Supporting Make Polluters Pay Action Day

That the Parliament supports Make Polluters Pay Action Day on 23 September 2023, which calls for industrialised countries, as a result of their historical emissions that are considered to have contributed significantly to the climate crisis, to bear a responsibility to provide appropriate redress for the climate harms suffered by non-industrialised countries, which cannot be prevented by mitigation or adaptation activities; welcomes the agreement for a Loss and Damage Fund made at COP27, and calls on the UK Government to ensure that the operationalisation of this fund at COP28 is supported, and that sources for the fund should adhere to the “polluter pays principle”, which is the commonly accepted practice that those who produce pollution should bear the costs of managing it to prevent damage to human health or the environment, be new and additional, and come in the form of grants, not loans; notes what it sees as the links between establishing the “polluter pays principle” and the growing calls for ecocide, which refers to unlawful or wanton acts committed with knowledge that there is a substantial likelihood of severe and widespread or long-term damage to the environment being caused by those acts, to be recognised as an international crime under the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court, and welcomes steps to introduce ecocide legislation in Scotland and to Scotland playing its full part in the fight against the climate and ecological emergencies.