Net-zero targets and climate justice define Scotland’s roadmap to easing the climate crisis - Foysol Choudhury

It has been revealed that in 2021, ironically the year that Scotland hosted COP26, Scotland yet again missed its legally binding target for cutting greenhouse gas emissions.

António Guterres, Secretary-General of the United Nations, addresses the COP26 summit in Glasgow in 2021

Total emissions were only 49.9 per cent lower in 2021 than in 1990, instead of the target cut of 51.1 per cent. In a statement to the Scottish Parliament, Cabinet Secretary Màiri McAllan called missing this target ‘disappointing’.

Failing to meet this target during an escalating climate crisis is more than disappointing. This is a grave situation and we must urgently put Scotland back on track to achieve net zero emissions of all greenhouse gases by 2045.

To meet these targets, we must ensure we have adequate policy measures and accountable governance willing to see these through. I’m glad to hear that the Scottish Government have accepted or partially accepted 98 of 99 recommendations made by the Climate Change Committee. However, we cannot accept empty rhetoric. If they agree to the recommendations, the Scottish Government need to commit wholeheartedly to implementing them urgently.

By achieving net zero, Scotland can both build itself a sustainable future, while mitigating the disastrous consequences of climate change on countries around the world. To do so, Scotland should prioritise climate justice so that the transition to our net zero future benefits all of Scotland’s communities, as well as communities around the world who are feeling the devastating effects of our actions.

The Cross-Party Group on Bangladesh, which I chair at the Scottish Parliament, has heard that if the worst climate effects are realised, there could be as many as 18 million climate refugees from Bangladesh in the coming decades. That is approximately equivalent to the population of the Netherlands becoming refugees. The flows of people from vulnerable low-lying countries and climate- hit regions will only be exacerbated by increasingly extreme weather such as floods and cyclones which, only 20 years ago, would have been considered in a lifetime events.

Ahead of COP28, Scotland must urgently reckon with this and develop a climate plan that reduces fossil fuel emissions to meet out net zero targets, whilst simultaneously supporting the Global South to have its own part in the green revolution. This includes using Scottish expertise and knowledge to assist with climate mitigation. Scotland must also continue work on the loss and damage fund, to acknowledge internationally that countries which contributed the least to climate change are the ones now being largely affected by climate change’s devastating consequences, whilst the Global North has benefitted from fossil fuels and is now in the best place for a green transition.

This is the starting point for climate justice and will allow us to both calculate the damage to countries and fund mitigation work, in addition to ensuring that we do not lock countries out of the green transition. As the Chair of CPG Bangladesh, I will be chairing a discussion this summer on climate justice for low-lying countries ahead of COP28, as part of the Scottish Parliament’s Festival of Politics. I hope that this discussion will reinvigorate the drive for change this year so that Scotland both reaffirms its own targets for net zero emissions, as well as its targets to ensure climate justice elsewhere in the world.

We cannot afford to wait any longer before doing so.

Foysol Choudhury is a Labour MSP for Lothian.