Contents
This report sets out the Climate Change Committee’s independent assessment of progress in adapting to climate change in Scotland. This report comes near the end of the second Scottish Climate Change Adaptation Programme (SCCAP2) and is our second assessment of this programme, following our report in 2022. It comes ahead of the subsequent Scottish National Adaptation Plan 3 (SNAP3) due to be published in 2024, and soon after significant flooding in October 2023 highlighted the impacts that extreme weather can have on Scotland.
2. Download the report
3. Key messages
- Over the last eighteen months there have been several notable steps forward on adaptation policy, but important gaps remain.
- Overall progress on adapting to climate change in Scotland remains slow, particularly on delivery and implementation. For only one out of the 33 outcomes identified by the Committee for climate resilience across devolved areas do we find good progress on adaptation delivery. For four outcomes we find clearly insufficient progress; 16 show mixed progress; and for 12 there are insufficient data to meaningfully evaluate progress.
- Monitoring and evaluation of adaptation is slowly improving but remains limited. Since our last report in 2022, more analysis of public body reporting on adaptation has become available and data on wildfire incidents are now being recorded, but in many areas insufficient data collection is hampering adaptation efforts.
- The next national adaptation plan must embed adaptation in upcoming legislation and drive delivery. SNAP3, coming in 2024, must build on SCCAP2. It needs to ensure that there are quantified targets for climate resilience, that there are clear linkages between activities and outcomes, with clear ownership of delivery, and must finally address the long-standing absence of an effective monitoring and evaluation system. For it to address the current shortfall in adaptation delivery it must seek to unlock public and private investment in adaptation, and be fully integrated with upcoming legislation and cross-Government objectives on decarbonisation, health and nature.
Overall summary
4. Recommendations to Government
Table 1
Recommendations - Adapting to climate change - Progress in Scotland| First publication | Recommendation | Timing | Sector | Primary Responsibility |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Scotland 2023 Adaptation progress report | Ensure that support for adaptation alongside decarbonisation is included in key building policies such as the Housing to 2040 Strategy and route map and the Scottish Green Public Sector Estate Decarbonisation Scheme. | Ongoing | Buildings | Local Government and Housing Directorate; Directorate for Energy and Climate Change |
| Scotland 2023 Adaptation progress report | Address data gaps on impacts to buildings and adaptation actions by a) utilising already available data to track the resilience of the building stock (e.g. through the insurance sector) to monitor impacts on buildings from extreme weather, b) undertaking a programme of regular indoor temperature monitoring of samples of existing buildings in at-risk locations to better understand the extent of current overheating and c) consider introducing home resilience reporting that include assessments of flood and overheating resilience. | 2025 | Buildings | Local Government and Housing Directorate; Environment and Forestry Directorate; Population Health Directorate |
| Scotland 2023 Adaptation progress report | Facilitate access to finance to install proactive adaptation measures for overheating and flood resilience in buildings. This could be via grant schemes or green finance for private owners, with public funding targeted at low-income households or buildings with vulnerable occupants, alongside energy efficiency retrofit. | 2024 | Buildings | Local Government and Housing Directorate; Environment and Forestry Directorate |
| Scotland 2023 Adaptation progress report | Respond to the outcomes of the Living with Flooding action plan and recommendations of the Property Flood Resilience Delivery Group to develop a vision for identifying at-risk buildings, awareness raising, training and engagement on property-level flood protection. Consider developing localised targets for property-level installations to accelerate uptake. | 2024 | Buildings | Environment and Forestry Directorate |
| Scotland 2023 Adaptation progress report | Address data gaps on Scottish business preparedness, availability of capital and insurance for adaptation, and the effectiveness of business adaptation actions. Integrate adaptation into Government’s business engagement plans to improve awareness of data for business to monitor climate risk. | 2024 | Business | Economic Development Directorate |
| Scotland 2023 Adaptation progress report | Set out targets and supporting measures for reducing water use by business. Publish data collected by SEPA on water abstractions annually. | 2024 | Business | Energy and Climate Change Directorate; Environment and Forestry Directorate |
| Scotland 2023 Adaptation progress report | Integrate supply chain resilience to climate hazards into the Supply Chain Development Programme, including funding research to assess and monitor resilience of essential supply chains to climate shocks and establishing a process to engage businesses and enterprise agencies to develop contingency planning. | 2024 | Business | Economic Development Directorate |
