THE Scottish Greens have ruled out supporting any move to unilaterally declare independence, saying it is a decision for the people.

Co-leader Patrick Harvie said he believed independence was coming and “maybe sooner than some of our critics want it.”

However, speaking at the party’s conference in Inverness, he said the fundamental issue was that it was a decision for “the people of Scotland to make, on their timescale”.

He said: “Independence can and only will be delivered in a democratic manner, that’s the kind of Scotland I want to live in.

“I wouldn’t want to live in a Scotland that had achieved independence by forcing it on people.

“It has to be a choice, it has to be and I think will be, a democratic choice that the people of Scotland decide to make.

“They’ll do it on their terms, not anyone else’s.”

The party also kicked off their 2021 Holyrood election campaign at the conference, which will continue today, by calling for “courage” from candidates and activists.

READ MORE: Greens conference: Party targets 16 seats at 2021 Holyrood poll

During a speech made jointly with Harvie, co-leader Lorna Slater declared the campaign for election in 2021 “starts right now”.

All six of the party’s current MSPs, with the exception of the retiring John Finnie, were re-selected as candidates. The party announced the top two candidates who will stand for election in the eight regions across Scotland.

Slater urged the party to “do politics and power differently”.

She said: “I’ve been thinking about courage recently and how so much of what is going on around us is due to a lack of courage.

“It takes courage to stand up and say ‘things are going to change’.

“Courage appears to be an outmoded value in many of our leaders and public figures.

She continued: “It takes courage to be honest, dishonesty is cowardly.

“We need to do our politics and power differently. We need to expect courage from our leaders.”

Slater particularly pointed to the female candidates the Green Party announced, saying they would face a campaign in an already divided political climate.

She said: “I have asked the women of the Scottish Green Party to have courage.

“It takes a great deal of courage to stand for selection and election.

“It exposes you to abuse on social media, it requires you to speak in public, it opens you up to criticism about your appearance and the way you dress.

“Politics is still very much a rich, privately educated man’s world and to ask women to step into it, we’re asking them to overcome the overwhelming feeling that they don’t belong – the feeling that they are an impostor.”

She also said oil companies will have to switch their focus to renewable energy to solve the climate crisis and that transition of a whole industry was possible if it started now.

She said: “If we get to six degrees of global warming, which we are on track to do if we don’t make changes, 95% of life on Earth will be extinct.

“There’s a reason people like Extinction Rebellion are using that type of language.”