Community

We adopt an inclusive definition of communities, which incorporates communities of place, of interest and many other groups which are sometimes overlooked in restoration policies and projects, including younger people and mountaineering groups. Communities are not homogeneous or monolithic entities, as they are often presented, but rather multifaceted, diverse and grounded in place. We understand community to be a contested term, where multiple communities often co-exist. Within regeneration programmes and initiatives, questions can be raised over who is and who is not included as the ‘community’, a term that is often defined either narrowly or too vaguely. Divisions and conflicts within communities may hinder the development of community projects, and if landscape regeneration initiatives are to be sustainable and locally legitimate, diverse interests and perspectives on the land must be incorporated, negotiated and reconciled in visions of the land.

Appears in How to Use this Toolkit

Community Asset Transfer Scheme (CATS)

: This is where land under public control has been made available for communities. Under the Community Empowerment (Scotland) Act 2015, community bodies have a legal right to request the transfer of land from public bodies and local authorities, whether to take on outright ownership or lease and other management rights. The public authorities must transparently consider the request from the community based on a set of criteria and agree to the request “unless there are reasonable grounds for refusing it”.

Appears in Landscape Regeneration Stories

Community-based land governance

Whether through self-initiated projects or with larger organisations, community groups create and run landscape regeneration projects as an important way for people to reconnect to the land, rebuild relationships with environments and build alternative livelihoods. Evidence of the social and ecological impacts of community-based land initiatives is limited, with many of these in their early stages and limited capacity for data collection and monitoring. For a small number of more established, longer-running community land initiatives, such as Carrifran Wildwood or Knoydart Forest Trust, the positive environmental outcomes have been more clearly demonstrated.Lawrence and Macaulay, Intersections Between Land Reform and Rewilding in Britain.

Community councils

Community councils are the most local tier of representative democracy in Scotland, with elected members and run by local residents as volunteers to represent local views and causes. It holds three statutory roles covering 1) planning, 2) licensing and 3) coordinating and representing local views. It does not have service delivery duties, which in Scotland are carried out by local authorities.

Appears in Landscape Regeneration Stories

Community wealth-building

Community wealth-building encompasses a wider, holistic economic model that supports aspects such as community and democratic ownership of enterprises, social enterprises, and shorter supply chains; it also points to the importance of developing local employment opportunities and local skills bases as a vehicle for enhancing community prosperity.Community Wealth Building (Scotland) Act 2026.

Appears in Aims and Actions

Environmental change

Transformations and disruptions in environments that often occur due to human activity, as well as natural hazards. Environmental change includes events such as climate change, biodiversity loss, pollution, fragmentation of habitat, and other typically large-scale alterations to ecosystems.

Just transition

Principles of just transition are embedded in the Scottish Government’s Climate Change (Scotland) Act 2009.Climate Change (Scotland) Act 2009. They are based on developing an equitable approach to achieving net zero emissions by 2045 in Scotland, incorporating decent and fair job creation in ‘green’ sectors, low-carbon economic regeneration, and tackling inequality and poverty. The Scottish Government aims to create a ‘fairer, greener future for all’,Scottish Government. Just Transition. with an equitable distribution of costs and benefits of achieving net zero, and wants the process to be ‘co-designed and co-delivered by communities, businesses, unions and workers, and all society’. Since 2019, the independent Just Transition Commission has guided and scrutinised the process. For land-based industries, the government carried out a consultation in 2025 on the draft Land Use and Agriculture Just Transition Plan, reflecting ongoing work in the area.Scottish Government. Just Transition.

Appears in Key Findings, Landscape Regeneration Stories

Land Reform (Scotland) Act 2003

Land Reform (Scotland) Act 2003.: A legal framework for land reform committed to diversifying land ownership in Scotland, which incorporated three main dimensions: 1) the right to responsible land access; 2) ‘Community Right to Buy’ to allow community groups, with populations of up to 10,000, to register an interest in land, with first right of refusal on an asset listed for sale; and 3) Crofting Community Right to Buy to allow crofting communities to purchase land from existing landowners, clarifying how these rights are used.

Appears in How to Use this Toolkit, Landscape Regeneration Stories

Land Reform (Scotland) Act 2025

Passed in December 2025, the most recent land reform act grants further powers to the Scottish ministers to ensure public benefit from land.Land Reform (Scotland) Act 2025. The act introduces measures for large-scale landholdings over 1000 hectares, including Land Management Plans that must be publicly available and involve community consultations. It also gives more time for community bodies to register an interest in buying land; based on ministerial decisions, sales of certain large-scale landholdings must be transferred in smaller ‘lots’ rather than as a whole; and a transfer test applies to significant landholdings.

