Just Don’t Waste!

Transcript

This transcript has been automatically generated so may feature errors.

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Welcome to you all here in the Royal Society of Edinburgh in Edinburgh, and to all of those online,

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this is a summit this afternoon.

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It says on the title, don’t just don’t waste but we’re actually going to be talking about transformation. We’ve done the analysis. What the heck are we going to do about it? And that’s where you, the audience, can contribute later on with the panel, whether you’re online or here in the room.

0:36
But first, a little bit of housekeeping. I

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we’re not expecting any fire alarms or evacuation procedures, but if it were to happen, you go out through the indicated exits out onto George Street turn bright to the splendid dome.

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You don’t go straight into the bar. If that happens, we need to count people, but that’s fine.

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Obviously that doesn’t apply. If you’re online, you can just go make a cup of tea.

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Royal Society of Edinburgh is Scotland’s national academy. We’ve been using a slogan right from the outset, of knowledge made useful. So we’re not just a bunch of academics or scientists. We’re a very, as we say in Scotland, a broad church from the public sector, like myself, from the scientific community, the business community, etc. And we like to think that we operate without fear or favor. It doesn’t matter who pays us. We’re going to say what we collectively think on the issues of the day and the issues for tomorrow.

1:59
And therefore we challenge. I’m Roger Crofts. I’m a fellow here and the convener of the society’s environment community of interest. That’s an informal network to exchange knowledge and ideas and to influence others beyond the fellowship about what needs to be done to improve environmental performance in the light of the crises we are facing, and we will hear a lot about that this afternoon.

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We have joined forces today with the joint Nature Conservation Committee, nature Scott and the Scottish Government to host this summit event.

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And you might think, well, it’s a bit pretentious to call it Summit. Well, this is an inaugural event bringing leadership experts together to tackle the five interconnected global crises. You made me think, My God, the number is increasing, but this is what is really happening out there, biodiversity, climate, food, water and health, and we need to see that in the context of, let’s face it, a skeptical world and where there is a gross lack of resources and commitment to address these crises. So our event title just don’t waste was coined by Sir David Attenborough when asked six years ago what we as individuals can do to save the planet, he said, live the way you want to live, but just don’t waste it’s brilliant advice, and I think it resonates now more than ever before. And Sir David has just written, endorsing. We use that phrase and saying, I hope you have a valuable afternoon and come up with some answers.

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So what we have first is two keynote speakers who I’ll introduce in a moment, and then we’ll have a panel,

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and we have an expert, younger person, quite right, too, who’s going to facilitate the panel.

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They will give their own brief introductions, and then it’s up to you, the audience, either here or online, to feed in your questions, and we’ll make sure pleased that we have a really good debate. So we’ve got an hour and a half to transform the situation from where we are now to one that’s a much better for future for people and the planet. So our first speaker is Ruth Davis, recently appointed as the UK’s first Special Representative for nature. She was more than two days two decades of experience leading policy and campaigns. She currently supports ministers through senior diplomatic engagement on nature and reports.

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To the foreign secretary and the Secretary of State for the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, she will play

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a key role in advising the UK Government for the next climate summit

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30 to be held in Brazil next month

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Ruth. Please come and dress us. Are you going to come up here? Excellent.

5:29
Hello, everybody. I do my first thing of checking see whether I can actually see over the top of the lectern, which is my, normally, my beginning problem as a short person, doing, doing public speaking. But I can see you all, which is, which is fantastic. I wanted to stop just by saying thank you for inviting me to be in Scotland. I spent a lot of my time traveling around the world, and unfortunately, not enough of my time traveling around the United Kingdom. And it’s a great pleasure to be here. And I took the opportunity to refresh myself a little bit remind myself of what an incredibly distinguished history there is of science and policy innovation in Scotland.

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That’s something that I actually see reflected when I travel, I go to places, and I see the work that people in this room are doing reflected back in conversations that I have with people who are working on nature around the world. So that’s a very extraordinary thing. And I just wanted to take the opportunity to say thank you to the people in the room.

6:28
I’ve got four minutes, so I’m going to have to say something that’s going to keep everybody, like, on their toes and awake. Great. We’re having a conversation about systems. Well, kind of about time we would say, in a way, we’ve gone through some strange processes, haven’t we, where, you know, there’s kind of periods where everybody sort of ignores environmental challenges, those periods where, you know, people get very agitated about one particular thing, but we seem to really struggle with being able to recognize that this is an intersecting system, a biosphere, a lithosphere, an atmosphere that are connected, and where you can’t manage one part of those things independently from the other. This seems to be one of those moments where that’s coming together. I know that it bears have been a champion of that approach for a really, really long time, and probably are feeling quite pleased that the rest of us have at least temporarily caught up with that discussion. I see that now as something that’s happening everywhere. The work that Johan rockstrom has done on planetary boundaries brings some of that together. I don’t know if anyone saw the launch of the Earth Capital Nexus by the LSE last week, doing very similar things, trying to kind of bring those ideas together. Governments are very slow to catch up, but I’m confident that ours will at some point,

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and that Systems Thinking is really, really beginning. I think in all sorts of different places, I bring a climate and biodiversity lens to it, but I do want to try to position that within the kind of bigger picture of what we’re all trying to think about here. And I also think it’s quite important that we acknowledge that this is very, very difficult. I had a conversation with my excellent and very distinguished biochemist brother the other day about this, and he just looked at me and went, like, this is terrible. This is like Gaia theory. I don’t know what to do with this. It’s just like a sludge. I can’t make any decisions. It’s too complicated. Too complicated. He said, he’s very clever person. So what are we going to do to try to take this necessary complexity and turn it into something that is actionable? I don’t necessarily have answers, but I’ve got three challenges that I’d like to put to you. And perhaps I’m going to learn something from everything that you say when we then have a panel discussion.

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The first thing seems to me to be that we’re going to have to have a slightly different conversation about the accelerated pace of technology development than the one that we’re really used to having a lot of time in the environment community. I think we chase after technologies concerned about whether or not they’re going to turn into something which generates tomorrow’s environmental problems, or hoping in some way against hope, that they’re going to be a single civil silver bullet solution. I feel as if we are going to have to start taking a different approach, which is a very proactive approach to thinking about how technology, in principle, is enabled to deliver public goods. I commend what David Lammy, the foreign secretary said in the UN General Assembly about this recently, where he was saying, how do you get ahead of this? What sort of principles would environmentalists look to put in place to be able to do that? And I think there is a question about whether the precautionary principle on its own is sufficient to try to harness those technologies to deliver good What about something that was more regenerative, it requires a different approach. I think the second thing is that I don’t think solutions will work unless they actually meet very recognized political priorities and needs. And there are system solutions we have that can do that. So I want to give an example if we’re in a position to be able to use enhanced.

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First biological recovery of critical minerals as part of a recycling process that reduces the pressure on forests and oceans around the world from extracting those minerals. But what it also does is allow the UK Government to assert its strategic independence in access to those minerals. That is a thing that really matters to the government, that is a solution driven by a circular economy that meets a political need. We ought to be looking for more of those things. I think. Then the third thing that you will know more about than I do, and I really want to hear about, is that there’s something kind of magical about a solution that works in the public imagination, and we haven’t yet really kind of captured that. I don’t quite know why it is when I talk to my friends and relatives that I could be in a situation in which people are really, really keen to start using Vinted for example, or to use eBay, or to use free cycle. They feel empowered by it. They find it interesting. They want to do it the same. People just cannot bear having six bins. So, so there is something there about what it is that actually empowers and enables people to feel that they own something that works and that has a kind of credible outcome, technology, meeting policy needs, public resonance. Seem to me to be the kind of three big challenges. The government that I work for at the College Center, which is the UK Government, obviously has a bit of it that does England. So I’m just going to talk about a bit of it that does England now for a minute. England now for a minute, they really are going to focus, I think, quite clearly, on looking at a circular economy approach and strategy. I’m going to try to bring the bio economy, part of that into it, so it’s a bit more of a circular bio economy approach. I’m here in the market for anything I can take back down of clever ideas about how we can do that really well. And yeah, thanks again for inviting me to be part of this conversation. It’s a bit speed dated, but I hope that was a useful challenge to you all. Thanks. Then

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that’s the classic example of saying you’ve got for four or five minutes and you get the pithy stuff. So thank you very much for that.

