Green recovery
national milestones that has been delayed or extended due to the impact of Covid-19.
A grey seal off the Isle of Coll. Scotland's Year of Coasts and Waters is one of many
S
uch has been the collective trauma of the past nine months that it seems a long time ago that 2020 was being billed as a ‘super year’ for action on the joint climate emergency and biodiversity crisis. It was also the year when Scotland was set to step firmly into the limelight and adopt a leadership role.
But that was then, and this is now. One by one, the national milestones and major international events scheduled for 2020 fell victim to a virus that put all other policy planning on hold. The focus on our marine and freshwater habitats as part of Scotland’s Year of Coasts and Waters. Key updates to the Scottish Government’s Climate Change Plan. An international biodiversity workshop in Edinburgh. A meeting of world leaders in Kunming, China, to adopt a new global biodiversity framework. And the big one: the 2020 UN Climate Change Conference (COP26) in Glasgow under the presidency of the UK Government. All pushed back or extended until 2021. Given the expectation that accompanied the turn of the year, it’s hard not to feel a sense of missed opportunity. “There is a feeling of trepidation around the fact that this was meant to be such a significant year for nature, and with a real focus on Scotland,” comments Bruce Wilson, the Trust’s Public Affairs Manager. “The fact that the First Minister had confirmed that she would go to China for the UN Convention on Biological Diversity meeting was a big moment. There has never been that level of interest in biodiversity before.”
But perhaps not all of the momentum has been lost. As part of its commitment to a green recovery from the ravages of Covid, the Scottish Government convened an independent economic advisory group that made clear how investment in natural capital and nature-based solutions would help deliver for the climate, wildlife and for people.
NATURE RECOVERY Placing nature closer to the centre of policy planning is the message enshrined in a new document co-authored by Bruce alongside his policy counterparts at RSPB Scotland and WWF Scotland. Also supported by a host of other conservation bodies, A Nature Recovery Plan outlines a list of 11 immediate and high-impact interventions to restore nature in Scotland on land and at sea (see previous spread).
Written before the pandemic, the document was due to be published just as lockdown came into force. Understandably, it was
NOVEMBER 2020 SCOTTISH WILDLIFE 19
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