Scotland on Track for Climate Change

As a former Minister for Environment and Climate Change, I have been pleased to see the increase of global awareness for climate action stem from the UN Climate Summit meeting. World leaders recently met in New York to debate specific needs and raise awareness on the need for political action. While no specific laws are in place, the first draft for a universal agreement is set to be written at a conference in Lima this December.

While Scotland’s current devolved powers have somewhat limited our international influence on climate change, we have set a strong example of progress and international engagement.

From 1990 to 2012 we achieved a 29.9% reduction in unadjusted emissions, higher than the UK as a whole and the averages for both the EU-15 and EU-28. At this percentage we are on track to reach our target of a 42% reduction of greenhouse gas emissions by 2020.

As the UN continues to meet in December and in Paris the following year we will likely see new invitations and legislations to change the world environment. It is important when considering these changes to rely on a definition of the environment that is not limited to the natural world but which includes the surroundings and conditions in which a person lives.

While we stay focused on our global output, the ethics of climate effects on individuals must be considered.

Former Irish president Mary Robinson has been actively instructing on the issue, for what she calls, climate justice. She has said that there is substantial agreement among Governments that climate change is undermining human rights.

I look in particular at what happens in Africa in that regard, particularly the gender effect of climate change. In Africa, 70 to 80 per cent of the farmers are females. Mary Robinson has said:

“Women on the whole don’t get agriculture training. And they’re having to learn now to diversify their crops, to have seeds that can survive in drought or survive in waterlogged [conditions], and so there’s a disconnect between even the donor community for this agricultural training, mainly focusing on men, and who’s [actually doing the farming].”

That is the price that is being paid by people in poverty in many countries in Africa. I hope that in our international engagement, whatever its character and whatever opportunities exist for it, we will be able to pursue that gender inequality in particular, because the effects of that gap between men and women are very substantial.

Scotland has exerted extensive efforts to help improve the environments of these individuals. In support of closing the gap of gender and resource inequality the Scottish Government is working directly with Mary Robinson’s organization in Malawi, Zambia, Tanzania and Rwanda. The group is improving access to clean water and empowering women to overcome the current challenges they face.

As new climate initiatives are released in the coming months I hope that we can keep in mind the individual rights of those most affected in developing countries—as their lives are directly impacted by our climate choices.