ExCASES mission: Exploring collaborative governance to support community land stewardship for biodiversity and social benefit

Research team

Siobhan Vye (project lead) – National Trust

Sicily Fiennes (project lead) – National Trust

David Bavin – National Trust

Claire Collins – National Trust

Bryony Aitchison – National Trust

Matthew Heard – National Trust

Sarah Crowley – University of Exeter

Theme

ExCASES missions provide short, intense periods of focus towards issues communicated as priorities for RENEW partner organisations and external stakeholders. The ExCASES team work collaboratively with people across different sectors and disciplines, co-designing research and participatory processes to generate empowering outcomes for people and the environment. 

Aims

Diversifying land stewardship in the UK could have multiple benefits for nature, communities, and landowners, including habitat restoration, nature connection, and more equitable food production. Yet research is lacking on the opportunities and challenges of novel and collaborative governance models where landowners and communities share management responsibilities.

This mission aims to better understand the benefits and challenges of different approaches to land stewardship from both the landowner and community organisation perspectives. We aim to answer the following research questions:

• What drives biodiversity and social outcomes in these community land stewardship initiatives?
• What challenges do landowners and communities face when setting up collaborative land stewardship agreements outside of market rate long –term legal tenure or land ownership?
• Where are the key leverage points and next steps that large organisations and landowners can tackle to help support effective collaborative land stewardship?

Approach

The mission has three main parts:

1. Synthesis of types of collaborative land stewardship: Identifying the different types of arrangements land owners and communities enter into that enable communities to access and manage land in the UK.
2. A detailed review of ~5 case study land stewardship arrangements combined with interviews with landowners, communities and facilitating organisations. These interviews will explore examples and identify common challenges and opportunities.
3. Identifying the key leverage points where large organisations could provide additional support to help initiatives deliver for people and nature, and understand pathways to unlocking this support.

Outputs

Mission outputs will be linked here when published.