to create a Scotland in which there is economic stability and social justice; a Scotland that has a cohesive co-operative society in which people live fulfilling lives; a Scotland where protecting our environment is seen as being in the national and global interests; a Scotland where people are committed to contributing to securing the environment for the future; and a Scotland where people know how to engage effectively in decision making.
We want to create a Scotland where people enjoy a clean and attractive countryside and healthy and thriving wildlife and habitats; a Scotland where people walk, cycle or use public transport as the norm because they are clean, efficient, safe and accessible forms of transport; a Scotland where people live in well-made, energy-efficient homes, most of whose power comes from renewable sources; and a Scotland where people are mindful of the environmental impacts of the ways in which they spend their money and leisure time.
We want to create a Scotland where we recycle as much of our waste as we can; a Scotland where our businesses and industry are highly resource-efficient and competitive; and a Scotland that has a global reputation for innovation involving new greener technologies, minimisation of waste and harnessing of renewables and clean energy technologies.
In that Scotland, our people and businesses will have changed their ways and, as a result, our children and grandchildren will also be able to expect to experience that fulfilling way of life.
That is our vision, but where are we now and how will we get there? It is clear that we cannot afford to be complacent. We know that people around the planet are living beyond their natural resources, which creates climate change and other pressures that affect our people, our economy and our environment.
There is a lack of due respect for nature, but it is everyone's responsibility to have such respect. The challenge is to translate people's awareness and concern into changed mindsets and action: we need to encourage individuals, businesses, communities, countries and the international community to recognise their duties and obligations. We all need to change our behaviour.
Since the Scottish Parliament's establishment, Scotland has made good progress, but I call for Scotland to do more from that good base. The Scottish Government will offer leadership and will support others in following it.
We have made it clear that Scotland wants no nuclear power stations-a nuclear-free Scotland is an important part of our vision of Scotland's future. We are also committed to taking action to protect our marine environment. As a first step, we will change the law on ship-to-ship oil transfers near environmentally protected sites.
Tomorrow, I will provide a briefing for MSPs to outline our progress on that important issue. All members are invited to that briefing.
An exploration of how we can use our resources to work better for a greener Scotland will be integral to the next Scottish Spending Review. We will ask the Council of Economic Advisers to consider how we might measure environmental resource depletion and well-being alongside gross domestic product, so that we will know to what extent our economic performance is sustainable.
We intend that the Scottish Government and our partners - including local authorities, public bodies and the national health service - work to become exemplars on environmental issues. I can announce that we will work with those partners to develop and publish a detailed programme to improve the Scottish public sector's environmental and sustainability performance.
The Government acknowledges the good work that is being done throughout the public sector - reductions in energy and water usage and the design of new buildings to high sustainability standards being examples - but we can build on that. I make it clear that we are not doing enough or going forward fast enough.
Across the public sector, we need to cut energy and water use, reduce waste, reduce travel emissions and support biodiversity. We need to support green innovation in matters such as renewables and the hydrogen economy. Alongside that programme, the Government will produce guidance for the public sector on how to build into procurement corporate social responsibility as part of a green procurement action plan, which we will publish later this year.
The action plan will guide public bodies on how to assess and improve sustainability in their procurement while delivering value for money.
The Scottish public sector must show leadership through not just steady improvement, but a transformation in performance. Cultural change and behavioural change are also critical - education is the key to achieving them. We will drive forward in our schools, colleges and universities the Action Plan for the United Nations Decade of Education for Sustainable Development.
We will build on the It's Our Future campaign by recruiting ambassadors for change, including leaders from the voluntary sector, business and politics. We will develop and implement a training programme to equip the public sector and its partners with the capacity to deliver greener policies and services. We will learn from best practice in countries such as Denmark, Norway, Finland, England, Wales and Northern Ireland. The public sector in Scotland has the opportunity to take a lead on environmental issues, so we must seize it.
We have identified a programme for a greener Scotland over the life of this session that will focus on five key themes. The first theme is climate change. Unchecked climate change will have serious direct consequences not just for Scotland's environment, including its biodiversity, but for our economy and our people.
For instance, we know to our cost the impact of extreme weather patterns on our communities. That is why we have placed climate change at the heart of our economic decision making and why we will ask Parliament to support a climate change bill that will set ambitious targets to reduce emissions. Next week, we will announce to Parliament our objectives for the bill and we will discuss its detailed content with parliamentary representatives and others in the coming months.
Our second theme is sustainable places. Healthy communities need healthy places - they need clean air, green spaces and they need places where people want to live and work. We will work with partners and communities to build on the many good projects around Scotland, in order to support more sustainable places, especially in our most deprived neighbourhoods.
The third theme is people and nature. The importance of our relationship with the natural world is at the heart of our concern for a greener Scotland, so by spring 2008 we will have developed plans to deliver the next phase of the Scottish biodiversity strategy, and we will look closely at how we should best approach the commitment to halt biodiversity loss by 2010.
Environmental volunteering is central to the theme of people and nature. Such volunteering has an important part to play in building connections between people and nature. It offers benefits not only to those who volunteer, but to key priorities such as community participation, social justice, regeneration, health, biodiversity and good citizenship. An implementation group including representatives from public environmental bodies, local authorities, non-governmental organisations and business has been considering how the Government can assist the environmental volunteering sector. I am grateful to those representatives for their contributions.
We accept the implementation group's recommendations to increase the quality and quantity of the volunteering experience in order to deliver even greater benefits by assisting volunteer managers to become better equipped to handle the range of responsibilities that are placed on them, by removing logistical barriers that small voluntary organisations face, and by helping to raise general standards. We will appoint a voluntary sector based project officer to co-ordinate much of that work.
Earlier today - during a visit to Tay house care unit at Murraypark nursing home at Corstorphine hospital - the Minister for Environment and I witnessed at first hand the benefits of volunteering. We pay tribute, as all Members will want to do, to the work of those volunteers, who are improving access for residents to the unit's garden. The project's environmental, health and social benefits were clear for all to see.
Our fourth theme is consumption and production. We must tackle over-consumption and the throwaway society, which means that we must tackle both what we buy and what we use.
Our fifth theme is people and landscape. Our landscape and our environment have made us what we are as a nation and a people. We cannot have landscapes without people. Communities are rooted in the land on which they live and work. Therefore, everything that we do must focus on sustaining living and vibrant communities. The concept of landscape and people will be central to our approach.
In conclusion, we are depleting our natural resources faster than we can replenish them - we would need three planets to continue to meet our current demands. Our challenge is to move towards one-planet living and a one-planet economy, and to balance what we give and what we take now and for the future. We need to unleash the power of Scotland's people, who rightly demand information and engagement and who wish to make informed choices. The Scottish National Party's five themes will, over the life of this Parliament, provide the focus of our efforts to deliver a greener Scotland.