In 2020 governments, businesses, and citizens around the world have had to respond rapidly and radically to the more immediate global emergency of COVID-19. As the world begins to recover from this emotionally and economically devastating pandemic, questions are arising about how societal views and values may have changed in light of this experience, and what this might mean for how we think and talk about the global climate emergency.

Through a desk review, focus groups and a survey, this research identifies the potential impact the response to the COVID-19 pandemic has had on how the Scottish public understand and respond to climate change messaging and narratives.  This learning can support a green recovery from the pandemic by using language and framing that speaks to people’s values, generates a positive impact on key audiences and encourages the action needed.

Key findings

• The impact of COVID-19 has widened the narrative around climate change to highlight that: collective action and change are possible, and in recovering from the pandemic, there is the opportunity to introduce further measures to tackle climate change.
• Although people care about climate change it is not top of mind for most – participants were still engaged with the topic of climate change and recognise its importance, but its significance was relative to the pandemic.
• A large array of climate change and environment related terminology is in circulation but vocabulary and understanding are limited. 
• The idea of a green recovery is relevant and important to people in Scotland but as a term it needs to be clearly explained.
• It is not always clear what the different climate responsibilities are and where they lie.
• People are looking for a strong, urgent tone, with clear targets and path to follow.

Recommendations

In order to develop further the Scottish Government’s public engagement activity on climate change and to help facilitate support for a ‘green recovery’ from the pandemic, the report makes the following key considerations/ recommendations:

• Educate and build knowledge around climate change by explaining key terms. To improve clarity of understanding and personal relevance, frame these and illustrate arguments in ways that are relevant to the lives of the different audience groups. 
• To help create a sense of optimism to motivate action and demonstrate leadership, it is important to present:
  • A clear and concise vision, to help the public understand where everyone needs to get to – the end goal.
  • An accompanying routemap with clear targets, to help people in Scotland better understand the required journey and actions to reach the end goal. Emphasise key targets and how these can be achieved
  • A sense of being “all in this together” and all having a role to play at several levels (including global, Scotland, business, community, personal)
  • The progress made on both climate change and COVID-19 due to collective action

• Clearly communicate the urgency of tackling climate change, but balanced with presenting climate change as a challenge that can be solved. There is strong support for action at all levels of society and a clear indication that a strong ‘must do’ tone is most appropriate for the topic of climate change.
• Ensure the source is credible and reputable, but keep language accessible – while it is important that messages originate from a source the audience considers trustworthy, avoiding excessive use of climate-related jargon or other technical language is also required to maximise appeal and understanding.

Weather disruption is a ‘system stressor’ that is projected to increase in the coming decades as the global climate changes. The UK Climate Change Risk Assessment has identified climate change as one of the greatest risks to public health in the UK, and one which will impact vulnerable people disproportionally.

This project looks at how providers of social care support at home in Scotland respond to extreme weather events. Based on experience from three case studies of extreme weather, it considers how the sector is planning for, dealing with and learning from such events. The study only looks at support provided in people’s homes. It does not address care provided in other settings such as residential care homes.

The report is a first step in making an assessment of the social care support sector’s resilience to climate change and helping to improve this. The research is based on interviews with social care providers and with those working in business continuity, emergency planning and community resilience in six geographical focus areas. It also involved desk research, drawing on strategies and plans relevant to the provision of social care support at home which are in the public domain.

The study was commissioned and carried out prior to the coronavirus (Covid-19) pandemic, and also at a time when the Scottish Government was working with partners to develop a programme to support reform of adult social care support.

The report is published with the hope that the findings and recommendations resonate with and can support the recovery and remobilisation of the sector, and the ongoing reform work that was underway prior to the pandemic, and can support the wider learning around resilience from the pandemic.

Key findings

• While extreme weather is a consideration in social care support, the research suggests planning for more frequent events caused by climate change is not front of mind for current leaders and managers in the sector.
• The case study extreme weather events increased staff workload and travel times. Some providers moved to working from priority lists following Met Office weather warnings, continuing care and support categorised as critical or essential. We did not find data on the impact on clients not on the priority lists. It is also worth noting that priority list clients have complex needs that require specialist skills, which those staff who can reach them during travel disruption may not have. This makes staff re-deployment more challenging.
• The social care support sector – thanks to the extraordinary commitment of staff – flexes at a time of crisis. Delivering social care through the case study extreme weather events was dependent on the goodwill, flexibility and high levels of motivation of the existing workforce. Some of the challenges faced during extreme weather bear aspects of similarity to those emerging as key factors for responding to the pandemic and during the first steps towards recovery.

