NOVEMBER 2020 SCOTLAND'S CLIMATE ASSEMBLY -Pre-engagement Overview CONTENTS 03 Introduction 05 Method Diet and lifestyle Biodiversity and rewilding. Tree planting. Soil. Peatland. Carbon sequestration. 07 Food. Agriculture. Allotments. Fishing. Consumption. Ownership. Work and travel 14 Active travel. Public transport. Cars. Air travel. Infrastructure and city planning. Working environment. Green jobs. Wellbeing. Homes and communities 20 Heating. Improving our homes. Water use. Communities and decision-making. Communities and infrastructure. Sharing. Energy 26 Fossil fuels. Alternative energy. Carbon capture. Just transition. Global justice in energy. Mechanisms of change and fairness Mechanisms of change and fairness 33 Systems change and economics. Tax. Business. Regulation. Decision making. targets. Incentives and subsidies. Education. Media. Fairness and inequality. Green jobs. Covid-19. COP26. Population. Assembly. 42 Informing Scotland's Climate Assembly INTRODUCTION Grounded in Scotland's Climate Change Act (2019), Scotland’s Climate Assembly is currently bringing together over 100 people who are broadly representative of the Scottish population. The Assembly Members are tasked with learning about, discussing, and making recommendations on how we can best tackle climate change. Specifically, the Assembly is considering ‘how should Scotland change to tackle the climate emergency in an effective and fair way?’. In 2021, the Assembly will report to the Scottish Parliament on the outcomes of their deliberations. While participation in the Assembly as a member, expert lead, or speaker is by invitation only, a public engagement exercise was run in October 2020 in order to include the views of wider society. The general population has a genuine stake in the outcomes of the Assembly and therefore it is important they have the opportunity to have an input into its proceedings. It was also a chance for those who initially received an invitation but did not make the final selection to still participate. The public were invited to suggest what they think the Assembly should discuss, who should speak at the Assembly, as well as their ideas on how Scotland should reach net-zero. The online platform, Dialogue, was launched at 3pm on 9th October 2020 and closed at 3pm on 26th October 2020. All ideas and comments published on the platform are available to view at https://scotclimateca.dialogue-app.com/how-should-scotland- change-to-tackle-the-climate-emergency-in-an-effective-and-fair- way. They can also be found in the Annex. The platform involved the submission of ‘ideas’ by registered users. The contributor had the opportunity to provide a title for their idea, and say 'why the contribution is important'. Registered users could rate the idea on a five-star scale, and/or provide comments. All contributions to the website were pre-moderated in accordance with the published moderation policy before appearing on the site. The site was visible to members of the public, whether or not they registered as users. Fourteen ideas were pre-seeded by Scotland’s Climate Assembly to inspire people to engage with the themes already in consideration for the Assembly. Users were encouraged to join an existing discussion on an idea similar to their concerns, but were free to add their own idea. Moderators locked discussion on ideas where it was thought they were duplicating something already on the site and signposted contributors to comment on the existing idea instead. The Assembly’s first weekend took place nine working days after the Dialogue closed, consequently analysis of the Dialogue took place after the initial meeting allowing more time to put together a detailed report. This was not an issue as the first weekend focused on ensuring all Assembly members understood the basic science behind climate change and most of the evidence was prepared by climate scientists. The intention was for the Dialogue to feed into the subsequent meetings, more details on how the consultation is being utilised can be found in the ‘Informing Scotland’s Climate Assembly’ Chapter. This report outlines the key themes that emerged from the public engagement exercise and is intended to simply provide an overview of what was discussed. It does not involve an analysis of the effectiveness and plausibility of respondent’s suggestions. METHOD Over the course of the Dialogue engagement exercise, 244 ideas were published on the site, with 1,008 comments added and 455 unique users registered. Users had the ability to add new ‘ideas’ as well as comment on existing ideas. When posted, new ideas were moderated and either accepted, rejected or locked in line with the moderation policy guidelines (Annex A). They were subsequently assigned ‘tags’ so that they could be