Scottish National Adaptation Plan – Annual Progress Report 2024-2025

As global greenhouse gas emissions continue to rise substantially, the climate impacts already seen today are projected to continue and intensify.

For Scotland this means wetter winters, drier summers, persistent and protracted sea level rise and more variable and unpredictable weather conditions. A thriving Scottish economy, society and environment is increasingly reliant on how effectively we respond to these inbound trends.

The Climate Change Committee (CCC), independent statutory climate change advisors, recommend that Scotland should do all it can now to prepare for +2 °C of warming by 2050 and assess relevant activities and investment against the risks of up to +4 °C of warming by the end of the century.

The third Scottish National Adaptation Plan 2024-2029 (SNAP3) is the most comprehensive adaptation policy package to date, setting out an expanded range of activities to ensure Scotland is building resilience to climate change.

The first annual report updates on progress across the adaptation policy spectrum, including several SNAP3 commitments which have already been successfully delivered since publication. For example, successfully expanding of capacity building support for public sector bodies, with 65 organisations, including 26 local authorities, now receiving training, guidance and advice on adaptation action.

When SNAP3 was published, the Scottish Government also, for the first time, published an adaptation monitoring and evaluation framework to assess progress toward the Plan’s objectives and how we are building greater climate resilience in Scotland. This monitoring framework draws on 38 data ready indicators to assess progress across SNAP3’s 23 delivery objectives.

The framework responds to a key recommendation from the last Climate Change Committee adaptation assessment for Scotland. As a result, in this report you will find the first baseline data set for the objective indicators developed in a way that means adaptation progress can be monitored annually. While some indicators have several years’ data collection already, allowing us to build a picture of progress and climate resilience trends, other indicators are baselined in this report for the first time, with trends emerging during SNAP3 implementation. These newer indicators, now established as a climate resilience indicator, will continue to be reported against in future annual progress reports – expanding the evidence base on how effectively Scotland is adapting to climate change at the national level.

Since publication of SNAP3, several key milestones across different sectors have already been met:

• Scotland’s first Flood Resilience Strategy was published in December 2024 and sets out what is needed to make our communities more flood resilient in the face of a changing climate, including the establishment of a Flood Advisory Service for Scotland.
• Publication of the Scottish Biodiversity Strategy Delivery Plan in November 2024, describing joint action across climate change and the resulting loss of biodiversity, recognising the fundamental role a thriving natural environment needs to play to deliver a climate resilient Scotland.
• The Biodiversity Investment Plan, published in February 2025, outlined six key actions to further boost investment in nature restoration and climate resilience.
• Forestry Scotland’s Routemap to Resilience, launched in March 2025, is now driving actions to help woodlands adapt, respond, and recover from climate-related threats over the next decade.
• In May 2025, a new Soil Route Map for Scotland was published, consolidating soils policy into an overarching strategy for improving soil security, meeting another recommendation from the Climate Change Committee to improve coordination in a policy area that is critical for climate resilience.
• May 2025 also saw the Climate Ready Infrastructure Scotland Forum establishing agreement between more than 20 Scottish infrastructure owners and operators to pool knowledge, align efforts and take collective adaptation action.

These headlines make up just a few of the climate resilience building activities being undertaken across Scotland to prepare for the impacts of climate change.

You can access the full report at: Scottish National Adaptation Plan – Annual Progress Report 2024-2025 – gov.scot