(S4O-00520) United Nations Climate Change Conference

Gordon MacDonald (Edinburgh Pentlands) (SNP): 2. To ask the Scottish Government what impact the outcomes of the recent United Nations climate change conference will have on Scotland. (S4O-00520)

The Minister for Environment and Climate Change (Stewart Stevenson):
The outcome at Durban represents a significant success for the European Union in that, for the first time, the major emitter nations have been brought together behind a timetable for a global climate treaty to be agreed by 2015 and in force by 2020. There is an opportunity now to build on that success, which has boosted certainty about the global low-carbon future, in which Scotland, as the green energy capital of Europe, can have a competitive advantage. However, there will be many challenges for the global community in the years ahead in delivering on the commitments that were made at Durban.

Gordon MacDonald: With Scotland being a world leader in the climate change agenda, what lessons and experience was the minister able to share with conference delegates?

Stewart Stevenson: One of the key elements of my message in my meetings with other leaders was that despite being a developed modern nation we can set ambitious climate change targets. Our target of a 42 per cent reduction in emissions by 2020 is—with that which is now set in the United Kingdom—the highest legally enforced target in the world. Our agenda of creating new industry from the opportunity that is presented by renewable energy has attracted widespread interest, and we will continue to engage with as many people internationally as we reasonably can.

Claire Baker (Mid Scotland and Fife) (Lab): How, specifically, will the outcomes of the Durban conference impact on the Scottish Government’s target of reducing CO2 emissions by 42 per cent?

Stewart Stevenson: Under the land use, land-use change and forestry agenda, some progress was made in taking forward the inclusion of wetlands—or, in our case, peatlands—in the calculation for sucking in carbon dioxide and reduction in methane emissions. Early in the new year, we will host in Edinburgh a meeting of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s panel on wetlands. We have the specific prospect of improvement in that situation and reward for the work that we are already undertaking to restore peatlands.