Spurred in part by Scottish government policies such as the commitment to reach Net Zero by 2045, there has been an increase in investment in land for natural capital purposes in Scotland. This project builds on and provides tools, capacity, and knowledge regarding good community engagement practice for communities and land owner-investors impacted by these land use changes.
We conducted two participatory workshops in locations where green investment and landownership change recently took place. The workshops were designed to identify challenges and opportunities in the community and discuss questions of who is community and what supports are needed for meaningful engagement. Following the workshops we have used the knowledge gained to create a report and a digital storymap that has been shared with communities, landowners, organisations that represent rural communities, and policy makers. These outputs aim to assist community-landowner engagement and identify opportunities for targeted policy and government support.
Stage
Work CompletedDirectory of Expertise
Purpose
Natural capital investment is a rapidly growing phenomenon in Scotland, with new actors purchasing or investing in land for nature restoration, rewilding, afforestation, peatland restoration, renewable energy, and other activities that maintain or enhance natural capital, and/or sequester carbon.
Building on recent Scottish Government-commissioned research (Social and Economic Impacts of Green Land Investment in Rural Scotland), this project responds to a significant research finding and associated recommendations: for communities to be involved in land-use decision making, and for natural capital investor-owners to consider the long-term consequences of decisions and activities on local stakeholders. The research found that good practice in terms of community engagement had a significant impact on communities’ perception of natural capital projects and a perceived lack of engagement emerged as a critical negative impact. Furthermore, the Scottish Land Rights and Responsibilities Statement (2022) calls for ‘sustainable economic development’ that will ‘protect and enhance the environment’ and ‘support a just transition to net zero’ which implicates social justice and the building of a fairer society, which engagement can support.
Therefore, our project aimed to engage directly with investor-owners and communities who wish to improve community engagement and involvement in decision-making. By sharing the results of our earlier research on green land investment, this project builds on and provides tools, capacity, and knowledge regarding good practice for communities and landowners. Moreover, this research contributes to vocalising the needs of the community in this engagement process, warranting a rethinking of the directionality of the process.
Results
We selected two cases of communities in Scotland where recent purchases by natural capital investors had taken place and reached out to key community stakeholders to gauge interest in our work.
Then, informed by a literature review that focuses on community engagement in relation to natural capital investment, we conducted a workshop in each of the two anonymised communities with 34 total stakeholders: area residents, local landowners, food producers, recreational land users, business owners, and representatives of interested organisations and community councils. We presented findings from the Social and Economic Impacts of Green Land Investment project and facilitated a form of dotmocracy (a simple activity that tries to identify group preferences) to discern which challenges and opportunities identified in the previous research were relevant to the workshop community.
Participants discussed a number of questions, including:
- who is community,
- how to reach them, and
- what are community and landowner needs
The workshop concluded with a discussion of future visions for land use in the area and suggestions for supports for community engagement and decision making to reach that vision.
In our thematic analysis of collected data, five principal themes emerged:
- community engagement and participatory decision-making,
- infrastructure and access,
- governance,
- employment, and
- culture.
A significant finding relates to procedural justice - the fairness of how decisions are made and by whom – and the power relations involved. Current engagement processes resulted in feelings of disempowerment and apathy and seemed to lead to a loss of employment, access to land, and lack of other benefits. Participants emphasised a need for more meaningful engagement, even preferring ‘partnership’ to engagement, and they constructed a broad, inclusive notion of community that encompassed diversity. There was a sense that communities are subject to legislation, rather than co-creating it.
From the data and analysis, we created several outputs for sharing with participants and more widely. We compiled a report with further details on our methods, the themes we found, and participant suggestions for better community relations aligned with procedural justice. We also created a highly visual, reader-friendly, interactive StoryMap about our project that features participant quotes and community engagement good practice. We will share these with our participants, landowners, policy makers, and third sector organisations that represent rural communities across Scotland. We also hope this work will lead to further research in this area.
Benefits
To determine the success of the project, we first assessed participant satisfaction by short pre- and post-workshop surveys (94% indicated their expectations were met) and again afterwards to evaluate utility and intentions for use of the knowledge and materials generated. The follow-up survey responses showed that creating space for local participation and making visible the power dynamics at play within natural capital Investment scenarios was useful for participants. Notably, none of the activities were rated ‘not useful at all’ and the ‘slightly useful’ activities were ones that ran out of time – showing that engagement takes time and flexibility and resources to do well! Respondents also found the opportunity to listen to others’ perspectives and build understanding to be of benefit, even if they disagreed. Intentions to use the information included “working across [area name] for better environmental solutions” and “engaging with other landowners in the future”. A month after the workshops, people had perceived “More people talking about and aware of these issues” and “A desire to meet and take them forward.” However, respondents noted that leadership was needed to take this forward, perhaps suggesting a role for capacity building.
Figure: Graph showing how respondents rated the project activities
Long-term benefit is linked to our outputs. With the data, we created a report and an accessible, attractive storymap to be shared with participants, policy makers, and organisations that represent rural communities and landowners across Scotland. The research results could assist with the new obligation on large landowners under the Land Reform (Scotland) Bill to produce Land Management Plans and engage communities with the development and changes to these plans. We also hope project outputs can inform ongoing policy development and identify opportunities for targeted Government support.
Project Partners
This project was funded by the SEFARI Gateway Innovative Knowledge Exchange (IKE) fund.
Project Partners were:
Miss Lin Batten, University of Strathclyde