| Scotland 2023 Adaptation progress report | Engage with UK Government to strengthen adaptation reporting requirements across the UK Sustainability Disclosure Requirements. | 2024 | Business | Economic Development Directorate |
| Scotland 2023 Adaptation progress report | Scottish Government should continue to support the implementation and evaluation of the Adaptation Scotland programme, upscaling the delivery of initiatives for place-based and cross-sectoral adaptation and including support for vulnerable areas and sectors. | Ongoing | Community Preparedness and Response | Energy and Climate Change Directorate |
| Scotland 2023 Adaptation progress report | Scottish Government should review the funding model for the Scottish Fire and Rescue Service and other major incident responders to provide multi-year funding for long-term planning, including monitoring of weather-related incident response. | 2024 | Community Preparedness and Response | Safer Communities Directorate |
| Scotland 2023 Adaptation progress report | Scottish Government should provide clear criteria for when central government funding will be made available to local authorities after severe weather events and include emergency funding for resilient repairs. | 2024 | Community Preparedness and Response | Local Government and Housing Directorate |
| Scotland 2023 Adaptation progress report | Scottish Government should evaluate measures rolled-out in response to the Storm Arwen review, including the impact of Ready Scot alerts and the winter preparedness programme, and roll-out of collection of vulnerability data. | 2024 | Community Preparedness and Response | Safer Communities Directorate; Performance, Resilience and Delivery Directorate |
| Scotland 2023 Adaptation progress report | Address data gaps on adapting heritage assets to climate change . For example, monitoring grant money used for adaptation and tracking how many at risk sites or buildings have been adapted for climate change. | Ongoing | Community Preparedness and Response | Historic Environment Scotland and National Trust Scotland |
| Scotland 2023 Adaptation progress report | Include a national assessment of the scale of current and future risks from weather-related cascading infrastructure failures in the Scottish National Adaptation Plan, as well as specific policies and/or actions to plan for, and manage, risks from interdependent infrastructure. | 2024 | Cross-cutting | Energy and Climate Change Directorate; Performance, Delivery and Resilience Directorate |
| Scotland 2023 Adaptation progress report | Explore policy opportunities to ensure decisions around the location of new infrastructure consider future climate change impacts, before the next National Planning Framework, as this was not explicitly considered in NPF4. | 2024 | Cross-cutting | Local Government and Housing Directorate |
| Scotland 2023 Adaptation progress report | Engage with UK Government to ensure that regulators are given consistent climate resilience remits across the UK, including all devolved administrations. | 2024 | Cross-cutting | Energy and Climate Change Directorate |
| Scotland 2023 Adaptation progress report | Work with UK Government and key energy system stakeholders, building on CCC recommendations, to understand what is required to ensure a resilient energy system in Scotland, identify resilience gaps and prepare a plan for addressing these. This plan should identify actions that can be taken within Scotland, as well as opportunities to influence UK Government policy, to respond to the multiple climate risks affecting energy generation, transmission and distribution in Scotland. | 2024 | Energy | Energy and Climate Change Directorate |
| Scotland 2023 Adaptation progress report | Address national data gaps on asset resilience. This should include monitoring the vulnerability of energy assets (including flood resilience, condition of power system infrastructure, heat resilience, ground conditions and abstraction restrictions) and monitoring weather-related outages (including the frequency and duration of the outage and the number of properties and businesses affected). | 2024 | Energy | Energy and Climate Change Directorate |
| Scotland 2023 Adaptation progress report | Undertake research, engagement, and consultation with business and financial institutions to assess the extent to which improved access to finance for adaptation is needed in Scotland. Based on this, integrate appropriate adaptation finance policy into major economic development strategies where needed, and include finance more prominently in the next Scotland national adaptation plan next Scotland climate change adaptation programme. | 2024 | Finance | Director of Energy and Climate Change |
| Scotland 2023 Adaptation progress report | Include adaptation in investment frameworks used for major development strategies and long-term strategic approaches to improving regional economies, such as the Regional Growth Deals. | Ongoing | Finance | Economic Development Directorate |
