Ahead of Scotland’s Climate Week, and amid a rising backlash against green policies at home and across the world, our CEO Barry Fisher reflects on the everyday actions being taken in communities across the country. He explores our role inspiring the large proportion of society who support taking fair, positive and speedy action for our environment and he shares positive and practical stories of success. Ultimately, he makes the call for sustainable funding to scale up climate and nature education across Scotland.
Climate action is happening all across our country every day, but Scotland’s Climate Week - running from 29 September to 5 October - gives all of us, working so hard to inspire positive change, a chance to come together, highlight and celebrate achievements being taken across Scotland, and call for deeper and more sustained commitment locally, nationally and internationally.
We could lambast the fact that nine of Scotland’s last 13 climate targets have been missed, that the critical temperature threshold of 1.5C was breached across a whole year in 2023 for the first time, that three quarters of people in Scotland worry about climate change. We could be angry that global consensus of the need to combat climate change urgently is in jeopardy.
But that is not the role we think our charity should play. We firmly believe our place is to concentrate on the way forward, support and inspire positive action and focus on celebrating the enormous efforts being made already by people from all walks of life and from communities right across the country.
So many people care deeply about nature and protecting our environment; many of those we work with through our connections to Stop Climate Chaos Scotland and Scottish Environment Link feel that politics is failing them. Members of #TeamKSB often feel frustrated and angry as climate change seems to diminish as a priority.
Yet while we acknowledge the need for more urgent global action we also know that millions of people are not connected to the mission and do not have ‘saving our environment’ on their list of priorities.
So many of the people we speak to are interested in making their communities cleaner and safer to live in, improving the health and happiness of their families, friends and colleagues and saving money. They want to see plants and animals thriving.
It is these basic motivators that often lead to wider action and long-lasting behaviour changes from people that also support our aims of combating climate change and restoring nature.
I believe that Keep Scotland Beautiful plays a vital role in bridging the gap between the experts, the scientists, the campaigners and the general public, of all ages and backgrounds, who just want to live their lives as best they can.
This Climate Week we will be joining communities, schools, businesses and individuals across Scotland to talk about climate change, unpack the barriers to doing something to cut carbon emissions and celebrating and normalising positive climate action.
You often hear people say that we must instil good environmental behaviours in children if we are to ensure we address the issues we have with littering, with the depletion of nature and climate change. We are extremely proud of the leading role we have delivering climate education at scale in schools, equipping educators, children and young people to take positive action for climate and nature. Last year we directly taught 27,000 pupils through our Climate Action Schools programme, and just last week we ran five days of live lessons – beaming our team members into schools right across Scotland and engaging with thousands of pupils and teachers, in English and Gaelic. As always, we were inspired by the positive stories that the children and young people relayed to us, the enthusiasm that they showed as they participated in our call to work together to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions and track emissions savings.
It is clear that progress that is being made every day in small and big ways thanks to the actions of communities, business, schools and individuals, and we will always paint a picture of positivity by encouraging people to learn about the additional benefits of taking action for our climate – such as improved health and wellbeing, healthier eco-systems, and lower living costs.
Recent polling carried out by Climate Outreach highlights that more than two out of three people want to see ambitious action[1]. It also highlighted that the biggest fear for people in Scotland is the harm climate change may do to nature and wildlife, followed by the impact on the world’s poorest (24%), then by household bills rising as a result of climate change (22%).
From my own experience of living in an old, rural house, I know all too well the cost of household bills, and the environmental guilt I feel about not currently being able to invest in more sustainable alternatives to heat it is hard to digest. My pledge following my Carbon Literacy training was to reduce power consumption at home, in part I have achieved this but there is always more to be done. Rather than beat myself up about how I haven’t done enough, I have come to recognise that by doing other things such as helping plant trees in the local community, ensuring that the environment is a key part of our local community plan and having conversations with people locally, I have unintentionally played an important part tackling climate change. (Although here’s a funny story – having spent ages researching tree species that were deer friendly for the community to plant, the feral goats ate almost half of the saplings!)
What is my point here? Well, it is this ‘unintentional’ climate action that we need to scale up. Combatting a global problem such as climate change is scary. It may appear to be unachievable at an individual level. And it is all too easy to blame politicians, and big corporates for the lack of progress. Yes, they have a vital role to play, but let’s not forget the power of passionate people taking action every day to improve the places they live. Earlier this month we brought together community groups from across Scotland at an online awards ceremony for Beautiful Scotland competition – part of our Climate and Nature Friendly Communities Network. Each and every one of the volunteers giving significant amount of time to improve their community is also planting for biodiversity, recycling, upcycling, growing fruit and vegetables to share and in so doing reducing greenhouse gas emissions, food miles, water and energy consumption – and crucially bringing climate and the environment closer to many more people.
So, I ask you, if you feel climate change action is ‘not for you’, to consider adopting behaviours that save you money instead – choose to buy less, reuse more, grow your own vegetables, mend things rather than chucking out and buy second hand instead of new. Choose actions that are good for your health – walk and cycle more, take the car less often, spend time in nature with your family and friends. Then let it dawn on you that by doing so you are taking action to combat climate change. See, it can be easy!
I’m not downplaying the importance of political leadership and corporate commitment to do things differently and this Climate Week we will be working behind the scenes to identify opportunities to influence policy and support Scottish Government ambitions. But what I am saying is that I very much feel our role as a small, but mighty, environmental charity is to keep on with the doing. We will be on the ground across the country - from delivering Climate Emergency Training across a variety of sectors, to supporting youth climate conferences, delivering a workshop on sustainability and climate change to Police Scotland, talking to SMEs about our environmental management support services with Business Gateway Lanarkshire and reflecting with and celebrating the efforts of ordinary people in communities across Scotland working to make their places more beautiful and sustainable.
I feel the positive progress that’s already underway in communities across our beautiful country. What I hope #TeamKSB can do is share this positive progress and inspire those young people, community members to make the future tangibly better.
We all desperately need to feel that this is possible, and that everyone can play a part.
We support the 