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And our second speaker is Gemma Harper, who is the Chief Executive of the joint Nature Conservation Committee, which is a UK organization funded by the Four Nations, Scotland, England, Wales and Northern Ireland. Before that, she was deputy director for marine policy and evidence,

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and she was the UK commissioner to the International Whaling Commission and Chief Social scientist at Defra note, the social bit there, because it’s relevant, I’m sure, to what she’s going to say. She’s an acknowledged champion of clean, healthy, safe, productive and biologically diverse oceans and seas. Gemma over to you.

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Thank you very much. I’m afraid this is a little bit longer, but do bear with me. Good afternoon. It’s a real pleasure to be with all of you in this incredibly impressive building, these beautiful surroundings. I don’t know if you’ve been around this building. It’s the first time I visited, and we were in a meeting room earlier, and the walls were decorated with beautiful, inspiring images of female scientists. And I want to give credit to the Society for paying tribute in this building to the enormous contribution that female scientists have made throughout history, and we will come back to that point. It’s a real pleasure to be here with Scottish Government, with nature, Scott with business and with civil society. My first message for you is that you are all stewards of Scotland’s natural heritage, and I’m really honored to be here with you to talk to you about a path for transformative change.

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I’d like to begin though by asking a question that I’ve turned to throughout my life.

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What is life calling you to do? It’s a question that invites us to reflect not only on our personal purpose, but on our collective responsibility, especially especially in a time when the challenges we all face are so deeply interconnected.

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But I like this question because I feel it’s imbued with hope. And here, I would like to pay tribute to Dr Jane Goodall and her extraordinary legacy. She encourages us to use the gift of our life to make the world.

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A better place

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and to make the world a better place. Today, we’re here to talk about two new global assessments. They both highlight the urgency of protecting the natural world. The Nexus assessment explores the inter linkages among biodiversity, water, food, health and climate and the transformative change assessment examines the transformative actions that are needed to address the root causes of biodiversity loss.

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The other question we really should ask ourselves is, why do we care about this? Why do we care about biodiversity loss?

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Well, let me be as crystal clear as I can be, the science is absolutely consistent, compelling and clear, and may I also say that in this age of disinformation, we must all be guardians of scientific endeavor, as this society is so admirably,

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biodiversity is declining in all regions of the World at an unprecedented rate in human history. We know without healthy forests, wetlands and the global ocean, absorbing carbon from the atmosphere, temperatures will continue to rise, we will reach we will breach the Paris Agreement, as biodiversity declines, as shown here, the number of climate related disasters such as wildfires, floods and storms increases.

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I’m just personally astounded every single day that this is not the biggest news headline every single day as covid was

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the ipus nexus. Assessment warns us that the current trajectory of biodiversity loss threatens the collapse of key ecosystem functions with serious and in some cases fatal consequences for human well being, for our economy and for the planetary systems themselves.

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There are examples here of how we are so utterly dependent on biodiversity. And having been at jncc for now over four years, it’s really incredibly clear to me that we, humanity, are changing the operating system of this planet without a Target Operating Model in mind.

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I’m still astounded and astonished that we have changed the chemistry of the global ocean.

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The Nexus assessment focuses on five interconnected crises as we’ve heard, biodiversity loss, water availability and quality, food insecurity, health risks and inequalities and climate change. And it is biodiversity loss which is driving each of these crises, and the impacts of this loss, we must remember, will be disproportionately felt by the most vulnerable people in society. And let me be clear about who those people are. They are the most marginalized and racialized people in the world.

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I believe, as I know many of you do, that environmental justice is social justice.

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We will only succeed in tackling these crises if we work, as you’ve heard, in a systems way, in a much more integrated, interconnected way, recognizing that we are all part of this complex system, and to echo what Ruth said so powerfully, I know this is hard. If it was easy, we wouldn’t be in this state. But I believe that humanity had the ingenuity to cause this problem. We have the ingenuity to solve it.

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Let’s look at an example here of a Nexus approach land use, when we change the way in which we use land, so converting it from one function to another, for example, deforestation to agriculture, when biodiversity is replaced by unsustainable agriculture, which uses excessive amounts of fertilizer and pesticides, this increases pollution in the soils and rivers that reduces water quality and availability, resulting in negative impacts on our health. And at the same time, when biodiversity is lost, this disconnects us. It disconnects our species from the rest of nature. It increases.

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Greenhouse gas emissions, it intensifies climate breakdown and further has negative impacts on our health and well being

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scientists. And I am a scientist, a social scientist, but we’re very good at inventing languages are quite hard to understand what they mean, and we need we need to do better. We need to communicate this better, but a Nexus approach simply means win, win.

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That’s what it means. It means avoiding the unintended trade offs, and it means promoting synergies across different sectors, all of which depend on biodiversity.

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Now I’m going to say something really shocking. Now,

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trigger warning.

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We humans are not separate from nature.

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I don’t just want you to hear that.

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I want you to feel it

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makes me feel quite emotional.

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I love nature.

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What does it make you feel

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to feel part of nature,

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our dominant systems and in how we think and sorry, our dominant systems, in how we think, govern and behave, continue to treat nature as a resource to be exploited rather than a partner to be respected. And also we use nature relentlessly to define what we think humanity is, what we want it to be, or what we don’t want it to be. How do we know that?

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Well, how does it make you feel to say

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they were treated like an animal? Do

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Scotland, this land knows nature from the peatlands of Cath ness to the marine ecosystems of the Hebrides. I had a great joy of being out in the Hebrides and seeing a fin whale last summer, the second largest animal ever to exist on this planet. These landscapes are living proof of the interconnections between biodiversity, climate, food, water and nature. And what this diagram shows is that when we take a balanced and nature orientated approach. We consider all of these interconnections. We can we can achieve a pathway to a sustainable future. It’s very simple to interpret this diagram. If we do what’s at the bottom, it’s going to be really negative if we continue to exploit nature, it’s going to be really negative if we deal with one of these Nexus areas on its own, we’re going to miss a massive opportunity if we have the ingenuity and the innovation and The courage to see ourselves as part of this system, which I believe is the most major barrier to actually tackling these issues, and then see what the system how the system works and how it doesn’t. If we take a nature orientated approach, as described by it best we can solve this problem.

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Let’s have a look at what that looks like in practice, both in terms of solutions, because we’ve been very good at describing the problem, but also in terms of Scotland’s leadership. I’m

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just going to talk through a couple of these examples. Let’s take regenerative agriculture. I’ve referred to it already, but this is about improving soil health. Everything we want to eat almost is dependent on that, reducing emissions, enhancing biodiversity, and let’s move beyond blame. Let’s stop blaming sectors of society for this problem. We’re in it together. We have to solve it together,

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reducing food loss and waste through analyzing supply chains from production to consumption, as Sir David Attenborough said, just don’t waste

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transforming economic systems. It’s really hard. We know it’s really hard to move beyond GDP to metrics that value nature, equity and well being. But what happens when we don’t value those things?

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Of course.

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We need to reconnect people, not with nature, but with the rest of nature.

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These actions don’t just tick boxes.

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They’re not easy. They require collaboration. They require innovation. Most of all, they require courage. They will deliver across multiple sectors and multiple global goals, from the sustainable development goals to the Kunming Montreal global biodiversity framework and the Paris Agreement.

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We’ve known for some time, decades, that business as usual is not enough, but I am absolutely delighted that Scotland is showing the way. Over 10,000 hectares of degraded peatland were restored last year, the highest annual total ever. The Nature Restoration Fund has invested 65 million pounds in over 250

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projects from restoring rivers and woodlands to protecting rare species and reducing whale entanglement. Scotland’s 30 by 30 commitment is progressing well, with 18% of land and 37% of seas already protected. The natural environment bill will embed statutory targets for nature restoration and the draft environment strategy sets out a holistic framework to tackle climate breakdown, ecological collapse and pollution, whilst promoting social justice and economic resilience. These aren’t just policy wins. They’re people powered successes.

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Let’s turn to what is transformative change. Transformative change tells us we must go further. The unprecedented challenges posed by global environmental change call for an urgent shift in how we view and interact with nature we’re always talking about, it’s urgent,

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but we need to be really clear about what is urgent in relation to transformative change as humanity faces the consequences of our unsustainable practices. It is clear, it is really very clear that transformative change isn’t an option. It’s an absolute necessity. The it best transformative change. Assessment defines transformative change as a fundamental system wide shift in views, how we see and understand the world, in structures, how we govern and organize ourselves in practices, how we behave and how we relate. And I know, having spent my career in organizations that all organizations have immunity to change.

