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Many governments have set ambitious targets for tree planting and increased woodland cover as a key part of actions to reach net‐zero carbon emissions by 2050. However, many uncertainties remain concerning how and where to expand tree cover, what species to plant, and how best to manage new plantations. Much contemporary forestry has been based on even‐aged monocultures, largely because of perceived advantages for timber production. However, in order to play a key role in climate change mitigation future forests will have to achieve timber production (and wider ecosystem service provision) alongside resilience to biotic and abiotic challenge. It is therefore crucial that appropriate informed decisions are made with regard to the structure, composition, and planning of future forests, in order to provide sustainable solutions that provide environmental, economic, and health benefits to society. Genetically diverse, mixed, and irregular forests, with their higher biodiversity and niche complementarity, are promising new forest configurations for regulating the water cycle, storing carbon, and delivering other goods and services. In the following discussion, we have used UK information to illustrate the benefits of mixed woodland versus monocultures and highlighted current issues related to government initiatives and policies for current and future forests. However, similar issues and problems are encountered globally. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Decarbonizing industrial sectors is a critical global challenge, involving the creation of new industrial spaces—'net zero industrial clusters'—co‐locating energy sectors and 'hard‐to‐abate' industries such as oil refining and steelmaking. This paper provides the first empirically grounded geographical investigation of these emerging spaces. It employs a place‐based research agenda to unpack how UK net zero industrial clusters (ICs) are imagined and emplaced in policy and industry discourses through place‐based naming, spatial configuring and mapping activities. By conducting document analysis, 33 in‐depth stakeholder interviews and five field trips to three UK case studies, we show how cluster imaginaries vary across cases and policy contexts in terms of constituents, focus and purpose. Ontological complexity is compounded by different rationales among stakeholders in configuring clusters and by contested cluster naming and boundary setting. This ambiguous, evolving spatiality raises important political and justice concerns over who and where is excluded in cluster building. These findings advance the geographies of low‐carbon transitions by showing: (1) ways that ICs' spatial embeddedness, which underlies cluster spatial configurations, helps increase industry actors' recognition of their economic, social and cultural ties with the places of their making, even if this risks path dependency; (2) how fluid cluster boundaries, reflected in cluster names and maps, emphasize the value of a network topology of scale to enable spatially inclusive, multi‐scalar climate mitigation. Finally, we argue that a place‐sensitive net zero policy mindset is vital for fulfilling ICs and the UK's decarbonization potential in a manner that is both fair and locally grounded. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Against the backdrop of a fragmented and evolving governance landscape, this paper examines how effective climate commissions are in engaging the public to co-produce local climate action in the UK. Climate commissions are emerging amid heightened concerns regarding the top-down style of policymaking on climate change and resource-constrained local authorities. However, less is known about how they engage the public who are pivotal for climate action, both in signalling greater ambition from governments and through their own mitigation and adaptation efforts. This paper draws on qualitative interviews with an array of individuals both inside and outside climate commissions in the UK, and utilises Cash's theoretical framework of 'salience, legitimacy and credibility' to assess how effective climate commissions are in engaging the public to co-produce local climate action. The findings indicate a discernible chasm between commissions and the broader public. Equally however, they provide hopeful perspectives into the effect that more collaborative engagement, that speaks to local concerns and leverages local knowledge, would have on commissions' 'salience, legitimacy and credibility' and, additionally, the legitimacy of local authorities. Moreover, they suggest that deeper collaboration with local networks of community groups, who are not yet represented on commissions, could foster more sustained climate action. It concludes by considering the novel implications of these emergent insights for the Cash framework and what this means for commissions in their future engagement with the public. • Knowledge co-production resonates in both theory and practice. • Local and grassroot action is critical to meet climate mitigation and adaptation goals. • Ensuring 'salience, legitimacy and credibility' can lead to more effective climate policy. • Climate commissions need to better leverage local knowledge to drive climate action. • Community groups are under-utilised in climate conversations and decision-making. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]