Climate change - Scottish National Adaptation Plan 2024-2029: children's version

Our Nature

Scotland’s nature refers to all things that are not made by people such as our mountains, lochs, rivers, seas and forests. It is important that we protect our nature from the harmful effects of climate change. Our nature also helps us adapt to climate change and it is important that it is connected, healthy and has lots of different plants and animals living in it. Trees can provide shade when it is hot to cool us down and grass can help soak up extra rainwater. These are called “nature-based solutions.”

Goals:

1. Nature-based solutions of all sizes will be made safer, better and more connected to create healthier, cooler, water friendly and nature-rich places. This will involve looking after the plants and wildlife we have and planting or making homes for new ones.

2. The bigger, the better: Sometimes looking at how nature works across a large chunk of land can help us understand the impacts of events like flooding and drought. The way our land is managed is not always split up into large chunks of land like river valleys and forests so we need to encourage the people who own or manage different pieces of land to work together to improve nature.

3. When planning our local spaces like parks, we will consider the future weather and how we can use nature to make our spaces safer.

4. Areas or ‘pockets’ of nature across Scotland will be connected up and made stronger against the impacts of climate change. We will stop the loss of plants and animals in Scotland by 2030. We will have more nature than before in Scotland (called ‘nature positive’) by 2045.

5. Our oceans and seas are also affected by climate change. Using good information and planning how we use the sea as a resource helps us take care of its plants and animals in our seas. It also helps people who depend on the sea for their jobs such as fishers, local restaurants and tourism.

6. Peatland, forests and parts of the sea can help store greenhouse gases. This will help stop us from getting too hot. We will protect and support these as part of the Plan.