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We have to change that to achieve this transformation, we must redefine the relationship between people and the rest of nature, basing New Visions on inclusive just diverse and forward thinking approaches that address the underlying causes of biodiversity loss.

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And here they are, disconnection from nature and people and domination over people, concentration of power and wealth, prioritization of short term material gain.

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It best through consent, global consensus asks us to embrace four guiding principles to address these causes, equity and justice, pluralism and inclusion, respectful human nature, relationships and adaptive, learning and Action. I reflect

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all of this feels really hard, overwhelming, maybe impossible, but imagine this. Imagine 1783,

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nearly two and a half centuries ago, when this esteemed Society was founded. That’s around five generations ago.

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Were there women in this building

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during that time in living memory, women in Scotland and across the UK were being tortured and murdered for the crime of witchcraft.

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We can change

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if we have the courage to do so.

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Transformative change looks like conserving and regenerating places of value to people and the rest of nature. It looks like driving change, systemic change.

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Change in the sectors contributing most to biodiversity loss. It looks like transforming economic systems for nature and equity. It looks like transforming governance systems to be integrative, inclusive, accountable and adaptable. It’s about shifting our views and our values to recognize human nature, connectedness,

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but for transformative change, any change, we need people. We need you, all of you.

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We are all citizens of nature.

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You understand your local challenges, you have the trust of your communities. You’re already making a difference. We’ve seen that in terms of how progressive Scotland is on this agenda, and together, we can go further,

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because service is not just about duty. It is, as Jane Goodall taught us, it is about hope, and in Jane CC, we like to say that hope is a leadership skill.

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As Marshall Gantz reminds us, hope is the belief in the probability of the possible, not the necessity of the probable. It’s the belief

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that women could be considered human, not which.

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It’s the belief that humans can be considered nature.

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It’s what Emily Dickinson called The Thing With Feathers that perches in the soul.

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What is life calling you to do? Maybe it’s restoring a degraded river catchment or embedded by embedding biodiversity into your business strategy or advocating for stronger protections for Scotland’s native species. Small or large changes drive transformative change, whatever it is, let it be rooted in service, guided by science and fueled by hope, because together, we have the power to transform our land and seascapes, our communities and our future. We do not inherit the earth from our ancestors. We do not we borrow it from our children. In two and a half centuries time on the 500

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year celebration of this esteemed society, what will our descendants in this room be saying about us?

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Will they be thanking us because we had the courage to do the right thing

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with what we knew

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and what we had,

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let us be good ancestors. Thank you very much. Applause.

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I can’t comment on that. You’ve got the message, I think, from both of our speakers, we’re talking about transformative change. It’s not about arguing whether we can just stay as we are, but how do we

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make progress? And that’s what we’re going to debate now with an expert panel. And it’s a great pleasure to have

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Abby Gardner a

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young climate change

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leader in Scotland to chair the panel. She’s the founder and coordinator of the UK chapter of the Global Youth biodiversity network, which is an official platform of the Convention on Biological Diversity. She’s also a member of the long running 2050 Climate Group in Scotland, both of these youth led movements look to empower and equip young people to be leaders for biodiversity and climate

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more widely. Abby’s experience encompasses ecosystem services and nature based solutions as well as CO design and inclusive participation.

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They’re really key words for the future here, and she was recognized in the young woman’s movements 30 under 30 list. So Abby, it’s over to you panelists. Please take the

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seat. With

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the.

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See.

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Okay. Thank you very much, Roger. And thank you to RSE for inviting me along today to chair this esteemed panel.

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As Roger mentioned, I’m involved in two wonderful youth led initiatives in the nature and climate space, founders of the UK chapter of the Global Youth biodiversity network and 2050 Climate Group supporting the delivery of their award winning climate action Leadership Program. And outside of that, I’m an environmental scientist working in policy in Scotland. Now. That’s who I am on paper, that’s what I do. But in terms of who am I, I

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would say I’m an advocate, Justice orientated and ultimately driven by a sense of duty. I dedicate my time and energy and skills to the living world because I feel responsible. I feel we’re all responsible to be guardians, stewards of the home that we live in and we share with others. It’s our duty to stop being the problem and the cause of harm to others and the rest of nature and become the solution, the champion for planet Earth and those it supports.

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But this duty, this personal commitment to the planet, it wasn’t a light bulb moment. It was gradual. It grew over time, and it took me quite a long time to realize that that was my driving force, as Gemma puts it,

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while we all lived through the last couple of decades, I would say they really were my formative years. It took me from a time when biodiversity and climate crisis weren’t talked about beyond scientists or conservationists, who seem to be talking about it for quite a long time,

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through to today, where we have almost weekly headlines quoting the state of the living world and the massive scale of change needed to ensure that the planet remains survivable,

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as highlighted in this morning’s workshop and by Gemma and Ruth the scale of change needed and in such a short space of time is often overwhelming.

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But you know, who really understands transformative change, although they won’t use that phrase, it is young people.

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The Are we there yet? Mentality does take a long time to shake, and I’m sure many in the room will still feel that sense of like, why haven’t we cracked this yet? But

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it must be tackled, and it must be tackled head on, and it must be tackled together. This transformational change will only work if a whole society, a whole of government, approach, and everyone is involved, doing their part. So that leads me to introduce my wonderful panelists this afternoon. We’re joined today by leading voices in the space of biodiversity, food, water, health and climate.

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For those who are all too familiar with panels, you’ll notice this is quite a large one,

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so some housekeeping before we bring them in to introduce themselves, I’m sure we will prefer to get through as many questions as we possibly can. So I’ll ask our panelists to be concise in their answers, and I’ll come to one to two of you to answer the questions that we have coming in.

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You’ll see they have color coded flags representing the systems and the elements of the it best Nexus report,

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and hopefully they’ll give me a wee wave of the flag if they’re looking to answer the question. But I will say, if you’re not waving your flag, you’re not safe. I will use chair’s prerogative to bring you in.

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We’ll be taking questions from in the room, so put your thinking caps on, as well as the audience that are joining us online. Please stick your hand up nice and high so I can see you. And if possible, we’ll try and group theme. So if you hear a question that is similar to your to your own, do let me know, and we’ll try and group some of those together so we can keep it nice and smooth.

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Please wait for a mic to reach you, so that we can hear you, and those online can hear you, and try and keep your questions short and sweet as well, one so that we can remember what the question was, but also so that we can get as many through as well. Those online do ask your questions, and someone in the room will read them out for you.

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Okay, so I’ve got that covered. Ruth, Pete, Elise, Matt, Paul and Ian, please do briefly introduce yourselves, but in doing so, please share the Nexus element that you’re representing today and the sector that you work within, and

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please tell us kind of these reports on transformational change and the inter linkages with five between those five key areas of life, what do they mean to you, and what does it mean to your particular area of interest and work? And a challenge for you to do that in two minutes. So Ruth, do you want to give us take it away? Well, I’m cheating because I already had five minutes earlier, but I’ve had my extra two, if that’s okay, I’m very happy to do that. Thank you. As you know, I’m Ruth Davies. I’m the UK Special Representative for nature. Yeah, it was a really good question. What does it mean if you.

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Start from a position thinking about nature, and then try and build out to all of these other things. I think the first thing is just to remember that

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I really do think about things in terms of sort of biological systems. I expect that everybody else does in the room. And so for me,

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it’s never been a question of thinking in any other than a systems way. The really big challenge is, how do you communicate that to the people that you’re trying to work with, who are decision makers? And I would say that the one thing I wanted to say before we kind of moved on to the rest of the panel, is it really helps to be concrete. It really helps to be very specific in the examples that you give. And I think one of the things that has improved recently is that when we talk around these kinds of systems, partly as a result of the work that it bears and others have done, we’ve gone from talking in generalities to be able to be really concrete and specific about the way in which different bits of the system relate to each other. So these days, when I want to have a conversation about why tropical forests matter to people in the United Kingdom and the UK Government, I point to the rain regulating functions of tropical forests, the way in which that rain delivers rain to tropical agricultural basins, and how that affects supply chains in the UK, and the cost of people’s food in their shopping basket. And I would just say that to be as tangible as possible helps us move on and helps me to position myself in this conversation. Thanks very much.

