NatureScot Adapts framework

Published: 23 Spetember 2024

Introduction

NatureScot Adapts is our first climate change adaptation framework. It sets out how NatureScot plans to respond and adapt to the impacts of a changing climate, through actions that reduce climate change risks to all our work. This is a crucial element of our corporate ambition for a nature positive Scotland and a net zero organisation. This therefore is an inward facing document that ensures NatureScot is an adaptive and resilient organisation, ensuring we are climate ready, now and in the future.

This is our first organisational climate change risk assessment, as a foundation for placing these risks at the forefront of our thinking. It provides:

• a set of recommended actions to address climate change risks to our work. These will be further prioritised, developed and considered for delivery through our annual Business Planning. We will publish an annual adaptation plan each spring.
• a basis for ensuring that adaptation to climate change risks is demonstrably built into the work of all parts of the organisation.
• a robust footing for our part in bringing about adaptation for nature, and through nature for our society and economy, as set out in the Scottish National Adaptation Plan (SNAP).

Our adaptation framework covers everything we do, from protecting, restoring and valuing nature to the nuts and bolts of our corporate business, and from managing our own land to our advice and wider collaboration and advocacy role.

Climate change risks, and hence adaptation, will be at the forefront of all our business – from how we run our offices to how we provide our advice, guidance and services. Climate impact understanding – guided by ‘how bad could this be?’ and ‘does that matter?’ - must be prominent in all our thinking. This will ensure that all our actions are climate ready, and we secure the benefits for nature, and so nature’s benefits to people, in a changing climate.  Clear understanding of the risks that climate change poses to nature and NatureScot, and the adaptation actions we must take, will be embedded in our annual business planning process.

What is adaptation?

Scotland’s climate is already changing. Over the last century temperatures have increased, sea levels have risen, and rainfall patterns have changed, with increased seasonality and more heavy downpours. These changes are projected to continue and intensify over the coming decades; the last 1⁰C rise took 100 years but the next 1⁰C will happen over 30 years. We can expect future changes in climate and associated weather patterns to be far greater than anything we have seen in the past.

Adaptation refers to the adjustments that are needed in natural and human systems to reduce harm from these effects of climate change. There are two aspects: adapting to present climate and weather and making changes now and planning future changes based on future projected climate change.

When we talk about the weather, we mean day to day conditions such as rain, cloud cover, wind speed etc, whereas climate means “average weather” usually over a long period of time (say 30 years or more). It is also important to note that significant changes in natural and social systems are more often associated with extreme events, which will become more extreme, not the average projected change.

Understanding how we must adapt our buildings, travel, processes, advice and guidance is key to ensuring we are a resilient organisation that can continue to work towards a resilient nature positive and net zero Scotland.

Legislation and policy

The urgency of addressing potential impacts on the planet has been recognised in legislation in Scotland, the UK and the rest of the world. To drive action towards maintaining a stable climate, the Climate Change (Scotland) Act 2009 (amended in 2019) through the Climate Change (Emissions Reduction Targets) (Scotland) Act provides robust targets for reducing all "greenhouse gas emissions" to Net Zero.  This law also requires all public bodies to help deliver the Scottish National Adaptation Plan (SNAP) and public bodies are strongly encouraged to undertake formal adaptation planning, through support from Adaptation Scotland.

Linking policies and actions on land and sea for reducing emissions (mitigation) and helping us adapt to climate change increases efficiencies and effectiveness. Nature-based solutions contribute to both emissions-reduction policy and the national adaptation policies because they can simultaneously sequester (soak up) carbon and help our society and economy to adapt, as well as addressing biodiversity loss. But not all biological removals are nature-based, and this can lead to mal-adaptation as they remain expose to climate risks. Monocultures of even aged, single trees species for example can be at risk from increases in storms, pests, pathogens and disease. Through adapting planting to a diversity of species and age, helps secure timber production, carbon storage and ensures restoring nature and in so doing reduces risks from climate change.

