Scotland’s Climate Change Bill Campaign Success

An announcement from Cabinet Secretary John Swinney has revealed that the Scottish Government has accepted many of the demands of SCIAF campaigners relating to the Scottish Climate Change Bill!

The Scottish Government has committed to:

• Emissions reductions of 80% by 2050, from the basket of six greenhouse gases, and not just CO2.
• Annual targets to measure progress and encourage immediate action to reduce emissions.
• Inclusion of aviation and shipping emissions in the targets.

We have already seen the UK Government following suit – raising their targeted cuts in emissions from 60% to 80% and also including aviation & shipping in the UK bill.

Thank you to everyone who sent a SCIAF campaign postcard to their MSP, wrote a letter, sent an email or organised an event over the last year!

Thanks to you and our colleagues in the Stop Climate Chaos Scotland coalition, Scotland is leading the world in facing up to our historical responsibility for climate change, which is impacting hardest on poor and vulnerable people overseas who have done least to cause it. SCIAF’s next challenge is to take this world-leading piece of legislation and use it as an example to other industrialised countries to show what can and must be done to fight climate change - which we will do over the coming year.

Don Valeriano, a farmer from El Salvador, Central America, told us about the impact changes in the weather were having on his already precarious livelihood. He called on the most developed countries to consider their behaviour and to ask them to actively do something to save our planet, because they are destroying it.

He went on to say, “A message for the future, that in this planet, there is a place for each of us, we can all cohabit in this planet.”

I am sure he would be thanking you today for all you have done.