PROJECT 2: REALISING THE POTENTIAL CONTRIBUTIONS OF SCOTLAND'S RURAL LAND TO DELIVERING SUSTAINABLE ECONOMIC GROWTH
Aims & Objectives
The aim of this project is to review the potential contributions of Scotland's rural land to achieving sustainable economic growth, and to identify opportunities to increase these contributions by minimising conflicts and competition between different objectives for Scotland's rural land, while making best use of potential complementarities.
The project objectives are:
- To identify and describe the various ways in which Scotland's rural land contributes to the Scottish Government's Purpose of increasing sustainable economic growth;
- To identify the principal areas of existing and potential conflict, competition and complementarity between different objectives for Scotland's rural land, including key government targets and priorities such as reducing Scotland's greenhouse gas emissions and contributing to food and energy security;
- To present an agreed selection of the most significant current and potential future conflicts, competition and complementarity between different objectives, showing the regions in which they occur;
- To identify and assess the evidence behind possible ways of reducing the above conflicts and competition, and of ensuring that the opportunities offered by complementary objectives can be realised in practice;
- To describe and assess examples of integrated land use decision-making, showing how they have resolved issues of competing or conflicting objectives in order to make trade-offs, and realised the opportunities offered by complementary objectives;
- To identify the main barriers to achieving integrated approaches to the ways in which Scotland's rural land is used.
This project is being carried out by a consortium consisting of the Macaulay Institute, Scottish Agricultural College, Aberdeen Centre for Environmental Sustainability (ACES) and University of Aberdeen.