The effects of climate change that we are already locked into has the potential to significantly disrupt efforts towards Net Zero.  Actions to sequester more carbon in nature must be adapted to multiple climate risks, for example addressing the risk of newly planted woodlands being lost to increasing wildfire, pests, pathogens disease and storms, and restored peatland being damaged by worsening drought.  Therefore, NatureScot has a clear leading role to developing actions that deliver both mitigation and build resilience for adaptation. 

Specific risks to nature are clearly articulated in the Climate Change Risk Assessments and the resulting suite of actions to address and reduce these risks is set out in the Scottish National Adaptation Plan.

Corporate Plan

The NatureScot Corporate Plan (2022-2026) clearly states the important role of nature in tackling the twin crisis of climate change and biodiversity loss, including increasing the resilience of nature and our work with it.  To ensure we can achieve the ambitions set out in our Corporate Plan, we must take account of the risks that climate change poses to how we deliver our business and therefore our action for nature.

A new approach for adapting NatureScot

We have been promoting climate change adaptation for nature, and for our society and economy through nature’s benefits, for many years, we just haven’t called it ‘adaptation’. Our wide-ranging Climate change and nature in Scotland (revised 2016) and Climate Change Commitments (2019) both set out various adaptation elements, though these were mostly broad work areas rather than specific actions. We also published Adaptation Principles for helping nature adapt to climate change.

However, we have found it challenging to fully implement many of these intentions.  One limitation is that our core work has been ‘protective’ conservation, based, like other land and sea management over the last 70 years, on the assumption of a largely stable and predictable climate.  This is linked to a more fundamental issue that our thinking on adaptation has been all about nature, without turning the spotlight onto how we do our work. This framework and the accompanying Plan will focus on ensuring how we undertake our work to protect and restore nature is adapting to the impacts of climate change. 

The argument that nature conservation now needs institutional re-design if it is to bring about advances in ecosystem recovery seems to hold true for adaptation, in which ecosystem recovery is fundamental. 

It is clear that new approaches are required if we are to adapt to the changing climate and its impacts. Adaptation Scotland’s Adaptation Capability Framework for public bodies has helped guide our thinking.  Preparing an initial adaptation plan is a significant element in the Framework’s theme of Planning and Implementing, and the plan should also address the other three themes of Organisational Culture and Resources, Understanding the Challenge, and Working Together.

Climate Change Risks and Adaptation in Scotland

Global temperature change

The amount of global warming depends on emissions of greenhouse gases.  Global delivery of the Paris Agreement would create a low emission pathway in which global temperature rise relative to the pre-industrial baseline would touch 2°C in the 2050s before falling back to 1.5°C by 2100.  This can only be achieved if both gross emissions cease or reduce to trivial amounts, and greenhouse gases are successfully removed into biological and geological reservoirs after 2050. The amount of ‘overshoot’ (above 1.5°C in mid-Century) depends on global emissions peaking by 2025 and reducing by at least 43% against 2019 levels by 2030.

The closer and more time around 2°C, the greater the risk of triggering ‘tipping points’ where positive feedback increasingly control climate and efforts to reduce anthropogenic emissions have less effect: the ‘dangerous’ climate change that the UNFCCC and Paris Agreement seek to avoid. We know enough about the uncertainty and consequences of tipping points to render any decisive risk management for a 3+°C world essentially meaningless.

Up to about 1.5°C, it is just about feasible to consider the consequences of climate change through conventional management of individual risks (flooding, drought etc).  There will be familiar weather and climate-related events, but also more frequent, more intense events and unusual patterns of weather with more severe consequences. The climate is and will be much less predictable, creating a world unprecedented on human timescales.

If current country pledges on global emissions are delivered, we would be on a high emissions pathway (beyond the Paris Agreement) which would see global average temperatures continue to rise above 2°C after the 2050s and to 3°C or more by 2100.  This would be uncharted, unfamiliar territory, characterised by increasingly chaotic weather.  With multiple risks cascading and compounding, especially in social and economic terms, and context increasingly difficult to anticipate, ‘managing risk’ (the ‘known knowns’ and ‘known unknowns’ of Rumsfeld (2002)), especially single risks, is unlikely to be tenable.  For this pathway we must instead focus on building more resilient systems to prepare for ‘unknown unknowns’ and question the myth of endless adaptation.

