Resource for the Climate Café® Network (updated 6 Jan 2026)
This resource covers:
Scotland’s draft Climate Change Plan;
How can we get involved?;
Resources to support Climate Café® chats and action;
Sharing views from your Climate Café®;
What are people and organisations saying about Scotland’s draft Climate Change Plan?;
Climate Change Plan events to go along to (more being added as available);
Additional responses and solutions from across civic Scotland from 2019 to date;
Collaborations;
Annexes and useful resource links.
Scotland’s draft Climate Change Plan
Scotland’s draft Climate Change Plan was published on 6th November 2025.
On publication of the draft plan, the Scottish Government opened consultation on the draft Climate Change Plan which runs to 29th January.
The draft Climate Change Plan produced by Scottish Government can be downloaded below. find supporting Annexes at the foot of this page and all the materials can be accessed here.
How can we get involved?
As an individual:
1.Respond to the Scottish Government with your views
If you would like to share your views on the draft Climate Change Plan, one option is that you can access some questions from Scottish Government here. *It is important to know that your comments and input does not have to be limited to answering these questions.*
Another option is to send your views to climatechangeplan@gov.scot This could include what you would like to see in the Plan, ideas from your own experience and expertise, identifying what support is needed in your area or community, ideas for delivery – it is up to you.
If you choose the option to email your views, do include a Respondent Information Form and send it with your email. This can be downloaded as one of the supporting documents here:
Scottish Government has provided questions they would like answered, but you do not need to be limited to these and anyone can make comments that are outwith these questions as well.
2. Do share your comments with your Members of the Scottish Parliament, as this ensures that all those considering improvements to the plan and representing you in the Scottish Parliament hear your voice. Find out who your MSPs are here, include constituency and regional members.Councillors and MPs can be added too, so they know what matters to you.
3. It is also useful to share your views with the Scottish Parliament committees, who are leading scrutiny on the draft Climate Change Plan. The Net Zero and Climate Change Committee will be compiling a report from scrutiny in the Scottish Parliament and this will include recommendations to send to the Scottish Government as they finalise the plan. They are keen to hear views that will inform their recommendations and scrutiny of Government.
4. Before 25th January, the Scottish Parliament is inviting further engagement from the people of Scotland via an online platform, to hear what you think of the draft Climate Change Plan. If you would like to feed into their simple online tool, you can do so directly here.
Please do share this widely too. It is important to raise your voice with the Scottish Parliament so that the Scottish Government are held to account, on the issues that matter to people.
Idea: Do share what you are doing for our climate and nature. Be specific on what others (local or Scottish or UK governments or others) need to do that should be in Climate Change Plan.
As a Climate Café®:
• Have a chat about Scotland’s Climate Change Plan draft at your Climate Café® – short films, toolkits and supportive resources are provided below to help with that.
• Host a pop up event in your community with local groups – invite everyone along for a bigger chat and submit all the views to the Scottish Government and Scottish Parliament.
• Host a chat with friends and family, and support them to feedback all their comments.
*If you are having a Climate Café® or event on the Climate Change Plan – log your event at info@climate.cafe and these can be registered and with RSGS (where their resources used too).
Sharing views from your Climate Café®
Climate Café® chats present an opportunity to support individual contributions and to collate views from across the Climate Cafe® conversations, rather than seek to represent one view.
- The outcomes and views that come from your Climate Café® or community led event can be collated and shared with Scottish Government on climatechangeplan@gov.scot; please do ask for confirmation that it has been received and noted.
- For local MSPs to be aware of the views from your community, you might choose to copy them in to your response. Find out who your MSPs are here, include constituency and regional members. Idea: do invite MSPs to your Climate Café® to discuss further.
- It is also useful to share your views with the Scottish Parliament, who are leading scrutiny on the draft Climate Change Plan. The Net Zero and Climate Change Committee will be compiling a report from scrutiny in the Scottish Parliament and this will include recommendations to send to the Scottish Government as they finalise the plan.
Idea: Why not include what people in your community or Climate Café® are doing already for climate and nature; how that is benefitting the community, and how that can be supported; and what can be done to enable a just transition from fossil fuels to a greener, fairer Scotland.
As the Climate Café® Network
- If your Climate Café® would like to share a list of the points gathered from your discussion (they don’t need to be written up or all agree) – please send to info@climate.cafe
- These will be collated and shared as a consultation response with Scottish Government, copied to Scottish Parliament and to the Cabinet Secretary with the full compilation.
- As a collective, we can invite the Cabinet Secretary to meet with the Climate Café® Network at a Network Call to share views and hear more.
Support for Climate Café® Coordinators and community led events:
Scottish Government advised that they are producing a ‘Trusted Messengers’ Pack to support engagement on the Climate Change Plan, we will update here when this is available.
