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Scotland is at the heart of modern, sustainable upland management. Large estates cover vast areas of the uplands, with a long, complex and emotive history of ownership and use. In recent decades, the Scottish uplands have increasingly been the arena for passionate debates over large-scale land management issues. Crucially, what kinds of ownership and management will best deliver sustainable futures for upland environments and communities? Although the globally unique dominance of private ownership remains a distinctive characteristic of Scotland's uplands, increasing numbers of estates are now owned by environmental NGOs and local communities, especially since the Land Reform (Scotland) Act of 2003. A decade after the passage of this landmark Act, this book synthesises research carried out on a diverse range of upland estates by the Centre for Mountain Studies at Perth College, University of the Highlands and Islands. The findings from privately-owned estates as well as those owned by communities, charities and conservation groups will prove enlightening and relevant to upland managers, policy makers, and researchers across Britain and Europe. With the Scottish Government promoting a vision of environmental sustainability, and with the new diversity of ownerships and management now appearing, this timely and topical book investigates the implications of these different types of land ownership for sustainable upland management. Summary reprinted by permission of Edinburgh University Press

A Nature survey reveals that many authors of the latest IPCC climate-science report are anxious about the future and expect to see catastrophic changes in their lifetimes. A Nature survey reveals that many authors of the latest IPCC climate-science report are anxious about the future and expect to see catastrophic changes in their lifetimes. Trees consumed by the Dixie fire at night

Scotland is at the heart of modern sustainable upland management. This collection of cutting edge studies is a first-to-press synthesis of studies carried out by the Centre for Mountain Studies at Perth College, which will be both enlightening and relevant to upland managers across Britain and Europe.

Peatlands are globally important ecosystems that reflect many of today’s environmental challenges, particularly climate change and biodiversity loss. In recent years, several European countries have adopted national peatland strategies as integrated strategies that provide cross-sectoral policy frameworks to promote the conservation, restoration, and sustainable use of peatlands. This paper reviews eight national peatland strategies that have been formally adopted in Europe, i.e., the peatland strategies of Austria, England, Germany, Finland, Ireland, Northern Ireland, Scotland, and Wales. The strategies are analyzed based on six key themes: (1) the motivation for adopting national peatland strategies, (2) the generation of a sufficient database, (3) stakeholder participation and outreach, (4) institutional arrangements for cross-sectoral policy coordination and integration, (5) financial management strategies, and (6) mechanisms for monitoring and reporting. Our comparative study shows that there is a growing political commitment to sustainable peatland management in Europe. Although the national strategies show some differences in terms of the six key themes, they also show a high degree of similarity in terms of procedural aspects and the issues addressed. We conclude that the national strategies are currently performing quite well in terms of raising awareness and building capacity. However, the main challenge for the effective implementation of national peatland strategies is the issue of cross-sectoral policy integration.

A look back at 2021 through the Sustainable Development Goals. A look back at 2021 through the Sustainable Development Goals. A medical worker in PPE observes patients who have been infected by COVID-19

Human and environmental health are inseparable and interdependent. Doughnut Economics is a conceptual framework combining the Sustainable Development Goals with Planetary Boundaries, thereby simultaneously considering human and planetary wellbeing. The vision is to “meet the needs of all people within the means of the living planet, for the benefit of both current and future generations”. Glasgow City Council has committed to becoming a Green Wellbeing Economy, with a socially just transition to Net Zero by 2030. Through our City-University partnership, we are exploring whether Doughnut Economics can drive transformative action towards a sustainable, healthy, and equitable future. Glasgow is a pilot site for the C40 Cities’ Thriving City Portrait methodology that downscales Doughnut Economics to cities. The Portrait process combined desk-based research and policy review (from January to April, 2022) with participatory workshops to enrich initial findings. The five participatory workshops took place between April, 2022, and February, 2023, and involved about 130 stakeholders. Participants included civil servants, politicians, scientists, community representatives, employees and representatives of private and third-sector organisations, and social enterprises, identified through an iterative stakeholder mapping process with City Council partners. Workshop aims were to create pluralistic definitions of what thriving means for each of the Doughnut's social and ecological dimensions. Ethics approval for the study was granted by The University of Glasgow, College of Medical Veterinary and Life Sciences. The workshops produced a shared, holistic vision for Glasgow's future as a thriving city. The Doughnut demonstrated potential as a tool for both understanding the city's socioecological impacts, and as a compass by which the city might set its policy agenda. It allows the multiple goals and priorities of a city system to congregate around a cohesive goal. The Portrait process led to a widening of stakeholders’ perspectives, applying systems thinking to policy priorities, cross-sector discussion and collaboration, and significant buy-in from a diverse range of changemakers. The Doughnut framework offered a starting point for Public and Planetary Health researchers to understand connections, co-benefits and trade-offs across different parts of the policy and intervention system. Applying this framework in cities could generate support for whole-system interventions and sustainable solutions to the complex and interconnected climate and social challenges we face. One of the limitations is that we do not yet know whether stakeholders can translate support for this co-created framework into tangible whole-systems action. UKRI Natural Environment Research Council and University of Glasgow.

