No-one can be left behind as we move towards carbon neutrality, writes environment secretary Roseanna Cunningham

With all the ongoing Brexit chaos and uncertainty, you’d be forgiven for thinking politicians have forgotten there are other issues that demand our attention.

On my part, that couldn’t be further from the truth. There is no more urgent issue, in my mind, than climate change.

The threat has never been more real or immediate. The recent devastating flooding in Malawi and the carnage caused by Cyclone Idai are painful examples of what is at stake for communities around the world. All too often, it is those who have done the least to contribute to climate change who are hit hardest by it. We have provided £225,000 to support emergency flood relief in Malawi as well as £100,000 to the Disasters Emergency Committee to provide help to Mozambique, Malawi and Zimbabwe in the wake of Cyclone Idai.

Meanwhile, thousands of young climate change campaigners – their voices coming from more than 100 countries now – are expressing, very eloquently and passionately, their heartfelt concern for what the next generation will inherit.

The First Minister met five of those young people last week and heard their concerns about the future of the planet and what further action they think could be taken to address climate change.

Yesterday I welcomed the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change to Edinburgh, where they are holding a major scientific meeting this week. We must all act on the clear, global, scientific consensus that they have provided. The warning contained in their Special Report, published last October, was stark: the world needs to be carbon neutral by 2050 to prevent warming of more than 1.5

degrees. The Scottish Government is proud of our achievements to tackle climate change so far – Scotland’s emissions have almost halved since 1990 and we continue to outperform the rest of the UK in delivering reductions. But we are not resting on our laurels. We recognise the urgency of the call to action.

In May last year, we introduced our ambitious new Climate Change Bill as a direct response to the Paris Agreement. Our bill sets the most ambitious statutory targets of any country in the world for 2020, 2030 and 2040 – plus every year in between – and will mean Scotland achieves a 90 per cent net reduction of all greenhouse gases, regarded as carbon neutrality, by 2050.

This week, the bill is taking the next step to becoming law. Yesterday, I provided my initial response to the environment, climate change and land reform committee’s report on the bill. I was pleased that the cross-party committee agrees with the Scottish Government that greater action across the public and private sector is now needed, and that the bill maintains Scotland’s place “among those at the forefront of global ambition on climate change”.

Today, the bill will be debated in parliament. The ambition of the targets will undoubtedly, and quite rightly, be the centre of the debate. It is based on expert advice from the UK Committee on Climate Change (CCC), an independent statutory body tasked with advising us on targets. The CCC comprises experts in climate science, economics, behavioural science and business. In their last set of advice, they stated that the targets we have proposed are at “the very limit of feasibility”.

We have asked the CCC to look at this again, in light of the IPCC’S