The Environment Strategy for Scotland: Delivering the Environment Strategy Outcome on Scotland's Global Footprint - Evidence Base & Policy Levers
This report presents evidence and initial recommendations on how the Scottish Government could use the available policy levers to help ensure Scotland’s international environmental impact is sustainable.
Footnotes
1. Some have associated the beginning of this new era with the “great acceleration” of resource throughput post World War II.
2. With human demand corresponding 1.7-fold what Earth can renew, while also recognising that demand should be within half the Earth's capacity gives us an indication of how far the human metabolism exceeds a desired state: 1.7 / 0.5 = 3.4, i.e. more than a factor three.
3. For lack of data, and due to limited scope of this project, this study only covers the consumption Footprint of Scotland, extrapolated, as explained in Appendix B, from the UK situation. The production Footprint would inform about resources required to power Scotland’s economy. The economy in return earns the financial income that then is (largely) used to pay for Scotland’s consumption.
4. Consumption categories are based on the UN Classification of Individual Consumption by Purpose (COICOP). See Appendix A for detailed subcategories.
5. The UN Classification of Individual Consumption by Purpose (COICOP) is used widely as a categorization scheme for household consumption expenditure. While spending on food may logically be considered food, this consumption falls under the “services” of restaurants and hotels, and therefore is not disaggregated from services in the CLUM.
6. Isbell et al. identify as indirect drivers of biodiversity loss, in order of importance, production and consumption, human population dynamics, governance, trade, and technology (2022).
8. https://nationalperformance.gov.scot/national-outcomes
9. See Policy Prospectus, published in April 2023 which sets out the First Minister's overarching goals: Equality, opportunity, community
10. One way to overcome this may be how they dealt with such challenges in Curitiba, Brazil. They implemented such solutions, as in the case of urban high-speed bus lines, in smaller batches thereby demonstrating the benefits more clearly to the ones to be convinced next.
11. Stockholm+50: Unlocking a Better Future
13. Riskier Business: The UK’s overseas land footprint
14. The James Hutton Institute explains in its section 1.2 on 'Transboundary spillovers' (Ishii et al., 2022: pg. 2) that the prosperity of high-income countries is often associated with the burden of erosive practices in low-income countries. “For example, while trade is an important source of income, the production of goods destined for [higher income] nations can often lead to pollution of communities around manufacturing plants, drive deforestation, reduce soil fertility and be done under poor labour conditions. Therefore, the consumption of goods in Scotland can have consequences elsewhere.”
15. Responding to such environmental pressures, the UK Government introduced provisions for due diligence obligations related to forest-risk commodities in the Environment Act 2021. These provisions aim to prevent large businesses from importing illegally produced forest-risk commodities through legal restrictions, mandatory due diligence exercises and annual reporting. A consultation on their implementation was completed in March 2022. However, criticism exists regarding the UK's approach, which covers only deforestation and land conversion deemed illegal according to producer countries' local laws. In contrast, the EU proposes a broader 'deforestation-free' approach, requiring companies to confirm that products have been produced on land that has not been subject to deforestation or forest degradation after 31 December 2020. Robust certification schemes could assist businesses in fulfilling due diligence, but overreliance on them presents risks due to the limitations of current certification schemes and traceability barriers. Concerns also arise regarding compliance with World Trade Organization rules, potential trade obstacles, and the burden on producers arising from varying regional and domestic deforestation legislation. There is a call for more meaningful involvement of stakeholders from lower-income countries when shaping these regulations. Not only would they be more appropriate, but also increase in their legitimacy. While the UK Government holds authority over due diligence regulations, the Scottish Government can seek to influence their alignment with EU standards and broaden their scope to cover businesses placing forest-risk commodities on Scottish and UK markets beyond a legally-based approach.
16. European Committee of the Regions, Soldi, R., Sustainable public procurement of food, European Committee of the Regions, 2018, https://data.europa.eu/doi/10.2863/1187
17. The strengthening of multi-lateral commitments and partnerships to address sustainability in international trade and supply chains features in the recommendations of bodies such as the WWF and RSPB (2020), the World Economic Forum (2020), the UK Global Resource Initiative (2020), and other stakeholders (Bager et al., 2021). The Dasgupta review on the Economics of Biodiversity (Dasgupta, 2021) highlights agreements in relation to deforestation, such as the New York Declaration on Forests (halving deforestation by 2020 and ending it by 2030) and the Amsterdam Declaration (aiming for deforestation-free supply chains by 2020).