Although wind power is local, sustainable, affordable, and carbon free, mounting public opposition to the landscape changes it produces threatens its expansion. In an era when many countries are looking to renewable energy as an answer to questions about national security and the risks of climate change, it is important to explain the sources of this reaction. This article looks for similarities in public resistance to wind developments in four diverse settings: Palm Springs, California; Cape Cod, Massachusetts; the Isle of Lewis, Scotland; and Oaxaca State, Mexico. Despite the natural and cultural diversity among these places, there are five common threads in the opposition that has been experienced: immobility, the site specificity of the resource; immutability, an expectation of landscape permanence; solidarity, the close relationship between people and the land; imposition, a sense of marginalization; and place identity, a loss of security. Considering more deeply the relationship between land and life, in advance of the development of renewable energy resources, will help smooth the otherwise bumpy road toward a more sustainable future.

Rural areas face profound challenges in transitioning towards sustainability. Intensive agriculture is deeply implicated in high greenhouse gas emissions, biodiversity decline and water pollution. As a more socio-economically heterogenous rural Europe emerges with a greater non-farming component, changes such as in-migration and tourism in some areas can also be seen to compromise sustainability, as can an ageing and declining population in others. The dominant means of European rural policy support has been direct income payments to farmers, with modest but increasing expectations of environmental cross-compliance over time. Since the early 1990s, new policy means have been introduced, many based around collaborative actions to enhance sustainability. These include the European Union (EU) Leader scheme, environmental cooperatives, catchment management projects and support for community renewable energy. These changes mark a shift from sectoral support to a more territorial and place-based policy, often built around collaborative partnership models. Scotland has developed a wide and distinctive range of communitarian policies to support sustainable rural development which connect to this territorial approach. This paper reviews the contribution of communitarian and collaborative policies to sustainability transitions, drawing primarily on Scottish policy but referencing these policies against policies in other developed economies.

  In the face of climate change, cropping systems need to achieve a high performance, providing food and feed and adapting to variable environmental conditions. Diversification of cropping systems can support ecosystem services and associated biodiversity, but there is little evidence on which temporal field arrangement affects the performance of crop yields (productivity and stability), partly due to a lack of long-term data and appropriate indicators. The objectives of this study were to quantify the effect of cropping system diversification on yield stability, environmental adaptability, and the probability of diversified systems to outperform less diverse cereal-based systems in Europe. Spring and winter cereal yields were analyzed from long-term field experiments from Sweden, Scotland, and France. We investigated diversification through (i) introduction of perennial leys, (ii) increasing the proportion of ley in the rotation, (iii) varying the order in which crops are positioned in the rotation, (iv) introduction of grain legumes, and (v) introduction of cover crops. The results showed that cereal crops within cropping systems incorporating perennial leys outperformed systems without leys in 60–94% of the comparisons with higher probabilities at low fertilizer intensities. The yield stability of oat did not differ, but mean yields were 33% higher, when grown directly after the ley compared to oat grown two years later in the crop sequence under similar management. Durum wheat grown in a cropping system with grain legumes had higher yields in lower-yielding environmental conditions compared to rotations without legumes. Diversification with cover crops did not significantly affect yield stability. We conclude that diverse cropping systems can increase cereal productivity and environmental adaptability and are more likely to outperform less diverse systems especially when introducing perennial forage legumes into arable systems. Effects of diversification on cereal yield stability were inconsistent indicating that higher productivity is achievable without reducing yield variability. These novel findings can support the design of more diverse and high-performing cropping systems.