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Excellent. So I’m Pete Smith. My day job, I’m representing the Nexus. My day job is at the University of Aberdeen, but I was a convening lead author on the it best Nexus assessment, which is why I’m here, which means that I either have to field all the questions or none of them.

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The Nexus assessment, for me was eye opening.

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We spend 10 to $25 trillion every year on subsidies that damage the climate, that damage nature, that damage all the other aspects of the of the of the Nexus. So it’s not a matter of having to find new money if we, if we didn’t spend, we didn’t subsidize those damaging industries, and we instead repurpose those subsidies to do something better with them, to deliver to the Nexus. We could do so much more. So whilst, whilst I think it’s potentially challenging to think in transformative ways and in a Nexus way.

42:26
The capital is there to do it, the money is there to do it. We all we have to do is we have to persuade our policy makers and those who are incumbent, those that have the power we need to shift that balance where we spend the money. So I was in charge of looking at the all the Nexus elements. Gemma summarized much better than I could. She’s she’s done my job for me. All

42:50
the different Nexus elements looked at response options. What can we do about it? Not just what the problem is. What can we do about it? And those five different Nexus elements came up with a number of similar similar options, agroecological farming, sustainable food systems, reduced food loss and waste, conserving natural ecosystems. All of those came up in all of the different Nexus elements. So these things float to the top. They’re there. They’re the low hanging fruit, and we have to find a way to make that happen.

43:34
I’m Elise. I’m here representing water. I work for Scottish water, and water is essential for life and a fully functioning natural environment, which is sustainable, which is diverse, is absolutely essential to maintain that water service. And

43:56
that’s why for us as the water sector,

44:00
the climate change, the biodiversity, the pollution crisis, are so impactful for us in terms of being able to sustain that essential water element, but how we respond to these challenges is absolutely key. So as a sector, we have to recognize that we cannot build our way out of these problems as a sector. We have lots of wonderful engineers. We love pouring concrete, we love steel, but we have got to recognize that this is not a solution in its own any longer. We have to be working with others to get our catchments resilient diverse, so that they can retain the water we need under drought conditions. They can help minimize the impact of flooding. They can improve our source water quality so that we avoid additional treatment processes. We need to look at bio.

45:00
First blue green infrastructure to help soil solve the challenges of surface water runoff, for example. So we have to really manage things so much more differently than we have done before. The other area that we need to recognize is that we have absolutely amazing resources within the water sector. The first is, is water, and we’ve got to change our relationship with water to very much value it. In Scotland, we use the highest amount of water per person, about 180 liters per person per day, much higher than the rest of Europe and England and Wales. So we have to start valuing water, stop wasting this precious resource. We also have to just not waste the other resources that we are managing. We have final effluent coming from our wastewater treatment works an excellent source of hydrogen for the green hydrogen economy. We have phosphorus in our bio resources that could really help minimize the utilization of mineral fertilizers in agriculture. And we have heat a plenty in our wastewater resources, which could really help provide some of that fuel poverty and alleviate a lot of the fuel poverty. So we’ve got amazing opportunities, but we need to be able to change how we think about resolving some of the challenges which are really very impactful for us today.

46:40
Great to be here. Good afternoon, everybody. My name is Matthew Williams. I’m a professor at University of Edinburgh, but also been seconded into the Scottish Government as Chief Scientific Advisor. So I’ve tried to bridge that gap from the academic into the policy space, and I’ve been asked today to be the climate representative. I’m actually an ecologist, but of course, climate was, say, the original global crisis, and that generated a huge amount of activity around IPCC and and climate is still obviously with us in the extreme events we’ve seen over the past few years, from fires to floods and droughts so and interactions between all of those.

47:23
But as an ecologist, I’ve seen the need to connect climate more broadly into the more complete earth system, and particularly interested in in the monitoring around that. So for instance, this year, I was lucky enough to be involved in the launch of European Space Agency biomass satellite, which is monitoring the tropical rainforest in unprecedented detail as a British built satellite

47:51
and what, as Ruth was describing earlier, the importance of these ecosystems are global, and our capacity to monitor and understand Those better and explain their value is something that we can be really proud of in Scotland and in the UK and in Scotland, we’ve been I’m also happy to say that this year we began our national land LIDAR program, which is an airborne laser scanning program, which will be mapping Scotland unprecedented detail. And we’ve also started research projects to explore how those LIDAR data can help us map nature. LIDAR will help us with climate resilience, flood risk, but it will also help us we believe map are rare and important threatened ecosystems, and thereby support better policy making and better decision making by the public, by land managers in order to conserve nature. So I’m I guess I’m here to pitch for the importance of monitoring and evaluation, but also how we use that information to build better systems thinking. Because it’s often in these complex spaces around that the Nexus represents that we get frozen by that complexity. What are we going to do? The seem to be trade offs. There seem to be many people concerned about how change will affect them, rather than understanding the benefits. What I believe, what I hope, and hope is, as we see, an important skill to bring to this debate. What I hope is that by building systems tools, we can help show what a good future can look like for us all and cost the outcomes of inaction better. We have to recognize that doing nothing is a disaster, and we our models don’t tend to represent that effectively, but with the right tools targeted to decision makers and land managers, I believe we can help make those better tricky, but better decisions for the future slowly getting

49:52
longer and longer with your two minutes. So

49:56
good luck. I’ll try an actual two minutes, then just send me a second.

50:00
Know when I’m at two? I’m Paul Johnson. I’m the Chief Executive of Public Health Scotland. It’s a privilege to be here today. We have a program of work within Public Health Scotland on climate and health, the who has recognized that climate change represents the greatest threat to human health. Tackling climate change also recognizes the greatest opportunity to improve human health. Now, if that’s not a Nexus, I don’t know what is. So we want to make the most of that combination of factors. How are we getting on with human health in Scotland? I’m afraid, colleagues, we’re not doing very well at the moment. Scotland’s life expectancy is the lowest in all of Western Europe, and our health inequalities are such that people born in the poorest areas of Scotland have 25 years less healthy life than the richest 25 years less healthy life. What are we trying to do about it? In June, we published Scotland’s population health framework, a 10 year plan for improving human health. What I’m particularly pleased about is that this document, which I commend to all of you, absolutely recognizes the interconnected nature of human health and planetary health, and commits us to work together across all of government, across public services, with business, With voluntary sector, to improve both human health and planetary health. There are specific actions which I hope we’ll be able to have time to discuss. Do ask me more about them, but I think my two minutes is up. Thank you very much. Good stuff to get people’s minds going there,

51:36
yes,

51:37
last, but not hopefully least, Ian gone, Chief Executive Zero Waste Scotland. So we are Scotland’s circular economy and waste prevention agency. So we’re really here, I mean, probably very similar to what David Attenborough was talking about, is to allow the society to continue to exist as it as it wants to, but certainly without wasting anything, and certainly within planetary boundaries. So that’s really about, you know, a whole range of programs to support both industry, citizens and communities and support government policy making at the same time. So I’m here with my food hat on. It’s very much focused, I guess, on the impact of food waste, as much as food production more generally, and the significant impact that that has on biodiversity loss. So we do a lot of research into this in terms of the impact of Scotland’s waste. Won’t try and bore you with too many figures,

52:30
but our food waste across within citizens, businesses and more generally, in retail and hospitality, has a significant impact on biodiversity loss. In fact, it is the waste material that has the most significant impact on impact on biodiversity loss and land use, and is only second to textile waste in terms of water impact as well. So it’s hugely significant. But we don’t actually think about that when we’re wasting food, because we’re more importantly thinking about what to do with it afterwards, which bin to put it into. But it’s all of the impacts that have been put in to that that food in the first place, in terms of the carbon, in terms of the degradation, the land use that is taken up to get that food to your plate. And just, just to put things in perspective, globally, we waste about a third of what is growing in agriculture. For food waste, that’s a third so if you want to put that into scale, you’d need the amount of land twice the size of Australia to grow that food. So if you want to think about the pressures that the land and biodiversity and water and everything is under, that’s the scale of our food waste. So yes, we need to think seriously about the production of our food in terms of carbon, in terms of biodiversity, down to land use and make it more productive and systems

53:46
efficiencies. But ultimately, if we’re just going to waste it at the end of day, we’re really having no significant positive impact. So and there’s a moral implication to this as well, because while we’re talking about this in terms of insecurity, we have, even in the UK, we have one in I think it’s 14% of our society in the UK

54:06
say that they live with food insecurity. And globally, we have one in 11. I think is people going to bed hungry every night. So there’s we do a number of programs, as suppose I said, businesses. My takeaway from the conversation so far, somebody said it is, it is a complex situation that went to terms of the reasons why we’re in this situation. I think we need to embrace that complexity instead of just talking about it. We need to understand that it is going to be complex. There’s no silver bullet. There’s no silver bullet to food waste. But we do need to think about, as others have said, How are our systems set up to address those you know, and that’s really what we think we should be doing, is yes, we need to take specific action, but at the same time, we need to start thinking about the conditions that we need to have, not just debates, but actually action. We still live in a very siloed world, whether that’s policy making.

