Jim Densham, Senior Land Use Policy Officer (climate), on the Scottish Government's Climate Change Adaptation Programme.
Climate Adaptation and the Star Trek approach
Do you remember Star Trek? Of course you do. When I was young I watched the Next Generation - Captain Picard and crew. Do you remember the opening lines?
Space: The final frontierThese are the voyages of the Starship, EnterpriseIts continuing missionTo explore strange new worldsTo seek out new life and new civilizationsTo boldly go where no man has gone before
It feels like the journey Scotland is starting, into a future with a changing climate – a continuing mission, where no man has gone before.
Last week the Scottish Government published its long awaited Climate Change Adaptation Programme and in it set out the policies it will use in to help Scotland be more resilient and adapt to the changes ahead. I have been working for more than 3 years with our partners in Scottish Environment LINK trying to influence the Scottish Government to produce a quality document full of forward thinking solutions. Unfortunately, on first reading, it looks a bit disappointing.
To be fair there are some good ideas and some valuable policies but it doesn’t really inspire me to think that in Scotland we are headed in the right direction. In Star Trek, warp drive, ‘beam me up Scotty’ and ‘set phasers to stun’ were exciting but the real feel good factor was that the Enterprise’s crew went into the unknown peacefully, wanting to understand the new civilisations and outwitting their foes with Mr. Data’s logic or Picard’s strategy. They knew HOW they would tackle what lay ahead and they had the skills and resources needed.
That is what’s missing from this new Programme (No not warp drive). The HOW. How we will negotiate a path into a new climate, not simply what we will do in the next 5 years, and this includes allowing a discussion of what principles we will follow as a nation as we aim to thrive in a new climate.
As a Government there are different ways to approach adapting to climate change – or any other problem for that matter. You can allow sectors of society to go their own way or you can coordinate. You can react to problems as they arise or plan long-term sustainable actions, which are flexible. You can try to dominate the environment or work with nature. For example, our RSPB Inner Forth Futurescape aims to recreate saltmarsh and intertidal habitat along the Forth. This gives a home to wading birds but can also protect communities along the river who are at risk from sea level rise and flooding. The conventional response is to build even higher expensive sea walls to keep the water out – and these may not be adequate in future. However if we work with nature and recreate protective saltmarsh we can prevent flooding but also gain many other valuable benefits.
We have a lot of work to do over the summer to help Government improve their draft Programme. We will be pushing for the approach outlined in LINK’s 5 Adaptation Principles and we will promote the solutions that our natural environment provides us with - like the in the Inner Forth - as outlined in our recent RSPB Scotland report – Helping Nature to Help Us.
‘Live long and prosper’
p.s. I am not a Trekie!