Triggering environmental transformation on large land holdings

This project will use an established conceptual framework for understanding transformational change in agriculture (the ‘Triggering Change Model’), to assess how substantive environmental changes in large land-holding trajectories can be enabled. Large landholders are high impact but ‘hard-to-reach’ and will be brought into the research through Scottish Land and Estates, a popular membership organisation. Interviews will assess change trajectories on large holdings, with a specific focus on succession processes (a well-recognised moment for change which is internal to the landholding unit). Workshops will be conducted with interview participants to assess the effectiveness of climate change mapping tools (a novel, external means of triggering change). Findings will be analysed to identify best practice in supporting the managers of large land holdings to make transformational change, enabling industry organisations to better support their members, and provide a foundation for future research which integrate social and natural sciences.

Project lead: Naomi Beingessner (The James Hutton Institute)

Project collaborators: Large landowners recruited through Scottish Land and Estates (SLE), facilitated by Eleanor Kay (SLE Senior Policy Advisor),  Annie McKee (The James Hutton Institute), Mike Rivington (The James Hutton Institute), Mohamed Jabloun (The James Hutton Institute), Lee-Ann Sutherland (The James Hutton Institute)