Scottish Biodiversity Strategy to 2045

Enabling Conditions for Success

This Strategy establishes an ambitious vision and a set of outcomes which will deliver that vision. But we don’t just need bold words – we need to ensure we drive the transformative change that will deliver this vision. In developing the Strategy we have identified factors which have limited the success of previous strategies.

Scotland published its first Biodiversity Strategy in 2004. Although there is evidence of some good work on specific habitats and species, the ongoing decline of biodiversity demonstrates that we must do a great deal more and at scale to ‘bend the curve’ of biodiversity loss. Key lessons include the need to:

• work more strategically and at scale.
• systematically mainstream biodiversity across sectors and the wider policy landscape (e.g. agriculture, energy, housing, industry, education, health and transport).
• focus on ecosystem health and land and seascape-scale regeneration rather than on management for individual species.
• ensure sufficient investment and appropriately blend public and private funding.
• strengthen accountability for delivery, including evidence based monitoring frameworks and statutory targets to hold us to account.

We have therefore developed a Framework approach to ensure that we move beyond ambitious words to a point where we mobilise actions and investment of sufficient scale and scope to deliver a nature positive future.

3.1 Scotland’s Strategic Framework for Biodiversity

This Strategy represents the first element in Scotland’s Strategic Framework for Biodiversity. The Framework has been developed through engagement with a range of stakeholders, including land managers, environmental organisations, local authorities and other partners. The Strategic Framework comprises:

• a high-level Strategy setting out a 2045 Vision for biodiversity in Scotland, and a set of Outcomes which articulates what ‘success looks like’.
• a series of six-year rolling Delivery Plans which will set out in detail the range of actions needed to deliver the Vision and Outcomes. The delivery plans will reflect a programme of mainstreaming biodiversity across Government. We will pursue policy reforms which promote better understanding of the multiple values of nature’s contributions, deal with the causes of environmental harm and offer the potential to both conserve nature, generate economic benefits and support thriving communities. This will mobilise key sectors and policy areas and ensure coherence and alignment with key strategies.
• statutory targets for nature restoration that cover land and sea and a framework for setting, monitoring, reviewing and reporting on those targets. These targets, like our climate targets, will secure accountability, driving action across Government. They will be focused on achieving the overarching goal of this Strategy, of halting biodiversity loss by 2030, and restoring Scotland’s natural environment by 2045. The targets will be achievable and challenging, developed in consideration of available evidence and through consultation. They are expected to include outcome targets that accommodate species abundance, distribution and extinction risk and habitat quality and extent. The targets will reflect the challenges of a changing climate.

Delivery plans will set out and reflect the need for a participatory and inclusive, whole-of-society approach that engages: a wide range of delivery partners including local authorities and non-governmental organisations (NGOs); local communities; business, especially land- and water-based businesses; and the scientific and research community. They will be inclusive, engaging and empower stakeholders and communities through local and regional institutions.

3.2 Governance, Monitoring and Reporting

New arrangements for governance, monitoring and reporting will be published alongside this Strategy in a free-standing format which delivers accountability, can remain agile and dynamic and accommodates Scotland’s international, regional and national reporting obligations. This approach provides multiple advantages:

• high standards of scrutiny and peer review.
• transparency, and clarity on indicators and metrics which reflect increases in biodiversity.
• cost effectiveness.
• maintain and increase global influence.
• compare performance, share what has worked and learn from others to improve continuously.

3.3 Investment

An Investment Plan will identify practical actions we need to take which will help target public, private and philanthropic investment on the delivery of biodiversity priorities to deliver a nature positive future. Our Market Framework for responsible private investment in natural capital supports the development of natural capital markets that are responsible, benefit communities and are valued for their environmental and financial integrity. The investment plan will align to this and promote use of our Principles for Responsible Investment in Natural Capital.

3.4 Public Engagement and Communications

We will need to mobilise actions by individuals, organisations, small, medium and large businesses and adopt a whole-of-society approach to deliver a nature positive Scotland. We will initiate a programme of public engagement to increase understanding of the nature of the biodiversity crisis and the drivers of loss including those associated with people’s consumption and production choices. Leading through our Curriculum for Excellence, we will mobilise our whole education and skills development system to promote increased understanding of our relationship with nature and positive action to secure its sustainable use.

We will work with delivery partners to

• identify and eliminate incentives that are harmful to biodiversity.
• identify and overcome other obstacles to achieving our goals.
• help society understand the impact they have on biodiversity both in Scotland and, through their supply chains, the rest of the world.
• develop new frameworks for private sector investment and innovation.
• enable them to comply with new reporting requirements.

We want all levels of government to participate fully in the delivery of our goals for biodiversity, in line with the principles identified in the Edinburgh Process led by the Scottish Government for the CBD for COP15, and with the Edinburgh Declaration. In particular, cities and local authorities play key roles in conserving, restoring and reducing threats to biodiversity, in meeting people’s needs through sustainable use and equitable benefit-sharing, in developing the tools and solutions needed for implementing biodiversity protection actions, and in monitoring and reporting. Their actions in mainstreaming biodiversity ensure that support is in place at all levels. They are uniquely positioned to deliver the outreach, awareness, and uptake of our goals for biodiversity across the whole of society, facilitating engagement with key stakeholders to implement our Strategic Framework.

Case Study: Deadwood Management in Scotland’s National Forests

Many species of birds, amphibians, reptiles and mammals forage, shelter and rear young in and around deadwood and veteran trees, and these are even more valuable for a range of insects (especially beetles), fungi and lichens. Deadwood is also vitally important for species in aquatic ecosystems. Standing trees that are dying or dead (called snags), decaying logs and small pieces of deadwood on the forest floor are vital for forest biodiversity and are maintained whenever possible.

Supporting Scotland’s Vision for Forestry, Forestry Land Scotland (FLS) work hard to enhance biodiversity adding thousands of tonnes of new deadwood across Scotland’s national forest each year, which provides habitat for hundreds of generalist and specialist species. They focus on increasing the provision and retention of scarce types of deadwood, such as large-diameter snags and logs, keeping deadwood in woodland during tree harvesting operations, leaving dead or dying veteran trees and logs on-site, and creating piles of deadwood.

FLS have been working with the Royal Zoological Society of Scotland, and the uRare Invertebrates in the Cairngorms project, to create specific deadwood habitat for rare species, including the endangered pine hoverfly, one of the rarest species in Scotland. Previously thriving in pinewoods across the country, it currently can only be found at one or two sites due to a lack of suitable deadwood habitat for its larvae which develop and feed in the water that collects in rot-holes in Scots pine stumps. In 2022, this conservation management resulted in adult hoverfly being spotted in the wild for the first time in nearly a decade.