Miriam Ross, campaign coordinator
Scotland’s environment charities breathed a huge collective sigh of relief on 29 January when the Scottish parliament voted to pass the Natural Environment Bill, which will require the Scottish government to set legally binding targets to restore nature. The task is urgent, and the new law could be a game changer. It has been a long time coming.
For years, Scottish Environment LINK and its member organisations have been frustrated by the gap between the Scottish government’s fine words on biodiversity – from First Ministers down – and their lack of action to tackle the loss and destruction of our natural environment. We came to believe that only legally binding targets, akin to Scotland’s climate targets which have led to significant progress in reducing emissions, would force politicians to make nature a priority.
Heeding this call, and the campaigning clout of our members, the Scottish government announced in 2021 that it would introduce a Natural Environment Bill in the 2023-4 parliamentary year. But that year came and went without any sign of the bill.
Meanwhile, the weakening of the climate targets, along with the high-profile collapse of the planned Deposit Return Scheme and of proposed new marine protections, signalled that commitment to tackling the nature and climate crises could be faltering. Added to that was the increasing level of anti-environment rhetoric coming from a vocal minority.
With the next Scottish election due in May 2026, the time in which a Natural Environment Bill could still be introduced and passed was limited. It would have to be announced in the programme for government in September 2024. How could we in the environment sector push the Scottish government to keep its promise and avoid the issue being kicked into the next parliament or dropped entirely?
Government ministers and their officials already knew that environment charities wanted nature targets – we’d been banging on about them for years. But to persuade them to act, we wanted to show them how much restoring nature matters to the Scottish electorate.
So, we launched the Scotland Loves Nature campaign in July 2024, citing polling showing that three quarters of people in Scotland believed there should be legal targets for nature recovery.
From the outset, the campaign had a very deliberate focus on people. Sometimes as a sector we’ve been guilty of leaving people out of the picture, as if our nature and our landscapes were devoid of humans. We started with some great images of people in a rowing boat in Dubar harbour holding ‘Scotland Loves Nature’ signs, which were printed in the press.
We also filmed a series of short videos of people talking about their connection with Scotland’s nature.
We asked people to email their MSPs, calling on them to ask First Minister John Swinney to include a Natural Environment Bill in his programme for government. MSPs received more than 13,000 emails on the subject as a result.
It worked. John Swinney announced in September 2024 that his government would introduce the bill.
While we waited for the bill to arrive, the Scottish government announced its annual budget. We ran a petition calling on the finance secretary not to cut funding for nature – with some success in what was, as often, a mixed result of a budget. Making sure sustained funding is put in place to restore nature is likely to be an ongoing battle.
The bill was published in February 2025. We wanted to influence the bill as it made its way through the Scottish parliament, and to ensure that there was cross party support for legally binding nature recovery targets.
Over the next few months, as well as meeting with key MSPs, we did a series of things to keep the campaign in the public eye and to get it noticed by MSPs. In March 2025 we asked Scottish party leaders to join a photocall holding a sign saying ‘Scotland needs nature targets’. Some of them came, some sent deputies.
On a beautiful day in June we held a demo outside the Scottish parliament, attended by around 100 people, including a number of MSPs – not bad for a Thursday lunchtime.
We ran an e-action asking people to write messages about why nature matters to them, and sent a booklet of 40 powerful messages to every MSP. And in the week MSPs returned to parliament in September after the summer recess, we booked billboards outside Edinburgh’s Waverley Station, with the message, ‘1 in 9 species in Scotland is at risk of extinction. We need our MSPs to act now!’
Then on the day the first debate on the Natural Environment Bill in parliament, we turned up wearing puffin, bumblebee, wildcat and red squirrel costumes, resulting in print and broadcast media coverage.
As the bill made its way through the parliamentary process, staff from across the Scottish Environment LINK network worked hard to influence it, liaising with MSPs to get amendments tabled that would make the bill as strong as possible. Again we asked people to email their MSPs in support of strong, effective nature recovery targets.
The Natural Environment Act, as it will soon become, is testament to the determination of people across Scotland to see the nature we love and rely on protected and restored, for us and for the generations that come after us.
But the passing of the law and the setting of targets is just the start. Helping Scotland’s nature recover will require committed leadership, funding, and support for communities to restore their local environments.
Crucially, with targets in place, Scotland’s people will be better able to hold our government to account on the state of nature. Scottish Environment LINK and its members – now numbering over 50 organisations – will be making every effort to ensure politicians make restoring nature a priority.
Read more about the Natural Environment Bill and what comes next.