55:00
Or delivery. We live in a very, you know, almost a linear system from years ago. We need to create different types of environments for people to get together and take action, because this ultimately is system system thinking. It’s not system thinking, it’s system delivery and system action.

55:18
Okay, thank you so much.

55:21
Thank you for sprinkling in those various Nexus elements for us already to get people thinking. So it’s over to it’s over to you guys now, and whether anything has come forward that sparked your interest or you’ve got a good, challenging questions for those of us up here. So we’ll go with this lovely hand over here, nice and high. Thank you. Yeah. So my name is Dr, Michael Edwards. I work in desnaz on English heat policy. I’m over in that building over there, which is in the shadow of St Andrew’s house. So I’m getting some easy question. I work on heat and wasted heat. One of the things I work on is EFW, but I’m not gonna talk about that, because you’ll hate me. So a few people touched on it. So

56:03
Lisa Carmel, your colleagues in Scottish water horizons, of course, they’re actually much ahead of England in terms of extracting heat that’s being wasted. Call it surplus heat. Call it rejected heat. Emotional terms, maybe. But in with the heat that is being wasted, if I’m talking to people who, let’s say don’t believe in climate change. I borrow their union jack, and say you’re wasting British energy in terms of recognizing heat as a commodity which needs to be recirculated, and wasting heat. And we get very quickly back to what Paul was talking about in terms of people are struggling to burn pay to burn more fossil fuels to heat their homes, and we live in cold houses and number of operations, whether it’s high temperature, low temperature, even supermarkets, all this heat being wasted. It just so I think we all know this, but just going make sure we keep sight of in terms of before we it’s about like the food argument, isn’t it, before we actually try and improve the the low carbon fuel source. Let’s just get the heat we’re wasting. Let’s start with the efficiency, so just a wee sort of flag. Don’t lose track of heat as a commodity and the efficiency and heat as something that is also being badly wasted in this country. And gets back what we said before, if it’s what, like the price of whatever is and the cocoa beans going up, it’s if it makes my heating bill cheaper and makes me warm and cozy, then I like it. And that gets back to what is the bankable value of it for the individual in the street. So quite a long point there. But I just want to to get something to keep in mind.

57:39
I’ll try and translate that into a question, I suppose, maybe for Pete or Ian, in terms of trying to get the message across to folk that are having to deal with the cost of living, crisis and issues that are a bit closer to home and maybe more short term, how do we reflect the need to think about these more system wide issues.

58:04
I can take that one to start. It’s actually cheaper to not waste. It puts more money in the pockets of the people that are struggling so. So if we can come up with these options, heat is one good example, food wasted. Another great example, all the foods that wasted is money that you’ve paid in the supermarket, that you’re not consuming. So that’s, you know, it’s a no brainer, really, in terms of, in terms of making that, making the case to reduce those, there are things that that supermarkets. It’s not just down to individuals or governments. Things that supermarkets do. They may have buy one, get one free offers on bananas, for example, and those nobody’s going to turn down two lots of bananas for the price of one, but those bananas tend to get wasted. What would be a better way to do it is give you a token for next week so that you could get your bananas next week. So there are just simple options like that that would reduce the cost to people, reduce waste, and would make deliver across the Nexus elements,

59:10
no, absolutely echoing that. I mean, talking about, yeah, food waste is a massive cost. We’ve got numbers, you know, per house, per family, the average, you know, it’s considerable, I think, to households in Scotland that something like 1.3 billion pounds

59:24
is wasted in terms of food that’s bought and not used. So, you know, you can start to work out some of that. It’s significant. And there’s a number of programs to support people raising awareness of it and what they can do. You know, I can go create a long list of actions that individual people can do and as well as the redistribution of food, very importantly, because people who are more wealthy buy more food and waste more food, for obvious reasons. So how do we make sure that we’re distributing that food, or there’s facilities or projects community based significant action to make sure that food can be distributed and.

1:00:00
And there’s a number of programs, more with a social and a moral bent, rather than specifically an environmental thing. But these are things are very important, and there’s more of these types of projects that are needed and supported. And that’s, again, my point about, you know, we need, to some extent, invest in those types of initiatives. You know, of investment, you know, whether that’s, you know, venture funds or otherwise, they’re all very everybody’s like hunting down the next unicorn that’s going to make loads of money for somebody. But actually, we need to seriously think about investing in the infrastructure that we need to support wider take up of more sustainable behaviors. But in terms of heat, just an aside, because another role that I have, other side of food, you know, we actually deliver the Scottish Government’s heat network support unit. So all of the things you’ve talked about is very much front and center of our action. There’s a heat and buildings bill going, currently being lodged in Parliament, which is looking at all of the things you’ve talked about, and at the back of that is not just about climate. It’s very much about, how do we reduce the cost of heat, particularly to those who are living in a more disadvantaged circumstances?

1:01:10
Great. Thank you. Another question, got Bruce in the middle with the blue shirt? Where’s one? Where’s my mic? Oh, at the back, further back.

1:01:26
And keep it at 30 seconds. I’m Bruce I’m head of policy at Scottish Wildlife Trust. Two biggest issues on my desk that weren’t from our membership. We are a membership organization, are two planning issues, one that Scottish ministers have just consented Berwick Bank, which the rstb think is possibly going to have the largest impact on seaboards of any development they’ve ever seen. And another development which is with Scottish ministers for consideration, which is cool links, which is on a triple designated Ramsar spa and triple si site. So these are very live decisions, one that’s already been made, which the NGOs are unequivocally agreed is going to be a disaster for seabirds. There was other options on the table, and those haven’t been pursued. There’s another decision coming down the tracks on cool links. The question is, we’ve got, we’ve got the Nexus now on these things, and the wrong decisions have been made with one of one of these from the perspective of long term biodiversity, because there were other options with Daria bank for generation, and we’ve got one that’s very live. How do we get through to politicians that these things have long term consequences, acknowledging that there are other strong feelings locally, particularly with cool link. Cool links about short term economic benefits for communities. How do we get politicians to engage with those really difficult issues? We

1:02:52
have another question at the back that maybe can be grouped with it. Thank you. Hi Lee Morris, also for the Wildlife Trust, but the central team. So my question is going to be around Donald Trump’s presentation at the UN and around Rachel Reeves and the planning and also linked to the rise of reform. So it’s the same issue, the politics of it. How do we give us something positive at the front on how we can get Brianne the current politics that seem to deny climate change and don’t value nature as much in planning as we’d like them to Ruth,

1:03:24
you want to start us off? Thank you. Yeah, I might as well, because I think it’s a difficult question, and it’s better to face straight into it. So you shouldn’t pretend that this is an easy state of affairs. I you know, these are, these are issues of renewable energy nature, issues that I think colleague has raised raised here,

1:03:43
I do see an increasing willingness on the part of the industry to recognize that consent for continuing to roll out renewable energy is partly based on its ability to be able to work out what strategic solutions to the problem looks like. I think they’re looking to find ways in which they can roll out at speed. And let’s face it, we need them to roll out renewable energy at speed. We really do,

1:04:09
but in ways where they can go beyond just trying to deal with kind of mitigating impacts, and they can build out something which ultimately is going to be a genuine contribution to supporting diversity in the marine environment. We need to get round tables with them and start from that fundamental basis of trying to come up with solutions that look like that, because where we’ve sort of ended up is a quite adversarial conversation,

1:04:37
often very controversial set of decisions within within planning that don’t necessarily start from the fundamental principle about what you would do if you were trying to get the very best outcomes. I don’t feel hopeless about about that, because not least, I can see that there’s actually quite a strong evidence base in a lot of cases for where offshore wind, for example, is contributing to positive impacts.

