– in the Scottish Parliament at on 18 May 2022.
7. To ask the Scottish Government how the ambitions expressed in the first annual report to Parliament on progress in developing “The Environment Strategy for Scotland” coincide with the findings of the latest Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report. (S6O-01100)
The Scottish Government’s environment strategy sets out our overarching response to the global climate and nature crises. As highlighted by Mr Torrance, recent reports from the IPCC highlight the increased urgency of those efforts. The environment strategy progress report, which we published in March, recognised that, although Scotland has made great progress in cutting emissions, we must go further and faster to reach our target of a 75 per cent reduction by 2030. We are considering all options on how to accelerate progress.
In the wake of the latest IPCC report, leading scientists stated that the UK Government is moving too slowly to tackle the climate emergency. Meanwhile, the UK Government’s Brexit minister has declared that he supports exploiting every last cubic inch of gas from the North Sea. Does the Minister for Environment and Land Reform share my concern that, if the Tories get their way, Brexit will become an act of environmental, as well as social and economic, vandalism?
I absolutely do. The Scottish Government has made clear our commitment to remain aligned with the European Union on environmental standards. The EU is a beacon of progress in environmental policy, which is in stark contrast to the UK Government, whose cringeworthily entitled Brexit freedoms bill seems intent on abandoning legislation that has protected Scotland’s environmental interests for almost 50 years.