Climate Engagement Fund

Fund aims and strategic fit

Tackling climate change is a strategic priority for the Scottish Government. The Climate Engagement Fund (CEF) is a key deliverable against the Public Engagement Strategy for Climate Change (PES), which is a statutory requirement under the Climate Change (Scotland) Act 2009.

The fund will enable organisations and groups across Scotland to lead their own climate change engagement initiatives as climate change communicators – or 'trusted messengers’– in line with the strategic objectives of the PES.

Trusted messengers are organisations or groups with existing audiences who are best placed to engage with them on climate change. The PES is a strategy aimed at supporting trusted messengers, and the CEF is a key delivery mechanism for this.

The CEF can be used to:

• engage people and deepen their understanding of the climate emergency and the action that society needs to take to reach net zero, thus delivering on the ‘understand’ objective of the PES

Impacts, outcomes and outputs

The fund is aiming to achieve the following impacts:

• delivery against the Public Engagement Strategy for Climate Change
• delivery against Scotland’s statutory climate change targets, as per Climate Change (Emissions Reduction Targets) (Scotland) Act 2019

More specifically, the intended outcomes of the fund are to:

• increase the number of individuals and communities who are climate literate
• increase the number of individuals and communities who understand the need to take action and are empowered to do so
• widen participation by engaging in new, innovative ways and with new communities and individuals

The outputs of the fund are:

• the funded outputs will be agreed with successful bidders (e.g. number of events held, number of individuals engaged). Given the new and innovative nature of the Fund, these will not be set and will be assessed against their ability to deliver the objective of the funding
• monitoring reports of grant-funded activity to ensure activities are undertaken in line with Fund objectives and outputs/outcomes are achieved