1:05:00
On marine biodiversity by both being designed and positioned in ways that enable recovery around that infrastructure. But I think it’s a matter of trying to start from the kind of upstream early end of that process in CO design that that’s that’s the best that I can offer, which isn’t perfect, but I think it is a reasonable proposition to start with

1:05:24
on the broader question of, you know, how do you deal with a politics that constantly seems to set nature against growth? I, you know, I would answer this in two ways. I think the first thing is, you know, start very straightforwardly from the evidence base that is out there and will demonstrate, now, really, in an extremely concrete way, the actual dependencies of the global economy on the maintenance of critical ecosystems. Start there. Start by making the case really, really clearly to anyone who is actually still interested in an evidence base that this is not necessarily, you know, kind of about even individual decisions, about particular things that might be, you know, kind of concerning us at any given moment, at this stage, it is literally, at this point, about Earth systems. And I will begin by making that point. I commend the work that Nicola Ranger has done through, through her work in Oxford University, looking at what the impact of critical ecosystem losses in the UK economy, for example. So I start there.

1:06:26
I then I would look to see where the economic opportunities lie in the restoration and recovery of nature. Because I think there is an opportunity story that we’re simply not telling to people. Some of it is intimately linked to the circular bio economy, actually, where there are all kinds of things that we do very well in this country, including in Scotland, that drive jobs and growth. Then the third thing I would do is make it very, very clear that this is a country full of people who love nature and that there isn’t really a political payoff to be had actually, from deciding that nature is a kind of, you know, easy victim. And then I’m sorry, but I also think the fourth thing is that every single person who loves and cares about the natural environment has to be willing to get into a room negotiate and find solutions that actually enable development, because people want houses and they need industry. So we’ve got to get in the room and negotiate and look as if we actually care about the social outcomes that are involved in this as the environmental ones. Thanks.

1:07:26
I absolutely do not come here pretending to have all the answers to some of the complex questions that are already surfacing in the room. But what I would suggest is that we need to be clear about one of the things that the public already care about, that we all care about, which is our health.

1:07:42
And I think we can be really clear from the evidence that our health is not shaped solely by the quality or speed of access to the NHS. It concerns me greatly that that remains a myth, whereas the evidence is clear, the NHS and access to health services play about 20%

1:08:02
of what makes for health. What makes for health includes the communities in which we live and the quality of the environments in which we live. So we’ve got a really firm evidence base here about the fact that to improve health, we must also pay attention to the conditions in which we live, we must ensure that we are tackling poverty. We must ensure that we are building houses that are good for human health, and they will be houses that will also be good for the environment. So I think there’s a way in through all sorts of the dimensions that we’re looking at today, but please, let’s not overlook the great public interest and the evidence that exists around how we improve health? Thank you. That’s yeah. It’s a really good point to show that this nexus is providing solutions to these tricky questions, as well as addressing the challenges that we know in our own silos. Pete come in, and then maybe we’ll take a question from online if there’s Yeah, okay

1:08:59
with don’t get me started on Donald Trump, but

1:09:04
there’s a, there’s a there’s a bit of hope here. The former Senate Republican Majority Leader, Frist. Senator Frist, has written an op ed recently in the New York Times, and is really promoting nature based solutions. So this, this gives us hope that we’re dealing with a party there that denies evidence, denies science, denies climate change, yet there’s with a Nexus approach. You don’t even have to mention climate change for the nature based solutions to be relevant, because they co deliver to health and water. So even if you don’t believe in climate change or deny climate change, there are some options that are being discussed by the very people that we think we’ve got no hope with, that are pushing things in the right direction. So that just gave me a little bit of hope last week, when I found out that that was happening, that maybe all is not lost, even within the most

1:09:58
hostile and.

1:10:00
In political environments.

1:10:04
Okay? Online from Luca, how do we tackle system level inequalities and power asymmetries towards a just future for all in peace with nature,

1:10:15
a question

1:10:17
peace with nature being the kind of global vision Ruth, you want to kick us off?

1:10:25
Happy to actually, I fun enough. I strangely find this a slightly easier question to answer than the last one. I don’t know why that is, but maybe it is just the basic thing that that there is absolutely no way to move forward with the issues that we’re talking about here, unless that is going to deliver benefits for people. I spend my life traveling the world. In different parts of the world, there are very different kinds of levels of development and development challenges, but fundamentally, people have an aspiration to be able to have decent, well paid jobs and homes and be able to, you know, kind of like, deliver for their family. And if we can’t do that, we’re doing nothing, right? So how do you do that? You’ve got to be able to be prepared to give away power a lot of the time, and to be able to put power in the hands of communities and people who have solutions that they’re offering, and allow them agency. And you have to be able to work through this nexus approach, which is what is being talked about on the panel here, where at no moment can you have a conversation about what you are trying to do to look after the natural resources or indeed the wildlife of the world or the country, that doesn’t reflect the need for human beings just to have those very, very simple expectations met that all of us have all around The world. So I don’t, I don’t think it’s intrinsically actually a difficult question to answer. The really difficult bit is being willing, every day to try to practice that by putting yourself in a position where you will listen to people who don’t agree with you, and where you will give up agency and power to people who have solutions that are generated on the ground. So I think the question is not one of principle. It of principle, it’s one of practice, and how you do that every

1:12:07
day? One of the things that we was flagged by Gemma

1:12:13
was about they’ve got these really difficult, often theoretical, issues of equity, justice, pluralism, inclusion

1:12:23
I suppose, for anyone on the panel, what does that look like in practice? For you, what is a tangible action that you can go away today and essentially enact that and build it into your work, your organisation’s work, and ensure that you’re taking those first steps to ensuring you’re getting those enabling conditions for transformational change.

1:12:43
Just Just an example from our research program. The Scottish government invests around 40 million pounds a year in environmental, natural resources and agriculture research, and we’ve been just developing our strategy around that. And the consultation closes today, and we’ve been thinking a lot about how we generate impact, and that this isn’t an academic exercise, but actually engages more widely, and we’re hoping to see what the consultation brings back to us. But we proposed the concept of living labs, which is an interface between research and practitioners, and the idea is that we will look to co create solutions to challenges like regenerative agriculture. They don’t come out of the lab. They come in situ, with researchers, working with communities, with practitioners, with land managers, and that’s the approach. We’re hoping to see, whether it’s regenerative agriculture or climate resilient communities, how we actually get out and work with the communities on the ground, and that’s bringing social scientists aboard as well. So we’re thinking about issues around social justice alongside the broader Nexus challenges.

1:13:49
Thanks, Elise, you kind of mentioned in your opener that there’s inequalities and access and use of water. How

1:13:57
do you bring that into the governance and the management of our of our water systems.

1:14:02
Yes, I maybe take the example of how we’re managing that in delivering our net zero, our climate

1:14:10
targets. So the main thing for us is that we’re not chasing a target for Target’s sake. We’re not using customers money and spending a disproportionate amount of our customers money to solve one challenge in isolation, and it goes back to Gemma’s point earlier, we are looking at

1:14:30
trying to get multiple benefits by using our customers money. So we’re trying to get carbon mitigation, but we’re also trying to do that in a way that helps restore our catchments, reduces future customer bills in terms of deteriorating water quality. We’re trying to work with local authorities, instead of just piling in more concrete for surface water flooding, which will increase customer bills.

1:15:00
Often impacting on the poorest in our society. How can we work to actually get blue green infrastructure in there, partnering with others in terms of funding, so that we’re trying to use the our customers money to get those multiple benefits, and not just

1:15:17
utilizing scarce, you know resource because, you know, any increase in bills falls disproportionately on certain parts of the society. So we have to be really mindful that we’re using that money effectively, and partnering up as a team Scotland approach is also a way that we can generate that by working with others. So those are a few of the things that we we can do, and certainly some of the resources that we have, the heat from sewers, that’s heat that’s there anyway. How can we effectively distribute that into social housing? Also, how can we support

1:15:55
Scotland’s public sector? I don’t know why, but a lot of our hospitals are co located with our wastewater treatment works. I don’t know how this happened, but there’s a really good then utilization of that heat again, to support that public sector. So I think it’s just not just doing one thing in isolation, trying to get those multiple benefits. When you’re tackling an area I see you’re looking at, maybe, but we’re running out of time rapidly. I want to do one more short, short question from the audience. Try and keep it short, please.

1:16:28
First hand that was up at the back there. Give me a wave I can Bob looking at Yeah,

1:16:36
it’s happened. It’s happened. Now maybe if you could try and coordinate.