easily categorised on the site. Comments on existing ideas were also moderated before being added to the site. Topics were taken from a thematic coding framework (Annex B) that was developed to correspond with the subjects in the pre-seeded themes. The thematic coding framework was updated as new topics emerged during the challenge. An ‘optimisation' exercise was conducted once the challenge was closed in order to add any missing tags and to rationalise the topics to ensure consistency. Additionally, similar topics were grouped to account for differences in word choice or spelling e.g. ‘reduce and reuse’ and ‘reduce, reuse, and recycle’. Once the website was closed for submissions, researchers continued to carry out further thematic analysis. In future Assembly meetings, Scotland’s Climate Assembly will divide evidence sessions into three streams into which Assembly members will be randomly assigned for discussion and consideration. These three streams are ‘Homes and Communities’, ‘Work and Travel’ and ‘Diet and Lifestyle’. Ideas from the Dialogue exercise were therefore categorised into these corresponding streams. Additional categories of ‘Energy’, ‘Mechanisms for Change’ and ‘Fairness’ were identified to capture all other ideas. Within each category, the data was further divided into subthemes, for example ‘Energy’ included the subthemes ‘Fossil Fuels’ and ‘Alternative Energy’. To avoid duplication, each comment was not individually coded but all comments were considered and all unique comments were included in the analysis. An overview of commentary on the ideas and as well as notes on any new themes that were identified in the comments have been collated and included as part of this report (Annex C). Respondents were self-selecting and therefore do not represent a representative sample of the population of Scotland. Participation did not require evidence of residence in Scotland, or ask people to report their demographic characteristics. It is likely that the group who engaged with the platform were almost all digitally connected given that all publicity for the Dialogue was online. Because of this, caution should be used in interpreting the findings. However, it must be understood that the platform was designed to solicit ideas from the public on what they felt the Assembly should consider as well as their climate solutions, and not as a way to measure their attitudes. All quotes used in this report are verbatim, although some have been shortened. At the end of each chapter is a selection of resources and case studies that the public used as evidence which they hoped would be shared with the Assembly. Finally, this analysis does not set out to be a detailed examination of all the ideas and their relative effectiveness or relevance. This is an overview of what those who engaged with the platform said to us. Given that this report is meant to encompass all of the responses for consideration in the designing of future Assembly meetings, the analysis does not definitively quantify the balance of opinion on the platform. DIET AND LIFESTLE Many respondents focused on the need to preserve our land and improve biodiversity, changing the way we grow and consume food and suggested that we should have a systems change towards a circular economy, which focuses on reducing consumption and recycling. All tags which related to systems change will be discussed in the ‘Systems and Other’ chapter. Other prevalent themes included allotments, fishing regulation, consumption and ownership. This chapter considers the following themes: • Biodiversity and rewilding • Tree planting • Soil • Peatland • Carbon sequestration • Food • Agriculture • Allotments • Fishing • Consumption • Ownership • Resources Biodiversity and Rewilding Many respondents agreed that we need to increase regulation in our natural areas to improve biodiversity and protect local species and habitats. Rewilding was also a strong argument for restoring Scotland's nature. Increasing regulation of large hunting estates was often mentioned as a way to increase biodiversity. Many suggested that the Highlands is no longer wild because it is managed by large estates. They felt it could be reforested, to both increase biodiversity and act as a carbon sink. “[hunting estates] have completely ruined the last bit of wilderness in the North of Scotland and destroyed the balance of natural co- existence there” Similarly, a ban on new golf courses, labelled as green deserts, was mentioned as they massively reduce biodiversity. Other methods, suggested by contributors, for improving biodiversity included: • Making built up areas more nature friendly: sustainable drainage systems, rewilding of grass verges and parks, licence requirements for at-home pesticide use or stop pesticide