| Scotland 2023 Adaptation progress report | Engage with UK public financial institutions (such as the UK Infrastructure Bank, British Business Bank, UK Export Finance, and British International Investment) and Scotland’s financial services representatives (Scottish Financial Enterprise) to create adaptation finance strategies, setting out how they will independently and collectively ensure that no viable climate adaptation project fails for lack of finance or insurance. | 2024 | Finance | Economic Development Directorate |
| Scotland 2023 Adaptation progress report | Engage with the UK Government to strengthen adaptation reporting requirements across the Sustainability Disclosure Requirements . | 2024 | Finance | Economic Development Directorate |
| Scotland 2023 Adaptation progress report | Ensure the Food Security Unit’s remit covers risks from climate change and set out measures to ensure resilience of food supply from extreme weather in Scotland and internationally, while safeguarding against impacts from climate-related disruption of supply chains. | 2024 | Food security | Food Security Unit, Agriculture and Rural Economy Directorate |
| Scotland 2023 Adaptation progress report | Embed monitoring of current food safety risks posed by climate change into the existing risk monitoring process. | Ongoing | Food security | Food Standards Scotland |
| Scotland 2023 Adaptation progress report | Address data gaps on adaptation for health and social care, including conducting or commissioning time series analyses of temperature-related mortality data and establishing monitoring programmes to gather data on disruptions to healthcare due to flooding and overheating. | 2025 | Health | Population Health Directorate (with input from Public Health Scotland) |
| Scotland 2023 Adaptation progress report | The third Scottish National Adaptation Plan should include the broader impacts of climate change on health by ensuring that actions across other relevant policy areas consider health, wellbeing and equity. | 2024 | Health | Energy and Climate Change Directorate |
| Scotland 2023 Adaptation progress report | Assess vulnerability to existing and future climate risks across the social care sector. Following this develop a long-term, cross-sector approach on how risks in the social care sector can be addressed. | 2024 | Health | Directorate General Health and Social Care |
| Scotland 2023 Adaptation progress report | Assess the changing risks to vector-borne diseases from climate change (including those from both mosquitos and ticks). This should consider areas for future monitoring and surveillance and whether a dedicated strategy is needed. | 2024 | Health | Population Health Directorate (with input from Public Health Scotland) |
| Scotland 2023 Adaptation progress report | Address data gaps for telecoms and ICT as part of the Scottish National Adaptation Plan monitoring and evaluation framework. Develop a research programme to collect data against these indicators where none is available. | 2024 | ICT and Telecoms | Energy and Climate Change Directorate; Digital Directorate |
| Scotland 2023 Adaptation progress report | Scottish Government should publish full details on how the new Agricultural Payments Scheme will support the delivery of outcomes outlined in the draft Biodiversity Strategy and latest River Basin Management Plan. This should include clear guidance on which actions that reduce vulnerability to climate change will be eligible for payments under the scheme. | 2024 | Nature | Agriculture and Rural Economy Directorate |
| Scotland 2023 Adaptation progress report | A replacement to the Scottish Invasive Species Initiative (SISI) should be established immediately after the current initiative expires in 2023. | 2023 | Nature | Environment and Forestry Directorate |
| Scotland 2023 Adaptation progress report | Risks to freshwater environments from higher water temperatures should be better managed through adopting an integrated catchment-based approach for setting water quality targets and planning interventions in Scotland’s lochs and reservoirs. | 2025 | Nature | SEPA |
| Scotland 2023 Adaptation progress report | Identify barriers to achieving current peatland targets and consider financial incentives or facilitating private investment in peatland restoration. | 2024 | Nature | Environment and Forestry Directorate |
| Scotland 2023 Adaptation progress report | The forthcoming update to the National Marine Plan for Scotland should ensure the objectives it contains are measurable and timebound. | 2024 | Nature | Marine Directorate |
| Scotland 2023 Adaptation progress report | The new national flood strategy must include a clear vision for managing future flood risk, with measurable targets informed by updates to the National Flood Risk Assessment and the most recent climate projections, accompanied by multi-year funding for local authorities for a wider range of resilience measures. | 2025 | Towns and cities | Environment and Forestry Directorate |
| Scotland 2023 Adaptation progress report | Consult on new legislation (e.g. to supersede the 1949 Coast Protection Act) to clarify roles and responsibilities for coastal management planning, as well as laying out responsibility for monitoring delivery of actions in Coastal Change Adaptation Plans. | 2024 | Towns and cities | Environment and Forestry Directorate |
