Scotland’s Climate Week: Public Health Scotland’s Story for Change

Every year, communities and organisations from across Scotland come together to mark Climate Week, and encourage and promote climate action and move towards a Net Zero Scotland. To start our Climate Week activities, Manira Ahmad, Chief Officer at Public Health Scotland, reflects on the year that has passed since the launch of our Climate and Sustainability Strategic Approach.  

Scotland’s Climate Week 2024 is appropriately themed Stories for Change, and it’s given us a great opportunity to take stock of where we have come since launching our Climate Change and Sustainability Strategic Approach 2023-2026 in September 2023.

Climate change is a health issue. To prevent the threat to health from climate change we need to take urgent action to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and make Scotland resilient to changes in our climate.

Our Strategic Approach outlines how we plan to contribute to meeting Scotland’s climate ambitions, and support NHS Scotland and our health and social care partners to do the same. It also sets out our commitment to embed climate and sustainability in all our work to protect and improve population health in Scotland. Through these actions, we’ll contribute to achieving a Just Transition to Net Zero and build climate-resilient, healthy and equitable communities.

Climate and sustainability mean different things to people within and outwith PHS, both personally and professionally, with the commonality being the need to take robust action to protect our planet and by doing so, Scotland’s health.

In the last year, we’ve already made great inroads to delivering on our ambitious targets through our established and planned programmes of work on healthy places to live, work and play, transport, housing, open space and the environment and healthy and sustainable diets. It’s gratifying to look back at how far we’ve come and the partnerships we’ve created and strengthened upon in that time.

We’re working across sectors to explore the impact of climate change policy on communities across Scotland, to ensure the changes that must be made do not further entrench existing health and social inequalities. PHS has an important role to play in bringing data, evidence, expertise and public health approaches to bear on climate action. This will ensure that together we can deliver climate action that achieves not only climate outcomes, but also maximises the opportunities for improving health and reduces risks to health and equity.

As one of the three tenets of our strategic approach is PHS’s public body responsibilities, we’re striving to get our own house in order. We’re working to understand and address our impact on the environment, creating a sustainability staff network, maximising the efficiency of our office space and operations, and preparing for a move to new, more environmentally-friendly premises in Glasgow, and working to better understand and improve staff travel where possible.

We’ve recently worked to support mapping of the greenspace in NHS Scotland’s estate and will be publishing a report on this in October. This work will support the NHS locally to understand how best to utilise the estates and greenspace within their immediate reach in order to improve planetary and human health.

We’ve also published a three-year Adverse Weather and Health Plan which sets out how the organisation, with support from Scottish Government and working in partnership with key stakeholders, will help to protect the health of the population from weather-related harm.

We’re also working with partners across sectors to ensure that health is a key consideration in policy steps intended to support Scotland to adapt to and mitigate against climate change, including hosting partner events to ensure that these steps do not worsen existing health and social inequalities.

Later in the week, we’ll highlight other examples of the important work we’re involved in, including the publication of our Health Impact Assessment of the Scottish National Adaptation Plan 3 (SNAP 3), and initiatives around active travel.

We hope to give you some flavour of PHS’s role in changing Scotland’s story, and delivering the targets that will make Scotland a fairer, healthier and greener country for now and future generations, and continue to encourage the links between improving planetary and human health.