This evidence review examines Scottish consumers’ awareness of and attitudes towards low-carbon heating technologies and the consumer drivers and barriers to their take-up.

Emissions from buildings account for around 20% of Scotland’s greenhouse gas emissions; lowering them will be essential for Scotland to achieve its net-zero emissions target by 2045 and is likely to require changes to the heating and hot water systems of nearly all homes and non-domestic buildings.

While growing, the proportion of non-electrical heat demand met by renewable heat sources in Scotland is low, reaching 6.3% in 2018. Deployment of low-carbon and renewable heating needs to increase significantly to achieve our climate goals.

Key findings

• Broad concern about climate change is not driving widespread uptake of low-carbon heat.
• Raising awareness of low-carbon systems may not be enough to drive uptake.
• People can be put off switching to low-carbon heating systems.
• There are two main factors that put people off low-carbon heating systems: the expected cost and uncertainty about performance.
• The minority who have installed low-carbon heating tend to be motivated by environmental benefits.
• Financial support persuades some to adopt low-carbon heat but is not key for all and is not enough to drive mass uptake alone.
• The heating trade is an important source of information about heating systems.

Recommendations

• Reduce the inconvenience and uncertainty of switching to low-carbon heat.
• Help consumers discover what low-carbon heating options are suitable for them.
• Proactively introduce the idea of low-carbon heating options.
• Give consumers confidence they will be able to get the comfort they want for a predictable price.
• Start with homes that are already suited to low-carbon heating systems, because they will need less work.
• Encourage less suitable households to prepare their home for low-carbon heating.
• Simplify the application process for financial support.

This report was commissioned as part of the Scottish Government’s work to develop a new Public Engagement Strategy for climate change. At the core of this work is the need to understand public attitudes to climate change and review different models of public engagement to examine what works in achieving the transformation needed.

Key findings

• Levels of concern about climate change have increased in recent years. The review finds that most people in Scotland believe that climate change is happening, and agree that climate change is an immediate and urgent issue. Scots are more likely to say they believe human activity has been a factor in the causes of climate change than people in England and Wales.
• The Scottish public generally feel that more could be done to tackle climate change and support climate targets and agreements, and believe that governments should be showing leadership for tackling climate change.
• The review identifies a number of ways governments can engage the public on climate change – no one identified as the ‘best’ approach. Each approach offer strengths and limitations, and reflect the range of different purposes it is designed to serve. 
• The findings lend weight to the Scottish Government’s focus on public behaviours and public engagement as part of its work to tackle the climate emergency. However, levels of concern about and personal action on climate change issues vary across different demographic groups.
• In the design and facilitation of public engagement it is therefore worth considering carefully the different ‘starting points’ that different groups may have in terms of understanding and engagement on climate change. For effective engagement, it is important to make climate change easy to understand and relatable to the public.

It is worth noting that the vast majority of studies included in the review took place prior to the COVID-19 pandemic. Two of the surveys and six of the public engagement examples included in this review were carried out during the COVID-19 pandemic. As these were conducted during a time of crisis and transition, it is too soon to say whether these findings accurately reflect the attitudes and behaviours of the public in a post-COVID-19 world. This review also does not have enough data to make comparisons on public attitudes to climate change before and after COVID-19. 

Property Flood Resilience (PFR) are practical measures designed to improve the resilience of properties to flooding, and the emotional impacts of flooding to people. They can either prevent water from entering a property (resistance measure), for example, flood guards across doorways, or limit the damage once water has entered a property (resilience measure), for example by water-proofing the brickwork.

PFR measures may be installed by an individual, or by a local government as part of a flood protection scheme or a subsidy scheme.

This study provides a baseline best estimate of the potential for PFR and current uptake.  The next stage of the ‘Living with Flooding: action plan’, is to consider possible reasons for the poor uptake of PFR and approaches to encourage uptake more widely.

The research has analysed SEPA flood-map data and qualitative surveys to determine:

1. the flood risk circumstances whereby properties would benefit from PFR;
2. the estimated number of properties and businesses at risk from flooding in each local authority area which could benefit from PFR today and in the future, allowing for climate change projections; and
3. the uptake of PFR measures in Scotland in 2019, including how and when measures were installed.

Key findings

The findings suggest that potentially around 81,000 properties may benefit from the uptake of some kind of PFR measure. This is around one third of all properties at risk of flooding in Scotland from any source. All of these properties could benefit from some form of manual resistance measures (such as door and window guards, airbrick covers). Of these, 64,000 could benefit from automatic measures (such as sumps and pumps, non-return valves, automatic airbricks). 40,000 of the properties may also benefit from resilience measures.