Appears in Key Findings, Landscape Regeneration Stories

Landscape regeneration

Based on the extent of change needed to recover degraded land across the world, there has been an increasing focus on landscape-level regeneration, where interventions must go beyond the site level toward larger-scale recovery of habitats and ecosystems.Mansourian, ‘From Landscape Ecology to Forest Landscape Restoration’. This broader focus informs multiple global and regional programmes, notably the Bonn Challenge,The Bonn Challenge is a global pledge to restore 350 million hectares of degraded and deforested land by 2030 using an integrated Forest Landscape Restoration approach. which focuses on Forest Landscape Restoration as ‘a holistic process that aims to regain ecological integrity and enhance human wellbeing in degraded landscapes’.Chazdon, ‘Landscape Restoration, Natural Regeneration, and the Forests of the Future’. In this approach, a defining feature is ecological renewal across heterogeneous mosaic landscapes, comprising multiple land uses and forms of land management. It also aims to balance social and environmental objectives for diverse stakeholders across land-use sectors, while being grounded in local needs and priorities.Mansourian, et al., ‘Putting the Pieces Together’.

Worldwide, multiple initiatives are underway to regenerate landscapes while mitigating climate change and biodiversity loss. Improved landscape integrity is vital for ecosystem functions that support food, water, habitat, emissions reductions, and environmental security.UK Department for Environment, Food & Rural Affairs (Defra). ‘Global Biodiversity Loss, Ecosystem Collapse and National Security’. Driven by climate and biodiversity targets, as well as the possibility of financial returns from land-based investments, large-scale restoration initiatives have grown in recent years. In Scotland, these larger-scale initiatives are generally established and led by private landowners, established environmental NGOs (e.g., National Trust for Scotland, RSPB), or public bodies, with landowners and land managers working in partnership to achieve landscape-level restoration across multiple landholdings.Underwood et al., ‘Mainstreaming Large Scale Nature Restoration’.

Appears in How to Use this Toolkit

Nature Restoration Bill

In January 2026, the Scottish Parliament passed the Nature Restoration Bill to provide a legal basis for restoring Scotland’s landscapes.Scottish Government, ‘Landmark Nature Restoration Bill Passed’. This law supports Scotland’s Climate Change Plan and Scottish Biodiversity Strategy by scaling up woodland creation and peatland restoration by 10 per cent annually until 2030, and it helps link these policies in tackling the interlinked climate and biodiversity crises.

Appears in How to Use this Toolkit

Regeneration

A forward-looking approach where landscape changes can improve ecosystem integrity without necessarily reverting to an earlier state.Chazdon et al., ‘Key Challenges for Governing Forest and Landscape Restoration’. Regeneration further centres communities and livelihoods as crucial to socio-ecological visions and practices. This landscape-scale approach looks at broader ecosystem management to address environmental change and work across larger systems, including food, energy, water, transport, infrastructure and more. While policy and NGO spheres most commonly use the term ‘restoration’, this has been criticised for implying the need to return land to a prior historical condition,Hobbs, ‘Degraded or Just Different?’. which might not even be possible with changing climates.

Scotland’s Climate Change Plan

Nature restoration efforts are central to Scotland’s Climate Change Plan (2026-2040), which relies on emissions reductions from land-use changes to meet net-zero targets. It aligns with the Nature Restoration Bill and the Scottish Biodiversity Strategy through this shared focus.Scottish Government, Scotland’s Climate Change Plan: 2026–2040.

Scottish Biodiversity Strategy

A Scottish governmental strategy that commits to being ‘nature-positive’ by 2030 and to restoring and regenerating biodiversity across the country by 2045. It complements the Nature Restoration Bill and Scotland’s Climate Change Plan by reinforcing the same restoration agenda.Scottish Government, Scottish Biodiversity Strategy to 2045.

Toolkit

A collection of tools, objectives, practices, and methods that can provide instructions or principles for addressing or improving particular social and environmental conditions.Gabrys, Citizens of Worlds. Toolkits can take the form of guides, how-to manuals, lists of resources, webinars, knowledge exchange forums, among many other formats. They can be a useful way to gather and share resources, span fields of expertise, exchange knowledge, and develop experimental and creative approaches to learning and practice.Berry et al., ‘Unpacking Toolkits’.