The Island of Raasay lies between its larger and more-known neighbour, Skye and the west coast of mainland Scotland. Rosie and Tom, Community Development Officers (CDOs) for the Carbon Neutral Island project on Raasay were soon on board, with a dozen locals arriving for a visit, and a chat, shortly afterwards.

Rosie Macleod Macinnes and Tom Lusink jointly work on community development on Raasay and their skills complement each other. Rosie says, ‘Tom’s got community engagement down really well, and I’m good with numbers and fact sheets, which is really helpful with carbon audits and the technical side of things.’

When they started the job nine months ago, they had one objective – to make the island carbon neutral by 2040. They started with a carbon audit and community engagement events, ‘where we presented and mingled with thirty or forty folks, but what was really useful was actually going to people’s homes, speaking to people one-on-one and having a lot of in-depth conversations’, says Rosie.

Already being part of the community meant they had precious connections, which Tom describes as ‘an invaluable network you can’t put a price on. We could ring people and find out what whatever we needed.’

As a result, their initial survey had a nearly 90% engagement rate – giving a full picture, and plenty of data for analysis, of what was happening on Raasay. It quickly became obvious that everything on the island is inter-related. ‘The housing statistics are pretty dire’, says Rosie. ‘Almost 50% of households are unoccupied holiday homes. And 8% of full-time households are living in caravans because they can’t find anywhere else to live.’

The quality of housing is a major issue for the island becoming carbon neutral by 2040. ‘The housing that does exist is quite cold and damp, making heating inefficient. That is by far our biggest emission source and contributes to fuel poverty, which is experienced here’, says Tom.

‘After we collected all this data, we presented it to the community’, adds Tom ‘… and asked them to come up with ideas and then prioritise those ideas, and that’s our action plan.’

The highest priority, by far was trying to improve the quality of Raasay’s housing, ultimately adapting it to be resilient to the impacts of climate change.

‘That’s trying to make them more energy efficient, more watertight and better insulated.’

Another big issue Raasay islanders considered was how they can meet their food needs locally. ‘We’re very lucky; we’ve already got a really well-run community garden to get vegetables. Also, we’re looking at processing livestock locally. There is a surplus of deer on Raasay and people are very keen to explore how can we increase our capacity to get our own food. An animal processing plant would make us extremely resilient, because then we will have our own food source’, says Tom.

Like many island communities, Raasay can expect wetter and windier winters, more extreme weather events and an increase in sea level as the climate crisis continues. ‘I think we’ll see more flooding’, says Rosie. ‘There have been a couple of instances of landslides and rockfalls over the last few years. And the future climate predictions study for Raasay show quite significant coastal changes, in places losing up to 80 metres of land.’

‘Raasay is quite steep, and there are certain areas that are quite low lying, so an increase of sea level by half a metre or metre could have quite a significant reach,’ adds Tom. ‘That coupled with the minimal maintenance done on our infrastructure, then we’re quite liable to see roads ruined and disappearing.’

Transport is a major issue for the island, with ferries an essential part of the supply chain – and more extreme weather events add to the number of days the ferry isn’t able to run.

‘We’re an island off an island off an island,’ says Tom. ‘The ferry is a lifeline service,’ adds Rosie. ‘Any disruption to that would affect all aspects of people’s life on Raasay.’

Also, the high deer population and warmer, wetter climate means an increase in tick numbers and the potential incidences of Lyme’s disease. There are also other health impacts of wetter winters on the island says Rosie. ‘Everyone’s houses aren’t sufficiently insulated. If humidity levels are too high and you don’t have enough ventilation, it can have a really bad impact on your respiratory health. That’s only going to worsen.’

And Tom adds, there is a real social impact of wetter winters, ‘Raasay has limited communal spaces and it gets very dark here in the winter and rains a lot. The more that it rains, the more people are stuck inside, which of course has a huge wellbeing impact, which is immeasurable.’

The Community Climate Action Plan starts with improving housing on Raasay. ‘That’s making houses more energy efficient, more watertight and better insulated,’ says Tom.

Rosie says they are currently exploring funding options for a collective community retrofit to insulate and improve housing. ‘Obviously, if you’re living on an island, and you’ve got twenty or thirty houses signed up to retrofit, you can’t have those twenty or thirty houses going out trying to find different contractors, because it just wouldn’t work.’

Although the Raasay community hasn’t got all the answers, they have the support of those around them to ensure the sustained future of their island. It’s a vision aimed at creating a more resilient Raasay, regardless of the impacts of climate change.

‘If we fix the housing,’ says Rosie, ‘you’ve got lower fuel bills, your house is more resilient to extreme weather changes. And if you’re in a well-insulated house and extreme weather outside, you’re more capable of staying at a comfortable temperature.’

‘It’s just better quality of life for people in general.’

The next step is finding ways to fund the changes needed on Raasay – something that Novara mentors are assisting Tom and Rosie with.