Analysis show that areas where surface water flooding is usually less than 0.6m in depth will benefit the most from PFR measures.

An estimated 1,400-1,500 properties are currently protected by PFR across Scotland. The number has increased by at least 300 since 2014, with the majority installed by local authorities.

This shows the significant potential for wider uptake of PFR to contribute to flood risk management and climate resilience in Scotland. Therefore, while local authorities appear to have led the way in terms of contributing to PFR uptake, independent uptake by property owners needs to be encouraged and facilitated further.

Furthermore, as the number of properties at risk of flooding in Scotland increases with climate change, the number of properties that could benefit from PFR is expected to rise by 25,000 to 43,000 (30-70%) by the 2080s.

This shows that uptake needs to increase significantly over the short to medium term to ensure that Scotland employs the range of flood management measures best able to reduce the impact of flood risk, both current and in the future.

The analysis suggests that 400-600 properties would need to install PFR measures each year just to keep up with the projected increased impact on flooding from climate change, even without reducing current risks. This highlights both the significant role that PFR can play in managing the impacts of climate change on flood risk, but also the significant challenge in increasing uptake.

Read the Living With Flooding action plan

This study contrasts and compares how jurisdictions develop and monitor their strategic plans for achieving greenhouse gas (GHG) emission reductions. This is useful insight as the Scottish Government develops plans to meet the targets in the Scottish Climate Change Act.

The study looked at 16 jurisdictions (12 national and four sub-national). Of these, eight national and sub-national jurisdictions – Belgium (including Flanders and Wallonia), Germany (including Baden Württemberg), Netherlands, New Zealand and Sweden – were then reviewed in more detail. These were selected based on various criteria, including the level of ambition in their climate plans, the modelling approach used, sub-national links and innovative approaches taken.

Main findings:

• Only two of the eight jurisdictions have either legislated, or are legislating for, a net zero target.
• Some have expressed their GHG emission reduction targets as an absolute economy-wide percentage reduction of all GHGs compared to a 1990 baseline. However, there are cases where jurisdictions have chosen to exclude certain sectors from the economy-wide targets being set.
• When setting a 2050 GHG emissions reduction target, most jurisdictions have set a 2030 target to act as a stepping stone along the way.
• All jurisdictions had common elements, for example quantitative assessment of emission reduction potential and the associated costs.
• Jurisdictions would typically enter into political decision-making process which involves engagement with their political parties, key industry players, civil society and academia.
• Jurisdictions identified the importance of a clear governance and institutional set-up to ensure implementation and regular review of the climate plan. For most jurisdictions, the implementation was led by the Environment Ministry, with support from several other ministries.

Managed adaptive approaches to planning can outperform traditional methods in the context of climate change. Managed adaptive flood risk planning, unlike traditional ‘predict then adapt’ approaches, anticipates the fact that as learning about the climate takes place, future Flood Risk Management (FRM) planners will have more detailed information on flood risks than current planners.

This project uses international case studies to illustrate how adaptive approaches can be implemented in practical settings. 

It therefore places a positive value on affording future FRM planners flexibility to adapt appropriately to the superior information on risks that they will have at their disposal.

In Scotland, high-level guidance strongly endorses managed adaptive planning. The guidance states that flood risk management planning should be forward looking, acknowledge that future climate change risk is uncertain, promote managed adaptive planning as a means for dealing with this uncertainty, and endorse the use of real options analysis for appraising climate-sensitive investments. 

However, of 42 flood risk management schemes approved for the current planning cycle, 25 schemes are designed to provide a fixed standard of protection, of which 11 include an allowance for the future. None of the schemes incorporate adaptive plans or make reference to multiple climate change scenarios. Scottish case studies examined by this study nonetheless show that adaptive planning is both feasible and valuable, across a variety of relevant contexts.

We identified the following barriers to adaptive management:

• The lack of an adaptive mindset among all stakeholders, including practitioners and the general public. 
• The lack of a standardised methodology to generate adaptive plans. 
• The lack of a standardised methodology for economic appraisal of adaptive plans. 
• Funding mechanisms can disincentivise managed adaptive planning and promote large scale interventions. 
• Planning boundaries.

To address some of these barriers, this report makes recommendations to extend SEPA guidance on adaptive planning. The recommendations set out more prescriptive guidance on how adaptive planning should be implemented, assisting FRM planners in overcoming methodological hurdles and ensuring a greater degree of consistency between responsible authorities.