Scottish Government have funded the following organisations to support engagement too:
• Resources from the Royal Scottish Geographical Society (RSGS)
RSGS have produced an accessible pack that includes short films and resources to support facilitation of an event. The films cover an Overview (2 mins) and short films on themes.
These resources may be very useful for your Climate Café® – a short film to understand the importance and role of the Climate Change Plan; and further accessible, concise resources to allow focus on a key theme that may be a priority for your Climate Café® chats.
The materials to support a focus on a single theme are designed to be around 20 minutes, which may be useful to support a focus on the chat many Climate Café® spaces.
These RSGS resources are free to use, can be shared further, and are downloadable here: https://share.articulate.com/R9O2kFStRfJWoeUXkLmyE#/
If your Climate Café® has used or will be using these resources, the outcomes can be shared with the Climate Café® Network and RSGS to submit to Scottish Government as well.
Other organisations that have been given funding by Scottish Government to support engagement are Forth Valley Climate Action Hub; Glasgow Science Centre; Youthlink Scotland; NESCAN (North East Scotland Climate Action Network Hub).
As soon as these resources are available we will seek to share links to them here.
Scottish Government will consider responses, and produce the final Climate Change Plan for Scotland from 2026-2040 in March 2026.
Informing Parliamentary scrutiny of the draft Plan
At the same time as the Scottish Government is consulting on the draft Plan, the Scottish Parliament are undertaking scrutiny of the Plan.
While several Parliamentary Committees are contributing to scrutiny, it is led, and the final report with recommendations for Scottish Government will be collated, by the Net Zero, Energy and Transport Committee in Parliament.
The full plan for the Scottish Parliament process, including all the Committees involved, the timetable for Parliamentary scrutiny and a link to the Scottish Parliament Information Centre Hub with all the briefings for MSPs on the Climate Change Plan can be accessed here. These pages will also track all progress on the scrutiny process, and you will be able to view oral evidence sessions that are broadcast on Parliament TV.
Over summer 2025, the Net Zero, Energy and Transport Committee issued a Call for Views to hear from the people of Scotland about what they would like to see in the plan, ahead of the draft Plan being tabled in Parliament.
Themed summaries of responses, covering the list here are also available online: Agriculture; Buildings; Electricity; Industry; Land Use, Land Use Changes and Forestry; Negative Emissions Technologies (NETs); Non-sector specific questions; Transport; Waste and circular economy
The Scottish Parliament is inviting further engagement from the people of Scotland, to hear what you think of the draft Climate Change Plan. If you would like to feed into their simple online tool, you can do so directly here. All welcome to do this as well as the other options!
Scotland’s Parliament makes every effort to be accessible and participative, and have also provided a toolkit that may be helpful in having your own conversations about the Climate Change Plan and informing the Parliament with the outcomes of your chats.
Find the Scottish Parliament’s Draft Climate Change Plan Conversation Toolkit here.
What’s the difference between the Scottish Parliament and the Scottish Government?
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What are people & organisations saying about Climate Change Plan draft?
Stop Climate Chaos Scotland (Scotland’s Climate Coalition):
Stop Climate Chaos Scotland (“SCCS”) is a diverse coalition of over 80 civil society organisations in Scotland who campaign together on climate change. Members include environment, faith and belief groups, international development organisations, trade and student unions, community groups – and of course, the Climate Café® Network.
SCCS have published a very helpful explainer on the new Climate Change Plan, which may be a helpful introduction to Climate Café® chats: https://www.stopclimatechaos.scot/scotlands-new-climate-change-plan-an- explainer/
The initial response from the Stop Climate Chaos Scotland on the content of the draft Climate Change Plan is here. Their full and final response to Scottish Government is below:
Climate Change Plan engagement events (being updated as more are announced):
In Perth & Kinross, Climate Connect Perth and Kinross are hosting 10 events; collaborating with local partners in every community plus Cairngorms National Park Authority, Royal Scottish Geographical Society, Loch Lomond and Trossachs National Park Authority and more.
Find more on these events here:
Monday 12th January 2025:
Breadalbane Community Campus, Aberfeldy, from 11 am – 6pm
Tuesday 13th January 2025:
Pitlochry Town Hall, Pitlochry from 11 am – 6pm
Tuesday 13th January 2025 – in collaboration with Climate Café® Crieff High
Crieff Community Campus, Crieff from 11 am – 6pm
Wednesday 14th January 2025:
Auchterarder Parish Church Centre from 12 noon – 6pm
Thursday 15th January 2025
Civic Hall, 2 High Street, Perth from 11 am- 5pm
Friday 16th January 2025
Guide Hall, Birnam, Dunkeld from 11 am – 6pm
Monday 19th January 2025
Loch Leven Community Campus, Kinross from 11 am – 6pm
Tuesday 20th January 2025 with Loch Lomond and Trossachs National Park Authority
Sandison Hall, St Fillans from 11 am – 6pm
Wednesday 21st January 2025
Blairgowrie Town Hall, Blairgowrie & Rattray from 11 am – 6pm
Thursday 22nd January 2025 – in collaboration with Cairngorms National Park Authority
Blair Atholl Village Hall, Blair Atholl from 11 am – 6pm
What ideas and proposals for the Plan are out there?
