Climate Manifesto:
Policies to deliver action and justice

Mainstream climate action in all international work

Mainstream climate action in all international development programming and safeguard against climate risks relative to development impact.

All Scottish International Development Fund (IDF) programming must be climate-proofed. As climate risks escalate, without mitigating action, the effectiveness of climate-sensitive initiatives will decrease.

Projects funded through the IDF, therefore, should be developed and assessed through a Policy Coherence for Sustainable Development lens to ensure they are coherent with climate change issues.

Climate-proofing IDF projects in this way recognises the extent to which a project is vulnerable to climate change, ensures they do not contribute, inadvertently, to climate change, and incorporate opportunities to adapt to, and mitigate, climate risks.

Climate-proofing should be conducted at strategic and intervention levels. Both the Scottish Government International Development team and the agencies implementing IDF-supported projects should be able to conduct climate-risk analyses and climate-proofing.

The OECD guidance⁶⁸ on how to incorporate climate adaptation into development projects should be integrated into management of the IDF and the interventions it finances.

The 2019 Climate Change Act commits Scottish ministers to supporting international adaptation, and to outlining policies and programmes to achieve this, within both the climate change and domestic adaptation plans. This exemplifies PCSD in action.

For further information:

2021-2026 Policy Priorities for Scotland, SIDA, 2021, https://www.intdevalliance.scot/how-wehelp/2021-scottish-election