On the 7th September 2023, the Scottish Government launched a public consultation titled Tackling the Nature Emergency, which summarises their overarching framework for action to combat the Biodiversity Crisis. In our capacity as a community-led, climate action network, the Edinburgh Communities Climate Action Network (ECCAN) has formulated a coordinated response that outlines our assessment of the proposed actions.
The consultation is centred around the Scottish Biodiversity Strategy, proposed in December 2022. The strategy was framed around six, high-level objectives:
- Accelerate restoration and regeneration;
- Protect nature on land and at sea, across and beyond protected areas
- Embed nature positive farming, fishing and forestry
- Protect and support the recovery of vulnerable and important species and habitats;
- Invest in nature; and,
- Take action on the indirect drivers of biodiversity loss.
Of these objectives, we have elected to focus our response to the final two objectives: ‘invest in nature’ and ‘take action on the indirect drivers of biodiversity loss’. ECCAN is based in the City of Edinburgh and works to support climate action in a metropolitan area; the final two objectives were the most closely interlinked with our expertise.
Our response is drawn from the views of our members. On the 13th November 2023, we ran a workshop with 16 participants from across our network to facilitate critical discussion of the chosen objectives. The collective responses below have been formulated from analysis of comments made at the workshop, following ECCAN’s objective: to enable a joined up approach to reducing environmental harms and tackling climate change at a regional level.
Read the full report here