Since even the low emissions pathway (which seem increasingly unlikely) involves initial ‘overshoot’ to 2°C, interventions to manage risks in the shorter term must also build longer-term resilience. Uses of the land and sea must increasingly manage for multiple risks and produce multiple benefits, with richer nature in complex, connected, diverse systems that improve soil health and water quality through more regenerative practices. Productivity and yield must be considered for multiple crops within and across years, allowing for climate-related losses. The longer such changes are left, the more vulnerable systems will be, especially natural components. We face a choice whether to be more in control of change or leave it to a more chaotic climate.

Climate change in Scotland

Over the last few decades Scotland has experienced a warming trend in climate, shifting rainfall patterns and rising sea levels. This has resulted in measurable changes in nature and in the way we undertake our business in NatureScot. The impacts of this changing climate in Scotland will increase in the coming decades, which means NatureScot must anticipate and be prepared for these across all our business.

The 2018 UK Climate Projections, produced by the Met Office Hadley Centre, provide up-to-date information about the potential future climate in Scotland. The projections provide a range of potential climate outcomes, based on low, medium and high emissions pathways. Across all these there is a consensus that Scotland’s future climate will be characterised by:

• More chaos, both within and across years both for extreme events and patterns of weather
• Average temperatures increasing across all seasons.
• Our weather will remain variable and is likely to become more variable and more unpredictable especially if global average temperatures rise above 2⁰C.
• Typical summers will be warmer and drier.
• Typical winters will be milder and wetter.
• The west will be wetter in the winter.
• The east will be typically drier in the summer - with potential droughts of 1 in 3 years by 2040 and 2 in every 3 years in the worst affected areas.
• Intense, heavy rainfall events will increase in frequency in both winter and summer.
• Sea levels will rise.
• There will be fewer days / periods of frost and snowfall.

Among this ‘general change’ in climate and weather will be increasing extreme weather events such as floods, droughts, intense heat and storms. These could happen as a single event in a single location or multiple events across Scotland, and all the possibilities in between. Ultimately the amount of change that occurs will depend on how successful we are in reducing greenhouse gas emissions globally.

The impact these changes will have on NatureScot depends on how well we, and Scotland, anticipate and prepare for these impacts – because some choices in the uses of land and sea are more climate-risky than others and, generally, more nature-friendly practices are more resilient. Of course, we will need to become a continuing adaptive organisation as we better understand the projected impacts of a changing climate.

Climate change impacts on people

The changing climate is already impacting people in Scotland in a variety of ways, including the increased risk of flooding. There has already been a 20% increase in average high river flow runoff and winter runoff has increased by 40% in the last four decades. Tide gauge analysis has shown that even small amounts of sea level rise have resulted in increased coastal flooding events and impacts, affecting Scottish coastal communities. Increasing extreme events including heat, rainfall, storms, drought, wildfires etc will all have an impact on people’s future food choices, potential prices of commodities like timber, ability to travel, health, water security and could impact jobs too, if business are not prepared.

Of course, it will not only be Scotland that is impacted by climate change but other countries across the world too and this could lead to social, political and economic stresses and disruption both directly and indirectly, for example through supply chains. All of which will likely impact the people of Scotland.

Climate change Impacts on nature

There is now strong evidence demonstrating the impact of climate change on nature in Scotland. We have seen shifts in species populations, early spring emergence and later leaf fall. Some species are severely under threat from the changing climate such as our seabird populations, whereas some butterfly species, especially generalists, have increased their range. These changes, however, affect the synchronisation required between species, with plant food sources potentially out of sync with emergent insects or the birth of young. This could have an increasing impact on species in Scotland. 

In addition to changes arising through these ‘general shifts in climate’ are increasing extreme weather events of heat, drought, intense rainfall and storm events. These are increasingly impacting local populations – one example is the increased risk of ‘false springs’ with sudden increases in daytime temperature in late winter, which trigger emergence from hibernation or early budding, leaving species vulnerable to subsequent frosts or low temperatures.