More recently, in the Glasgow Leader’s Declaration on Forest and Land Use (at COP26 in Glasgow, November 2021), 140 leaders committed to halting and reversing forest loss and land degradation by 2030. However, thus far, international agreements and international environmental law have been ineffective in halting global deforestation (Dasgupta, 2021; Henn, 2021). Dasgupta (2021) provides an example of deforestation in Brazil, noting that most of the countries bearing the greatest responsibility for driving deforestation there, and the resultant loss of biodiversity, are signatories to one or both of the New York or Amsterdam Declarations. Henn (2021) points to the failure of previous multilateral efforts as leading to an increased drive for the adoption of unilateral approaches by national and supranational organizations such as the EU.
Deforestation is an example of an issue about which it is important that the Scottish Government and UK Government continue to support and drive action through multi-lateral partnerships and commitments, but where there is a growing need to address the problem through complementary unilateral action and domestic policy.
18. E.g. Agreement on Climate Change, Trade and Sustainability (ACCTS)
19 Montreal Protocol as successful example of Multilateral Environmental Agreement with trade considerations: https://www.unep.org/ozonaction/who-we-are/about-montreal-protocol
Potential role of Non Determined Contributions from the Paris Agreement to consider trade, see Trade Elements in Countries’ Climate Contributions under the Paris Agreement, Clara Brandi https://euagenda.eu/upload/publications/untitled-81229-ea.pdf
20. Because of data limitations, this assessment could only distinguish inside versus outside UK.
21. Food waste is responsible for 6% of global greenhouse gas emissions - Our World in Data
22. How much food is wasted in Scotland? | Zero Waste Scotland
23. Zero Waste Scotland; waste reduction plan
24. French Legal Scheme on Food Waste ('Lutte contre le gaspillage alimentaire: les lois francaises')
25. A revised approach to tackle food waste in Scotland is expected to be outlined in the forthcoming Scottish Government Circular Economy and Waste Route Map which has identified priority and long-term actions to reduce food waste.
26. Public procurement - taking account of climate and circular economy considerations: SPPN 3/2022
27. One potential trade-off with waste reduction at the consumer end is a reduction in supply requirements. This may have implications for the supply chain’s profitability as less gets sold.
28. The Good Food Nation (Scotland) Act 2022 makes an explicit link between food and sustainability issues. The Act requires Scottish Ministers to prepare a national Good Food Nation plan and for local authorities and health boards to have regard to this when preparing their own plans. The Good Food Nation plan will set out the direction for future food policies, helping to achieve food-related outcomes in coordination with other policy areas and linking more widely to strategic programmes such as the National Performance Framework and Sustainable Development Goals. The Scottish Government intends to publish the draft Good Food Nation Plan for consultation in 2023.
29. Scotland Love’s local gift card
30. Scotland’s Curriculum for Excellence outcomes
32. See the forthcoming route map: Delivering Scotland's circular economy – now in consultation. https://www.gov.scot/publications/delivering-scotlands-circular-economy-consultation-proposals-circular-economy-bill
33. See also the comments by Zero Waste Scotland on their website: The Circular Economy Bill (zerowastescotland.org.uk)
34. This means that Scotland favors assets and economic activities that can operate effectively in the predictable future of climate change and resource constraints. It is not about present GDP maximization, but rather a wealth proposition: making sure that the wealth (or Scotland’s assets) stays valuable. Just monitoring GDP can distract from the structural situation of an economy – with the wrong assets, longer-term income generation would be compromised.
35. These results are derived using Multi-Regional Input Output assessments to allocate the total footprint to 52 consumption categories. The trade assessments then also reveals where the resource consumption originates. The result is Table 1 which shows a simplified CLUM, with columns split by domestic versus foreign. Given the available data set, this analysis can only distinguish between UK and non-UK origin, meaning Scottish demands on the rest of the UK cannot be captured in this analysis.
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