Many solutions have been proposed by people, groups, organisations and businesses across Scotland since 2019.
This resource has been provided to share solutions and ideas that people across Scotland, to reduce emissions, gathered from civic society and across sectors, since 2019 and the last version of the Climate Change Plan.
Stop Climate Chaos Scotland (Scotland’s Climate Coalition):
Stop Climate Chaos Scotland (“SCCS”) is a diverse coalition of over 70 civil society organisations in Scotland who campaign together on climate change – with members that include environment, faith and belief groups, international development organisations, trade and student unions and community groups – and the Climate Café® Network. This is the SCCS Manifesto pulled together from across the coalition in 2023.
Download the full Stop Climate Chaos Scotland (coalition) manifesto here.
See also the SCCS response to the Call for Views (September 2025)
People’s Panel on climate change
In 2024, a Scottish Parliament People’s Panel, comprised of 23 randomly selected individuals, convened over two residential weekends and two online sessions. The panel deliberated on the effectiveness of the Scottish Government’s engagement strategy on climate change and made recommendations to enhance public involvement in meeting climate targets.
The full report – and their recommendations which may be of interest in thinking about the Climate Change Plan – can be seen here. Scroll to end for their Recommendations.
Scottish Climate Assembly
Scotland’s Climate Assembly met for 8 weekends between November 2020 and February 2022. It seems difficult to find a copy of the Scottish Climate Assembly report, but links to the sections and recommendations are still available here and the full report here.
The Children’s contribution to Scotland’s Climate Assembly (113 across Scotland) had clear recommendations which may be useful to understand and amplify.
Climate Emergency Summits: Thousands of solution ideas
Find the full series of Climate Emergency Summits here.
Background: Following Scottish Government’s announcement of a climate emergency in Spring 2019, a collective including the Royal Scottish Geographical Society, and our Director, Jess Pepper, hosted a series of solutions-focused climate summits from August 2019.
The Summits were solutions focused, the first with representatives from over 30 organisations, including NGOs, businesses, local authorities and Government bodies.
This produced literally hundreds of ideas for action on climate, and a document detailing some of the key priority areas for action was submitted to Scottish Government.
Further summits provided space for people from across communities and sectors to come together in a safe and open workshop to offer solutions to the climate emergency. These sessions continued to seek solutions from the collective expertise of participants to highlight purposeful actions and good practice examples, to inform plans for action.
- Ten Big Climate Solutions After 12 Summits involving 800 people from 400 organisations, this report highlights the Ten Big Climate Solutions with the scale, pace and impact to drive the change we need.
- Investing in Land and Sea Ten Big Climate Solutions Summit, sponsored by RSGS with financial support from NatureScot and the Scottish National Investment BankThe full series of summits produced reports covered the following issues:
- Shaping the Change: Building the World You Want to See
- Financing the Transition: Tax & Subsidies
- Nature-Based Solutions (with NatureScot)
- Construction (with Zero Waste Scotland)
- Coronavirus & A Green Recovery (with Zero Waste Scotland)
- Food (with The Pebble Trust)
- Geopolymer cement (detailed look at cement industry, responsible forc8% of global carbon emissions)
- Procurement (with Zero Waste Scotland)
- Land (with NatureScot and The Scottish Land Commission)
- Transport (with Smarter Choices, Smarter Places) – transport mindmap
- Soil (with NatureScot and Macaulay Development Trust) – soilmindmap
- Culture Change (with Creative Scotland) – culture change mindmap.
Audit Scotland: How the Scottish Government is set up to deliver climate change goals?
For those interested to focus on processes and Governance, that inform how the Climate Change Plan was developed and may be delivered, the recommendations from this report from Audit Scotland (published in 2023) may be of interest.
The full report and recommendations can be accessed via this link: https://audit.scot/publications/how-the-scottish-government-is-set-up-to-deliver-climate-change-goals
Collaborations
The Climate Café® Network are collaborating with other networks and organisations to support as many communities to engage and be involved in shaping Scotland’s Climate Change Plan as possible.
Please get in touch if you would like to collaborate or have resources or events to share!
Updated Tuesday 6th January 2026