1:16:42
Thank you. Yeah,

1:16:44
I’m risk. I’m a student of University of Edinburgh from Indonesia. It’s actually good that, sir. Ian Gulen, do you represent food? Because I’m studying on food waste in my class of circular economy, and I’m quite fascinated with the this 22,021

1:17:03
Scottish food waste estimate. I see that the I think in Scotland, you have already a very systemic way of circular economy, especially in food waste coming from Indonesia, where the the food waste is still very, very linear and the waste is not segregated. I’m so curious now, what’s more that could be done in Scotland to actually reduce the food waste? Because I see from the from the report itself, that they there is a five, five kilograms price of between 2013 baseline until 2021 and that’s only for per person per year. And what I want to know, what’s more actually could be done? Because I’m thinking like with this already comprehensive, systemic. I thought that it could be, it could be reducing the food waste, but apparently, maybe not. So what could be more than Yeah, thank you. What’s your question about food?

1:17:59
Amazing?

1:18:02
Is it on? Yes, Ian

1:18:05
alluded to this earlier, food systems go across all of the Nexus from obviously being a major driver of biodiversity loss, particularly tropical deforestation, globally, second biggest use of water, obviously, you know, wrecking our soils, the second largest sectoral contributor to emissions in this country, soon to be the first and obviously at the other end of it, end of it, having a massive impact on our health. Sorry, I forgot to say my name is George Barber. I work for the food farming countryside commission. Last year, we published a report estimating that the cost to the taxpayer of rubbish food systems is about 268 billion per year in NHS costs and lost productivity and so on. I guess my question is, there is an enormous amount of market concentration the food system, both within both nationally, in terms of supermarkets, both compressing farmgate prices, but also leading to negative health outcomes, but also nationally, with the extraordinary power of the abcds. And I would like to ask the panel as a whole, what shifts policy levers, market levers, changes would allow the kind of structural change to support better outcomes globally for food systems to have to allow the transformational change highlighted in the Nexus.

1:19:16
Thank you. I’m going to look to you to answer and any other panelists that would like to afterwards,

1:19:25
we could chat as an aside, because it’s quite a long answer to your question. Certainly from Scotland, we do, we’ve made huge progress on managing food waste. So we have food waste collection infrastructure, both at household level, across businesses and a lot of that. It’s obviously captured for for energy, for anaerobic digestion, and you talked a bit about that energy. So that’s where the progress has been made. Unfortunately, we’re not making the same progress and actually reducing the amount of food waste. Unfortunately, for a variety of reasons, there are, as I said, it’s not a silver bullet. You know, depends on lifestyle, age group.

1:20:00
Group, family, you know, whole host of things. And even depending on the time of day, people obviously waste more food in the evening, evening meals than they do at breakfast, etc. So there’s quite a complex things, which we’ve done a lot of evidence gathering about that. But you know, ultimately, we’re not having that conversation. You know, I’d say we don’t have a national conversation about food waste, yes, about the collection. But you know, what do we actually know? And comes back to points that people have made that connection between where our food has grown, the impact of that, the impact of that in nature. You know, even, you know, I was over in Ireland earlier this week talking about, you know, this very subject, and the whole interaction between school children and agricultural farming is so distant now that people don’t really understand where their milk comes from, you know. So there’s a real there’s a lot more we could do at that level, as much as the more practical level, about giving people tips, about, you know, buying what they need, eat, what they’ve got, you know, using the leftovers, storing food. You know, there’s lots of that type of stuff, but it’s a more generic, I think, a more strategic conversation that we need to have, and who actually owns that comes back to that point about bit more silo mentality. You know, in terms of government, who owns the challenge around food waste? Is it a waste issue? Yes, it is, when it’s actually produced, but consumption, is it a health issue? Is that a climate issue? Is that an agriculture issue? Is it, you know, a broader community issue, in terms of what is going on? I mean, others will probably tap into the second question. But there is, obviously, there is

1:21:35
statutory obligation of the government to have a national food plan, which is currently being developed as we speak, and that’s exactly the place where the second question should be answered, yeah. It feels like 30 seconds. Yeah. Feels that we’re needing a separate conference on our food system. What I wanted to say is that the population health framework that I’ve referred to already recognizes that improving healthy weight is one of our top two priorities in order to improve Scotland’s health. So we’ve we’ve thought a lot about the food that we waste. Let’s also have a focus on the food that we consume and the fact that 67% of our population in Scotland now live with overweight or obesity, and the profound impact that has on disease and on entirely preventable harm. But what we recognize here is that improving healthy weight requires a transformation in the whole food environment. It’s not primarily about lecturing people about what they eat. It is about shifting our relationship with food and the food environment that clearly is a cross cutting priority for us.

1:22:42
Thank you. We do need to wrap up there. This is a hazard of a six person panel in the time that we have.

1:22:50
I just have a very quick final question for you, and I just want a sentence you’ll you’ll want to add to it, but just a sentence.

1:22:58
We’ve talked about action that needs to be taken within our spheres, within the system. But I want to ask, as you go away today, what is your personal commitment? What are you going to go away and do to implement and deliver this transformative change that we’re just so desperately looking for? It’s a big question, but please do punchy sentence I’m going to start this, end for a change, put you on the spot. Ian, what’s your personal commitment for embedding this transformative change?

1:23:28
I mean, continue to I think, I think the answers, the answers that we are faced as an organization, I think, are going to be answered from people who are not the usual people that we talk to. I mean, this is about a much more systemic view. So it’s about reaching into other territories and other areas, other networks. I think we still tend to go talk to the same people and hoping to get different answers. As we all know, there’s a famous saying about that, you know. So it is about that much more, creating a different type of framework for us to address these systemic challenges. Thank you. Shorter shorter sentences, please. I’m going to seek to ensure that we pursue environmental sustainability and Health Equity together,

1:24:11
bring bring science and evidence to the decision makers.

1:24:19
Continue to work with others to get these multiple benefits so that we can really work collectively to solve things,

1:24:30
try and live in a way in your own personal lives that contributes to the Nexus. I’ve

1:24:36
planted trees.

1:24:39
I’ve got ground source, heat pump, I’ve stopped eating meat and dairy because they’re all what the science tells us we need to do. So I have chosen to embrace that and to try and live as I preach.

1:24:52
And I guess my answer is good compliment to peace, which is, you know, the privilege of working for a government, and that gives you the opportunity.

1:25:00
Be to reach out from inside the silo you’re operating in and finding the other curious, open minded, positive, practical people inside government who are going to put some of these solutions into action. Thanks very

1:25:13
much. Thank you. Please join me in thanking the panelists and thank you for your questions.

1:25:22
Yeah, in the

1:25:27
interest of time, I’m going to just continue while these guys vacate the stage. I’m pleased to give me Dennis for running over before I introduce our next and final speaker, I just want to leave you with a provocation similar to we have to I have with the panelists, I’d

1:25:42
like to introduce a term to you, if you’ve not familiar with it already, and that’s intergenerational equity.

1:25:49
Now I’ve not come across intergenerational equity. It’s quite a mouthful, but you might have heard those words separately, and it gives you a bit of a clue as to what it means. But being guided by the principle of intergenerational equity means to aim to meet the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs. And I feel like that is a nice jargony term for people to take away and embed in their policy and academic endeavors, similar to being a good ancestor. So I invite you to think about whether you are currently living and working by this principle and thinking about it, if you were to live by the principle, would your timelines shift? Would your risk appetites change? Would the trade offs feel different? Would your ambition rise, and would transformative change start to become the norm?

1:26:40
On that note, I’m going to introduce our final speaker. That’s Colin Galbraith, Chair of nature Scott to provide us with some final reflections on the day. Thanks, Colin.

1:26:58
Thanks Abby, and good afternoon everyone. I think we should just give Abby a round of applause for chairing that

1:27:08
we’re now moving to the other end of the generational spectrum, as it were,

1:27:12
I think we’ve had a fantastic afternoon, and it’s really encouraging to hear the comments from the panel as well. So well done panel. I’m going to thank some people at the very end, but just before I do, I’ve got one or two one or two reflections on what I heard this afternoon and very briefly this morning. These fall into three areas. And as many of you will know, who know me, I can’t really get beyond three in terms of talks any more than that. You will forget it and I will forget it. So three areas, I think, for me, firstly, the Nexus assessments, biodiversity, water, food, health and climate are inter woven, intimately intertwined, and to consider them separately is no longer really viable. We have to do that as one collective. How do we do that? How can we solve the nature crisis without tackling the other issues? Clearly, we can’t, but we shouldn’t be overwhelmed by that. We should tackle them. We should not be overwhelmed.