Recommendations include:

• Local FRM planners specify within their objectives (i) to manage flood risk at the catchment level, and (ii) to manage uncertain risks, noting that uncertainty on the climate and local exposure/vulnerability is expected to unfold over time. These aspects of the objectives should be made explicit in invitations to tender for flood studies.
• Where an adaptive approach is to be followed, candidate plans are constructed following four steps: (i) plans are built up from a set of schemes, including NFM options, that individually provide a range of standards of protection; (ii) schemes are screened using a multi-criteria approach that accounts for the benefits of flexibility; (iii) trigger points are identified under a set of climate or development scenarios, in which schemes cease to provide an acceptable level of protection; (iv) candidate plans are developed as sequences of contingent interventions, which can be triggered by future assessments of flood risk, designed to provide acceptable levels of protection over the whole planning horizon.
• Plans are appraised using a net present value criterion based on real options analysis, which accounts for the likelihood of different climate or development scenarios.
• Plans are implemented and updated using risk models held by responsible authorities.

*Please note there was a typo in original report download. Under the introduction on p6 it stated ‘sea levels have risen by 1cm since the 1920s’. This should be 10cm. This has been updated on the PDF* 

Community resilience and climate policy has the potential to be complimentary and mutually beneficial. However, there has been limited attention from both research and practice on how to capitalise on the opportunities such synergies provide for achieving more effective outcomes, and on how they can be maximised through policy development and implementation processes.

This project has looked at a spectrum of approaches and methods for joined-up working; from co-operation (shared information and mutual support) to co-ordination (common tasks with common goals) and collaboration (integrated strategies and shared purpose).

There is a significant gap in evaluation of the identified methods in terms of the quality of the collaborative process. Nevertheless, the review identified critical factors in creating a culture for collaboration. This involves identifying or developing structures and practices that actively enable and reward effective collaborations, and learns and shares the lessons learnt from each collaborative effort.

Incremental, piecemeal reduction of the functional fluvial floodplain is a threat to sustainable flood risk management in Scotland. From a flood risk management (FRM) perspective, removal of functional floodplain will often increase flood risk elsewhere, for example by increasing water levels upstream or downstream. Floodplain loss also results in ecological loss.

Despite Scottish Planning Policy seeking to safeguard functional floodplain, there are a number of reasons for loss, including historical planning permissions, householder and agricultural permitted developments and the cumulative effect of small scale developments.

Climate change is expected to have a significant impact on flood risk. As the frequency and magnitude of heavy rain events increase in the coming years, it is likely the frequency and magnitude of fluvial flooding will also increase.

Based on a literature review this report sets out a possible method for estimating floodplain loss and corresponding flood risk impacts. The method uses:

• information from historical maps and aerial photography;
• other datasets (such as the locations of embankments per the SEPA Morphological Pressures Database); and
• terrain information (if available).

Together this can drive the SEPA national flood map models using different digital terrain data for different time periods (therefore representing change in the functional floodplain) and simulate floodplain loss over time.

To inform a review of the Scottish Government’s climate change public engagement strategy, this report identifies and evaluates different approaches to grouping or segmenting the public according to their attitudes and behaviours related to climate change. In addition, to ensure the new strategy is based on the most up-to-date evidence, it reviews the dominant ideas on how to change behaviour.

Key findings regarding how to influence behaviour change are:

• While there have been many studies published in this area recently, behaviours and practices remain the dominant lenses.
• Behaviour change research remains a highly active area, but it has not seen any fundamentally different or significantly more effective approach introduced in the last five years.
• There is a growing evidence base highlighting the limitations of focusing on changing beliefs and attitudes with the intention of changing behaviour.
• Research also highlights the limits on what individual and collective choice can achieve and the limits of ‘nudging’ or manipulating choice architecture. This is not to say these approaches are not effective. However, a more interventionist approach is necessary to achieve the radical changes to our lifestyles required by the Scottish Government’s carbon-reduction targets.
• Using an interrelated practice lens rather than the existing behaviour-based approach will have significant benefits in guiding the interventions required by our climate change obligations.

Key findings regarding segmentation:

• Segmentation is a useful tool for helping to develop public knowledge and attitudes. However, it has limited effect on stimulating actions supporting new low-carbon behaviours over the long term when used to target information-based campaigns.
• It is challenging to identify which segmentation variables (and in which combinations) are the most effective and should be used as the basis for targeted climate change engagement. This is due to a) the broad range of variables used across the themes of housing, transport, consumption/waste, food and diet; b) inconsistent and missing evidence across a large number of studies reviewed; and c) conceptual limitations of the dominant belief-attitude-intention pathway.

The research summarises the most important and trustworthy segmentation studies into two tables. Then, to allow users to identify the variables used and to what effect, the available evidence has been formatted into an online database.