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You know the gist…rising rates of climate change on the global scale becoming more and more of a pressing issue. Scotland’s main issue is the increased rainfall that is a result of climate change. Scotland has experienced more events of heavy rainfall with, “the average between 2010 and 2019 was 9 percent wetter than the entire average from between the years of 1961 to 1990” (Historic Environment Scotland). This coincides with the rise of warm years. As this is projected to continue through the pattern of warmer, wetter winters and hotter drier summers, Edinburgh is instating policies to indirectly address this.

Edinburgh has set forth their 2030 Climate Strategy which sets forward a city-wide approach to reduce green house gas and meet other sustainable development goals. The City of Edinburgh Council outlines the following six goals: “energy efficiency in homes and buildings, heat and energy distribution and distribution infrastructure, focus and decarbonization of public transport, focus on climate resilience and accelerating adaptation of the city, citizen empowerment, and supporting business transition and green economy.” Alongside these, is the city’s aim to create a 20-minute city that is widely accessible.

As a part of this, many other action plans have been set in place but seen little return so far. In addition to these numerous action plans, the City Plan 2030 includes “the need for developers building student housing on sites of more than 0.25 hectares to include 50% private housing of which 35% must be affordable. Progress reports have not shown outstanding results, most information that is published relates to the details of said plans, not necessarily progress. A real lack of progress is evident in the funding cuts that have occurred. “The Scottish Government is cutting the tree planting programme in its current budget by 41 per cent (from £77 million to £45 million), meaning we won’t be planting the 18,000 hectares of new woodland each year as planned but only 9,000. And this follows several years of missed targets in the overall plan to increase Scotland’s tree cover from 19 per cent of the land area to 25 percent” (Knox, 2024). Another issue that is hard to address, is that while there is potential for wind energy, there cannot necessarily be a large reliance on it for completing a renewable energy transition since wind is sporadic. This would be a more solvable issue in the scenario that more effective energy storage is made in the coming years. The matter of it is, the city needs to make faster progress if they wish to make their goals by the year 2030.

I recommend that there be some more small-scale changes for the city of Edinburgh to reach these goals. For one, there can be incentivization for people and businesses to invest in trees and additional community green spaces, such as household and community gardens. This could be done by widespread education about the benefits of them and helps mitigate flood affect of increased rainfall. There could also be area regulation of vehicles, in places such as Barcelona only certain types of vehicles are allowed in certain zones of the city. To achieve the 20-minute city goal and accessibility there could be wide implementation of sidewalk improvement, such as bush barrier close to the street. The city already has a decent network of trams and busses, and electric bikes. Said electric bikes are only accessible to people 14 years or older. While there are “long tail bikes” that can carry two infants, there must be something accessible to larger children that are under 14. It would also help to have a bin on the bikes to make them convenient for shopping trips. There could also be rain water collection systems put in that could be used as toilet water or garden/green space water.

References:

The City of Edinburgh Council. (n.d.-a). 2030 climate strategy. https://www.edinburgh.gov.uk/2030climatestrategy

The City of Edinburgh Council. (n.d.-b). A plan for Sustainable Development in Edinburgh. https://www.edinburgh.gov.uk/news/article/13610/a-plan-for-sustainable-development-in-edinburgh#:~:text=Our%20ambition%20is%20to%20base,using%20precious%20greenfield%20field%20sites

Knox, J. (2024, February 8). Letter from Scotland. The Edinburgh Reporter. https://theedinburghreporter.co.uk/2024/02/letter-from-scotland-439/#:~:text=The%20Scottish%20Government%20is%20cutting,as%20planned%20but%20only%209%2C000

New climate projections summary for Scotland. Historic Environment Scotland. (2021, January 14). https://www.historicenvironment.scot/about-us/news/new-climate-projections-summary-for-scotland/#:~:text=There%20has%20been%20an%20increase,than%20the%201961%2D1990%20average

How Fast is Fast Enough? Edinburgh’s Race Towards Sustainability