1:28:05
Gemma, in her wonderful speech and talk earlier on, quoted the acclaimed economist and economics commentator Martin Wolf, who stated, in order to change the system, we need to change our ideas. And I think what we’ve heard today is a little bit about changing ideas. That’s right. Of course, the challenge is how we do it. So my first challenge to leave you with is still to articulate that joined upness in a meaningful way that people can really understand. I mean, my job, Chair of nature, Scott, is about communication. Really. It’s about managing an organization at the board level, but it’s really about communication being that front end. So how do we do that? How do we take that holistic view? How do we take that overall approach to resolving these crises, but talk in a meaningful way where we can say to government ministers, to people in public, actually, this is what the action is needed and how we do it. If you want a joined up approach. We need to be joined up, whether it’s a scientist, policy makers or others. That’s a big, big challenge

1:29:07
that takes me then on to my second sort of challenge area, and second thoughts. And it’s one about where is the urgency, you know, we had a year or two ago, certainly in a Scottish context, I should say I’m talking globally here, not just Scotland, just in case there’s any Scottish government colleagues in the audience, which I know there is, I’m talking globally. Where is the sense of urgency? Urgency, to me, means you don’t just carry on doing the same things. You don’t just have the same institutions. You actually change to respond to the urgent situation that you’re dealing with. Where is that unbridled mission for transformative change that we talked about it’s incumbent on us all to actually begin and to take that, that campaign, if you like, forward.

1:29:48
We’ve heard from the panel and through the earlier parts of today that we do have strategies and approaches to tackle each of the issues, water, nature, separately, but how do we join them up and.

1:30:00
That change that we need, demands that sort of collective thinking. So the conditions really for one crisis apply across them all, but that’s really a challenge. I think that challenge, then, for me, goes alongside what I see as something of a disconnect between how people view nature and we probably all see as being interlinked, intertwined with nature, but that’s no longer a common thread. There is this anti environmentalism that we can see a little bit in the UK, but we can see that globally as well. There’s somebody in there whose name I refuse to mention, but actually, you can see that anti environmentalism is a serious point. They may have a serious point, actually, in terms of where we are. So how do we take on board the challenges of communication, the need for joining up alongside that anti environmental view? That’s a big, big challenge. Probably what we need is a move towards politicians, dare I say it, and decision makers and leadership at all levels in government, but not just in government, in industry and across the board, that really articulates and really gets to the root of problems. We can’t just be superficial in short term. We also need to look at the consequences of inaction. And we heard that clearly earlier on in the panel, doing nothing is really no longer an option. So I’m intrigued to know, what will you do? And very good question, Abby, to the individuals along the panel, what will you actually do? My answer to that, by the way, is I’ve got some acorns that I’m growing if you want a superficial one to plant some trees. But actually, we do need to highlight the need for urgent change and for novel solutions. Take a risk or two. If we carry on and don’t take risk, we’ll never solve the problem. So how do we do that? How do we do that in government agencies, in your industry and individually?

1:31:44
So there is an appetite for doing that. But how do we actually get that restoration and community participation? How do we bolt people back in to nature so that they own the problem? So really, my second challenge is to recapture that sense of urgency, to recapture the ownership of the situation, no to urge action, to spend now, to save for the future, to actually take action. What we tend to do is we tend to what I think of as by managed by disaster. We wait till the hurricane happens. We wait till the flood happens. We wait till the storm occurs, and then we think, well, we didn’t see that coming. Well, we need to see that coming, and businesses need to be more resilient than they have been. It’s in their economic interest now to be resilient. So how do we do that? So my second challenge, as I say, is, how do we capture that sense of urgency again, and then how do we link that to our own and collective ownership

1:32:41
that then takes me on to my third and final thought, which is about generation, truly, in the midst of all that crisis, we could be pretty miserable, and in Scotland, we do miserable. Well, you know, it’s nothing to do with football. It’s just we have a genetic link to misery.

1:32:55
But actually, I think it is incumbent on us in Scotland and across the UK to actually be positive. And if you look at what Sir David Attenborough said today about this meeting, about about the overall approach that we’re taking, it’s that encouragement from all generations. And the key point that I used to laugh at, but I don’t know, is don’t underestimate great power. He said, looking at the ceiling, there is still something there for all generations to be accountable for and to take action on, as we’ve seen in many, many of the debates publicly across the UK. So what have we seen today? So David Attenborough, 100 year old, nearly gave us encouragement. Abby, chairing the panel, little less than 100 year old. Abby, but actually your involvement, and your colleagues involvement in I should say, I think Abby is still an employee of nature Scott, which we’re very proud of, but actually your encouragement at that generational level is really, really inspirational. So solutions may not come immediately. They may take a generation or two, but we need that

1:33:56
overall change and that political and policy framework for that change to happen. How do we do that? So overall, what are we trying to do? I think we’re trying to get a transition to a fairer, more resilient world, across the whole world, with healthier people, sustained economics and something I was challenged by when I took over as chair of nature, Scott was to say that agriculture should be profitable. It has to be profitable. But we as an organization had never said that. And for me, profit viable business and a cleaner economy. A cleaner environment is really key. We will never have a sustainable economy without a clean environment. And I think I get confused and worried when people put the two things against each other. It’s got to be seamless and one in the same. So my third and final challenge, for the sake of the current generation and for generations to come, is to instill a can do approach, not bottle half empty, but bottle half full, a can do approach, into all our work, and to take that in.

1:35:00
Message to decision makers here in Scotland, across the UK, a message from this meeting has to be, we can do something about this. What does that mean overall for us? Well, the three points, I think, one, we need to think holistically, scientifically, that’s a challenge. We need to work together more as scientists and policy makers than we have. Secondly, it is to recapture that urgency and increase ownership. What does that actually mean? Compromise novel ideas, new and exciting risk taking, and then, thirdly, to instill a can do approach. For me, it’s essential that we do all three.

1:35:35
Let me close this by telling you one very quick story before I thank the various organizers Chair of nature. Scott, I grew up in Highlands. In the highlands, as many of you will know, everybody knows everything else, and if they don’t know you, they’ll just make it up anyway. But I was in a shop, and Paul, I hate to say it was actually a chip shop in the West of Scotland, where I was quite well known, and they knew I was chair of nature. Scott, they came up and had a challenge. The owner came up and had a challenge about climate change. Didn’t believe it. Load of rubbish, based in Edinburgh. Now, what do you know?

1:36:07
Really? You know very public argument, which I’m quite used to, actually, 10 minutes of it. But at the end, he said, How are you? How’s the family? Come outside and look at my new car. His new car was electric, to which I said, What on earth? Why you just you really attacked me about climate change. What’s this about an electric car? He said, Well, you might just be right. And I think keep that in mind, you might just be right. Thank you very much.

1:36:41
Thank you for that. Today has been a wonderful day. And actually, days like this don’t happen by accident. They take a lot of work, a lot of organization. So let me thank on behalf of everyone here, the various people involved. So firstly, the RSE, jncc, nature Scott Of course, and the Scottish Government for supporting the event. Thank you all for your input, financial and otherwise. Thanks. Abby Gardner again and to our speakers on the panel for such really excellent panel discussion and really challenging questions that you got as well. There’s a number of people at RSE that have just made this work seamlessly. Ishita paraka, I hope I said that right. Talia West, Kate Kennedy and Daria Tuhtar within the RSE have done a wonderful job at getting us here in jncc. SARAH SCOTT, Marshall, Alicia Fisher and NES

1:37:32
Amaral Rogers, again, apologies, in jncc. And then within nature, Scott our own Clive Mitchell and Debbie Bassett have done a wonderful job in terms of getting the whole thing to work. Jack Bloodworth, Susie Turkey and Matt Williams, importantly, from Scottish Government. Thank you for your time and input. And then fundamentally, Roger cross and des the Anton deck of the RSE

1:37:55
have actually done a wonderful job at convening. I hope that sticks with it. Have really done a wonderful job at bringing this together, and Roger in particular, has been a leading light in terms of the environmental work within RSE. So Roger, thank you, and well done for that. The key point at the end, as we heard at the outset, is don’t just waste that’s fundamentally important for today. Thank you all, and please join me in thanking our speakers and organizers. Thank you very much the.