Campaign and petition email responses

Make polluters pay for the climate crisis

Climate change is the greatest threat facing our planet and our species and must be treated with the complete seriousness it deserves. That is why the SNP in Government in Scotland will always emphasise climate action.

Scotland was the first country in the world to commit money to loss and damage funding during COP 26, and ahead of COP27 more than doubled the funding the Scottish Government is putting forward towards loss and damage to £7 million.

The decision to increase came on the back of the Scottish Government’s International Loss and Damage Conference in Edinburgh, which brought together international representatives and experts on climate change to discuss loss and damage.

As Humza Yousaf, the First minister of Scotland has recently said: “The countries which are the worst affected by the climate crisis are often those which have done little or nothing to cause it. The injustice at the heart of the global climate crisis is why Scotland became the first country in the world to establish a Climate Justice Fund more than a decade ago and why we have led the way in being the first global north country to commit funding to address loss and damage."

The SNP have supported better windfall taxes, and have led criticism of the tory efforts in recent years to toll back on taxes for polluters. We will continue doing all we can to keep pushing the UK Government to do all to make polluters pay, pushing for justice for the Global South.

On the global stage, Egypt's COP27 Presidency welcomed actions by Scotland and Denmark as “steps in the right direction” in relation to loss & damage & encouraged other developed nations to follow their lead.

COP27 also agreed that Polluters Must Pay, now it is time for developed nations to pay their dues.