| Scotland 2023 Adaptation progress report | Establish the 5-year monitoring and evaluation programme for the fourth National Planning Framework to assess progress towards the framework’s policy objectives. This should include data collection on new infrastructure and developments in flood risk areas and planning permitted against SEPA advice. Data must be collected from local authorities and developers on the location, type and condition of SuDS and blue-green infrastructure. | 2024 | Towns and cities | Local Government and Housing Directorate |
| Scotland 2023 Adaptation progress report | Review the funding mechanisms and update guidance on funding for local authorities, private sector and community actors for installing and maintaining blue-green infrastructure. | 2024 | Towns and cities | Local Government and Housing Directorate |
| Scotland 2023 Adaptation progress report | Ensure the third Scottish National Adaptation Plan (SNAP3) incorporates urban heat risks and adaptation. | 2024 | Towns and cities | Population Health Directorate; Energy and Climate Change Directorate; Local Government and Housing Directorate |
| Scotland 2023 Adaptation progress report | Commit to timelines for publishing the Trunk Roads Adaptation Plan, Scour Management Strategy, Flood Emergency Plan and High Wind Strategy. | 2023 | Transport | Transport Scotland |
| Scotland 2023 Adaptation progress report | Develop guidance for local authorities on developing climate change risk assessments (based on UK Climate Projections 2018) and climate change resilience and adaptation plans for local roads. | 2025 | Transport | Transport Scotland |
| Scotland 2023 Adaptation progress report | The final Long-Term plan for vessels and ports on the Clyde & Hebrides and Northern Isles networks should explicitly consider investment needs under a changing climate. | 2024 | Transport | Transport Scotland |
| Scotland 2023 Adaptation progress report | The consultation on water sector policies planned for 2023 should include proposals for setting clear drought resilience standards under a changing climate, to inform leakage reduction and per capita consumption targets and future water supply needs. | 2023 | Water | Energy and Climate Change Directorate |
| Scotland 2023 Adaptation progress report | Address data gaps across across agriculture, forestry and fisheries, including collecting more recent, relevant and frequent data for monitoring purposes. Use existing or upcoming legislation to create consistent methods of collecting robust data to effectively track progress in adapting to climate change risks for agriculture and fisheries. Where there are solid frameworks in place (commercial forestry), expand data collection to include highly relevant metrics, such as on pests, pathogens and the impact of wildfires and wind damage. | 2025 | Working lands and seas | Marine Directorate; Agriculture and Rural Economy Directorate; Environment and Forestry Directorate; Scottish Forestry; Forestry and Land Scotland |
| Scotland 2023 Adaptation progress report | Ensure the developing Agriculture Bill and associated policies fully integrate and support adapting to climate change and building climate resilience for the agricultural sector. | 2024 | Working lands and seas | Agriculture and Rural Economy Directorate; Land Use Transformation Board; Environment and Forestry Directorate |
| Scotland 2023 Adaptation progress report | Tie any Government-funded payment schemes to delivering adaptation and wider environmental benefits. Ensure any basic payment scheme includes cross-compliance stipulations to carry out actions to build resilience to climate change. | 2024 | Working lands and seas | Agriculture and Rural Economy Directorate; Environment and Forestry Directorate |
| Scotland 2023 Adaptation progress report | Use the Blue Economy Vision to design a strategy for fisheries and aquaculture that integrates adaptation of the sector to climate change as a central outcome and brings together already existing legislation and frameworks into one coherent strategy for the fishing and aquaculture sectors. Ensure that policies are updated with specific adaptation actions, SMART climate resilience objectives and appropriate monitoring and evaluation to support the sector to adapt to a changing climate and ocean acidification. | 2025 | Working lands and seas | Marine Directorate |
| Scotland 2023 Adaptation progress report | Introduce sector plans for benefitting from any opportunities that might arise from climate change, including the commercial exploitation of new warmwater species that are migrating to Scottish waters and the profitability of shifting to the cultivation of crops and commercial forestry that thrive in expected new climate conditions. | 2025 | Working lands and seas | Agriculture and Rural Economy Directorate; Environment and Forestry Directorate; Marine Directorate; Land Use Transformation Board |
| Scotland 2023 Adaptation progress report | Ensure the key data gaps regarding exposure, vulnerability and adaptation are closed across all sectors with the provision of a comprehensive, well-funded and integrated monitoring and evaluation system operational from the start of the next Scottish National Adaptation Plan. | 2024 | Cross-cutting | Energy and Climate Change Directorate |
5. Supporting information, charts and data
6. Supporting research
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