Some habitats in Scotland are particularly susceptible to the impacts of a changing climate including mountain top habitats, wetlands, coastal habitats and Scotland’s rainforest, especially the more fragmented they are. According to the UK Climate Change Committee “the number of species and habitats adversely affected by climate change and the potential for local or more widespread extinctions and losses means the magnitude of current and future risk are both considered to be high”.

While the context outlined above is essential to our understanding of climate-nature, this Framework does not aim to address the climate risks and impacts to nature across Scotland. It is focused on the risks and impacts of a changing climate on the work of NatureScot. The risks to nature and other aspects of Scottish society are set out in the Climate Change Risk Assessment for Scotland (CCRA3) published in June 2021 (preparations for the 4^th Assessment are currently underway). The Scottish National Adaptation Plan 2024-2029 (SNAP3) currently out for consultation, sets out how Scotland will address these climate risks: in essence, how Scotland can become more resilient and have the capacity to cope with future climate impacts, including increasing nature’s resilience. NatureScot has contributed to the assessment of risks for nature in CCRA3 and provided a formal consultation response to SNAP3. 

Climate Change Adaptation Actions

We identified climate change Risks to our work, and ways to address them, through a process described in a separate document ‘Developing a Dynamic Adaptation Framework’ to be published in winter 2024/25.  The outcome was over 200 potential Actions, a summary below draws out the key areas of action.

• Raise the skills, knowledge and capacity of the organisation to meet the climate change risks to our business.
• Plan for longer time scales beyond our Corporate Plan 
• Better quantify how nature-based solutions contribute to adaptation, supporting stronger representation of climate risks in investment and funding decisions.
• Ensure NatureScot staff have the tools and processes needed to deliver and promote adaptation.
• Deploy a consistent ‘ecosystem approach’ to more integrated nature conservation.
• Ensure the marine and terrestrial protected area network and species strategies take full account of climate change effects.
• Apply a Just Transition approach to our work on addressing climate change risk, and correspondingly embed adaptation into the way we contribute to Scotland’s Just Transition.
• Greater collaboration on risks and adaptation with industry sectors, groupings in government and academia and regional partnerships. 
• Deeper engagement on risks and nature-based solutions with land managers and communities, especially key influencers.
• Increase our work with local authorities on nature-based adaptation in the planning system.
• Build adaptation into the legislative and regulatory regimes that our advice contributes to, notably through legislative targets for habitat restoration, stronger regulation of deer management, and better policy support for the health of soils and freshwaters.
• In the marine environment we aim to embed adaptation more fully in strategic planning and integration with blue carbon work support restoration of marine habitats to help address climate change risks. 
• On land use, help to reduce climate change risks by promoting reduction in other pressures such as over grazing and invasive species. 
• Address potential maladaptation in two key areas: species management and commercial forestry.

Delivering our Adaptation Actions

This dynamic framework sets out the scope of our ambition regarding adapting all our work to the impacts of climate change. Through our annual business planning process and Corporate Plan development we will determine the details of the actions we will undertake to implement the framework. We can expect many Actions to evolve, as new science and evidence emerges, our organisation changes, and the policy landscape develops – hence the ‘dynamic framework’ in the Title.

Monitoring and evaluation

A monitoring and evaluation plan is due for publication in winter 25/25. We will utilise our climate change Measures of Success which encompass four main areas and is reviewed by the Climate Nature Forum.

• We are a leading net zero organisation.
• Nature is indispensable.
• We are the go-to people for nature and climate solutions.
• Climate is at the heart of our urgent action for nature.

Monitoring and tracking of the Corporate Risk Register will form an integral part of the monitoring and evaluation process. Recommendations and updates to the Corporate Risk Register to reflect the potential impacts of climate change will be overseen by the Audit and Risk Assurance Committee in spring 2024. Senior Leadership Team owns Corporate Risks and is therefore responsible for monitoring and acting to reduce and manage those risks.

Reporting and learning

The Adaptation Framework will be assessed annually to identify Actions to include in the forthcoming annual business plan. The review process for the whole Adaptation Framework will be in line with the development of the Corporate Plan cycle, with the next one due in 2026.