The National Islands Plan.

The National Islands Plan (2019) (the Plan) has a duration of five years with a requirement for annual reports on progress and a review at the end of the five-year period in accordance with the Islands (Scotland) Act 2018 (2018 Act).
The purpose, main objectives and some of the key areas to achieve of the Plan are set out by the 2018 Act. The Plan sets sets out 13 Strategic Objectives with the aim to improving the quality of life for island communities. The objectives are: 1) To address population decline and ensure a healthy, balanced population profile; 2) To improve and promote sustainable economic development; 3) To improve transport services; 4) To improve housing; 5) To reduce levels of fuel poverty; 6) To improve digital connectivity; 7) To improve and promote health, social care and wellbeing; 8) To improve and promote environmental wellbeing and deal with biosecurity; 9) To contribute to climate change mitigation and adaptation and promote clean, affordable and secure energy; 10) To empower diverse communities and different places; 11) To support arts, culture and language; 12) To promote and improve education for all throughout life; 13) To support effective implementation of the National Islands Plan.
In order to make agriculture more productive and sustainable, the Policy envisages many measures in each sector. Firstly aims at ensuring that sustainable land use including agriculture and forestry continues to provide jobs and opportunities to island communities, it also encourages that crofting continues to provide jobs and opportunities to island communities, it seeks to expand the range of economic, social and environmental benefits that island communities derive from forestry.
To enable more inclusive and efficient agricultural and food systems, proposed interventions aim to support women in agriculture on Scottish islands to succeed, including encouraging their participation in the leadership development programme, addressing unconscious bias by organisations and businesses and breaking down cultural barriers, to support participatory processes aimed at providing island communities with a strong voice in the implementation of the Plan, among others.
To increase the resilience of livelihoods to disasters, main actions are directed to work with communities, crofters, farmers and landowners to expand forests and woodlands on the islands, recognising wider land-use objective, to support the adaptation of Scotland’s aquaculture and fishing industry to work with a range of stakeholders to develop an action plan to improve resilience to properties at flood risk, among others.