Centre for Public Policy

Blog by Dr David Clelland and Professor Fabrice Renaud

In the aftermath of the Covid-19 pandemic, many governments started implementing economic stimulus measures to kick start recovery. These were also seen as an opportunity to ‘build back better’ by addressing a broader range of challenges, including environmental issues, climate change and social inequalities and was captured by the notion of ‘green recovery’.

This raises questions about: 1) whether these goals were realistic and how they were to be achieved and 2) whether policies have been designed in an integrated manner to address synergies and trade-offs between these different goals. Understanding how this was approached in the context of post-pandemic recovery could help policymakers in Scotland and elsewhere design effective approaches going forward, as these multiple societal and environmental challenges remain pressing.

Our research project has explored the adoption of green recovery policies, looking specifically at coastal regions and the ‘blue economy’, which can be defined as sectors and activities that rely on coastal or maritime resources – including offshore energy, fishing, shipping and coastal tourism. Our published research has shown that globally, the blue economy was affected in specific ways by the pandemic, such as drop in fishery catches and market closures, significant drops in shipping and ports operations and violation of seafarers’ labour rights and loss of tourism revenues, to name a few.

In addition, the blue economy faces long-term challenges associated with global environmental change – ecosystems are at risk from ocean warming, acidification and stratification; the abundance and distribution of fish stocks is threatened, and coastlines are vulnerable to rising sea levels, erosion, and more frequent extreme weather events. Some coastal regions – including some of those in Scotland – can also be seen as ‘left behind’ places, impacted by deindustrialisation or changing patterns of tourism, low wages and seasonal employment. The blue economy concept seeks to promote sustainable development that combines economic growth with protection of resources and ecosystems, social inclusion, and transition to a low-carbon future and so is closely aligned with notions of green recovery.

We analysed a variety of policies adopted in Scotland since the pandemic – including those related to coastal regions and the blue economy, but also broader national strategies – to assess the extent to which they could support a green recovery. This first required a clearer idea of what green recovery should actually involve, as the term has previously been somewhat vaguely defined. Based on a review of existing research on coastal regions, we designed a framework for understanding green recovery. It highlights that green recovery should be understood as encompassing four pillars: economic, social and environmental dimensions, as well as action to address climate change. Each pillar is sub-divided into specific elements (see figure). Under climate action, a distinction is made between actions that seek to mitigate or adapt to the impacts of climate change.

 

 

Green Recovery Framework: Hartmann et al. (2025). Licensed under CC BY 4.0

Green recovery strategies should address at least one element within each pillar. In addition, three elements are considered essential – considerations of inclusion; good governance, as this underpins the achievement of other elements; and at a minimum there should be no overall negative impact on biodiversity.

Analysing policies adopted in Scotland since 2020 against this framework shows that there are policies at national and regional levels that address each of these elements.  The majority of these – representing the most explicit and significant financial commitments – are schemes to support businesses moving towards low-carbon activities and technologies. These directly address the green recovery pillars of green jobs and climate action. However, the analysis also raises several questions for Scottish policymakers.

Firstly, the extent to which different elements of green recovery are addressed holistically is variable. There does appear to be reasonably strong integration of climate action with economic and social objectives – as evidenced by policies to promote the creation of green jobs linked to decarbonisation and clean energy. However there seems to be less overlap between biodiversity as a policy objective and strategies orientated around promoting economic recovery. The Scottish Biodiversity Strategy shows that this is a priority, but it tends not to be mentioned in most other policies. Holistic approaches are necessary to ensure that different objectives are balanced and trade-offs between them can be managed.

Secondly, many of these policies tend to devote relatively little attention to questions of governance.  Some plans do consider how progress towards their goals will be achieved and measured – for example SNAP3 has a monitoring and evaluation framework, and  Regional Growth Deals include arrangements for ensuring delivery of funded projects.  In other strategies however, how and by whom the stated aims will be met remain somewhat vague.  It could be argued that these are formulated within a wider environment where there are existing governance mechanisms for delivery.  However, there could be a risk that policies for green recovery are being created without sufficient consideration of how their goals will be achieved.

Thirdly, although we were looking specifically at the post-Covid recovery period, the priorities of green recovery are also highly relevant for considering sustainable development going forward as well as considering recovery and resilience with regard to different types of shocks.  These may, for example, be important considerations in reform of the National Performance Framework.  Policy priorities are shaped not just by immediate response measures but by existing frameworks and longer-term strategies, as well as mechanism for implementation, and can change over time.  For example, despite the strong emphasis on green jobs and decarbonisation that we observed in the post-Covid strategies, there has subsequently been some retreat from the ambitious targets for reducing carbon emissions that underpinned these. The framework we proposed can help link policies to ensure green recovery is considered across government priorities, sectors and implementation scales and could be considered when developing future policies whether they target the blue economy or not. The framework could prove to be a useful tool for a more sustainable and resilient Scotland.

This research has been supported by the Economic and Social Research Council (Grant Number: ES/X001121/1) through the Trans-Atlantic Platform.

Research survey

We are currently seeking perspectives on the adoption of approaches to green recovery and development from organisations across Scotland. If you would like to contribute, we would like to hear from you through this short anonymous survey. The survey closes on 15 June 2025.

Authors 

Dr David Clelland is Lecturer in Rural Regeneration at the School of Social and Environmental Sustainability. His research focuses on local and regional development, particularly in rural or peripheral places.

Professor Fabrice Renaud is Professor in Environmental Risk/Community Resilience and Head of the School of Social & Environmental Sustainability. His research interests include vulnerability and risk assessment of social-ecological systems exposed to natural hazards, primarily on hydro-meteorological hazards.; understanding the multiple roles ecosystems play in terms of disaster risk reduction and climate change adaptation, particularly from the perspectives of local communities; resilience of coastal and deltaic social-ecological systems; water pollution and risks to people and ecosystems.

^{Preview image bye David Bayliss on Unsplash}

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First published: 15 May 2025