Award of RESAS/005/23 - Delivering the Environment Strategy for Scotland. Transformative changes ...

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Introduction 1. This is a research project commissioned by the Scottish Government’s Environment Strategy Team (Future Environment Division, Environment and Forestry Directorate) to support the development of the Environment Strategy for Scotland. Background & Context 2. The research project will help to inform the development of Scotland’s Environment Strategy. The Environment Strategy 3. The Environment Strategy is a statutory commitment under Continuity Act 2021, which requires Scottish Ministers to publish an ‘environmental policy strategy’ and to have due regard to it when developing policies. The strategy has 2 key aims: i. To create an overarching framework for Scotland’s environment and climate policies. ii. To promote a whole-of-government approach to support Scotland’s role in tackling the climate and nature emergencies. In particular, the strategy recognises that this will require transformative changes in Scotland’s economy and society (in line with the conclusions of the international IPCC and IPBES processes ). The strategy aims to explore what these transformations will mean in practice in Scotland, and how the Scottish Government can help to drive these, as part of its commitment to a just transition, in ways that create wider benefits for people’s health and wellbeing, for tackling inequalities and for supporting green jobs and businesses. The Scottish Government is taking a phased approach to developing the strategy: - Its vision and outcomes were published in 2020. - An initial monitoring framework and website were published in 2021 – identifying indicators for tracking progress towards the outcomes and highlighting gaps where new indicators will be explored. - The current and final phase is to develop ‘outcome pathways’, setting out actions and priorities across government for delivering the strategy’s outcomes. In particular, this work is focusing on 3 outcomes, which describe: - the transformations in Scotland’s economy and society needed to help tackle the climate and nature emergencies; and - the goal of ensuring Scotland’s has a sustainable global footprint - focusing on the impact Scotland’s consumption and production on the natural environment in other countries around the world. Development of outcome pathways 4. This project will form part of a set of four research projects which are being commissioned to help inform the development of outcome pathways. 5. Three research projects are focusing on individual outcomes: on Scotland’s economy, society and global footprint (as described above). Two of these projects have recently completed, led by the New Economics Foundation and Global Footprint Network (due for publication in November 2023). A third project, focusing on the ‘society’ outcome, is planned to commence shortly. These research projects i) evaluate evidence on Scotland’s current progress towards the outcome and ii) make recommendations on how the Scottish Government can use the available policy levers most effectively to drive progress towards the outcome. 6. This research project will complement these projects by ensuring that the development of outcome pathways is grounded in the latest international thinking on transformative change for sustainability. This will help to ensure that the level of ambition, and depth/breadth of scope, set out in the pathways is sufficient to support the economic and societal transformations which the IPCC and IPBES recognise are necessary for tackling the climate and nature emergencies. 7. In particular, the research project will review the developing international literature on transformative change for sustainability and consider what this literature reveals about key leverage points for driving transformative change. It will then develop recommendations on how the emerging theory on transformative change and leverage points could potentially be applied in Scotland.