The Scottish Climate Intelligence Service has been busy developing its offer, analysing and sharing its continually expanding data insights, delivering workshops and capacity building across Scotland. Here are the latest updates, highlights and a look at what we've got coming up over the coming months:
1. Sharing the strength of SCIS data to meet national climate intelligence needs
At the end of September, SCIS met with Scottish Government to share the latest insight and analysis and discuss how this can support policy, local and national level coordination and progress on collective climate ambitions.
The value of the evidence and insights the team are gathering was positively received. We were able to look at some examples of where local authority climate transition pathways are being implemented and progress being made — with almost 2,000 climate interventions currently logged and in action across the 32 local authorities. We were also able to reflect on the importance of aligning insight monitoring across local authorities and how this can aid in future national climate action planning.
Moving forward, we discussed some of the opportunities to maximise the utility of intervention insights, champion local authority priorities, gaps and barriers in line with national intelligence needs.
2. Spotlight Session: ClimateView Indicator Tool
There was a strong turn out for the recent SCIS Spotlight Session introducing the newly developed Indicator Tool to current service users from 22 of Scotland’s 32 local authorities, alongside new platform users.
The tool is being developed to help local authorities understand whether key climate mitigation transitions are happening, using a broader range of indicators than emissions alone. This includes indicators of transition activity, supporting service delivery systems and wider societal change.
The session included a detailed demonstration of the tool as well as providing local authority officers with the opportunity to feedback on the design and use of the tool. The session provided a space to discuss how indicators can be used in practice with the Transitions and Interventions parts of the ClimateView platform through a “gap analysis” to better understand progress, identify barriers and highlight where further action may be needed.
We maintain a user-centred approach to our work. Everyone came away with a greater understanding of how indicators can help identify gaps, barriers and opportunities for climate intervention in their local contexts, while attendees also contributed to the design, current and potential local authority use cases for the tool.
3. Insight Briefing on the Social Benefits of Climate Action: Public Transport
The fifth edition in the series of SCIS Insight Briefings focusing on the wider co-benefits of climate action is now out.
The series offers digestible information based on SCIS analysis on how local authority efforts made towards climate action carry shared benefits across operational public service delivery, health and wellbeing for citizens. This briefing focuses on the benefits of increased uptake in public transport, highlighting potential economic efficiencies for local authorities, while outlining some of the correlation between a range of factors — from reducing burdens on healthcare to infrastructure maintenance — as human, environmental and financial savings.
It is important that local authorities are supported to recognise in cross-service delivery, future planning or strategy-building, that climate action, service improvement and meeting public demands can be addressed together. It doesn’t have to be a case of doing one thing or the other.
Read the SCIS Insight Briefing: Social Benefits of Climate Action: Public Transport.
What’s coming up?
Over the coming months, we'll continue our dedicated one-to-one support for all Scottish local authorities, update our Scottish Area-Wide Emissions Inventory to reflect new data, and continue our ongoing collaboration with Scottish Government to improve multi-level climate delivery.
Continuing through October and November, SCIS are supporting local authority officers to upload and refine their interventions in the ClimateView platform, the leading indicator of climate action in Scotland. While working closely with several councils on their intervention data, Transition Pathways and their dashboard publication journey!
Key upcoming sessions for SCIS service users include:
- Following the Spotlight Session deep dive into Indicator Dashboards, the next one focuses on Nationally Collated Analysis.
- In November, we will also be delivering our new Mobility Transition Pathways workshop for all users.
Alongside these sessions, we will be publishing insight on climate equity and co-benefits of climate action for climate officers. We will also publish the final briefing in our Insight series on the additional benefits of climate action, focusing on public transport. Read previous briefings in the Insight series.
If you would like to find out more about the SCIS programme, you can visit our website and follow us on LinkedIn. You can also contact the team at info@climateintelligenceservice.scot.