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Despite the availability of important theoretical insights that could enhance the resilience of rural communities to complex challenges, there is a paucity of guidance on how to apply these insights in practice. This paper therefore presents and assesses a deliberative research process using the Delphi technique to elicit expert knowledge from 22 academics, community practitioners and policy makers working in roles related to community resilience delivery in rural Scotland. The participants co-produced an operational framework for community resilience, with support from researchers who facilitated the three-stage, interactive process. The methodology enabled participants to work together in an iterative and inclusive manner, culminating in the collective development of a conceptual framework consisting of eight resilience-enabling factors and corresponding criteria for monitoring change, which can be used to plan practical action and provide feedback to enable ongoing adaptation. The process also produced an in-depth understanding of participants’ perceptions of rural community resilience, identified key factors that enable or impede rural community resilience, analysed the potential to assess community resilience, and explored scale-related issues. The paper explores the implications of this framework for those working to make rural communities more resilient and reflects on the benefits and wider application of this type of research approach for developing shared understandings of complex concepts.

This paper considers understandings and applications of community resilience deployed by multiple stakeholders in rural Scotland. By exploring what stakeholders think rural community resilience means in theory and practice, we enhance existing understandings of the concept. Scottish policy has shifted towards neoliberalism and community empowerment, with the Government encouraging communities to play a proactive role in enhancing their own resilience. For this to occur successfully, we argue that it is important to understand the perspectives of multiple stakeholders in how they conceptualize community resilience, identify what practical factors they believe enhance community resilience, and provide a greater understanding of the mechanisms through which community resilience can be delivered. Drawing on data collected from focus groups and in-depth, semi-structured interviews, we question what resilience means and what factors can facilitate it in practice. We find that by examining the perspectives of multiple stakeholders, dual discourses of resilience emerge: the emergency which reflects the policy focus on short-term damage reduction, and the everyday which reflects the desire for more long-term adaptive capacities developing in response to gradual change in rural communities. We conclude that the discourse which stakeholders predominantly align with will affect how they understand, adopt, and practice the concept.

Interest in carbon markets has increased rapidly in recent months, leading to new market opportunities and interest in acquiring land to invest in natural capital, typically through tree planting and restoration of degraded peatland habitats. However, the extent to which natural capital investment is driving transactions is unclear, with owners and purchasers potentially influenced by many factors. There is also uncertainty around how large-scale land acquisitions might interact with post-Brexit policies under development across the UK and the interests of rural communities. In response to this, we conducted an evidence review and convened more than 60 experts from policy, investment, third sector, research, land management and rural communities to identify and critically assess options for policy and practice to pre-empt and address trade-offs and challenges.

Presentation of the FarmDemo Design Guide. Presenter: Anke Beermann, FiBL Switzerland With contributions of: Lies Debruyne, ILVO, Belgium Jendrik Holthusen, Grünlandzentrum, Germany Tom O'Dwyer, Teagasc, Ireland Richard Lloyd, Innovation for Agriculture, UK

Link to the NEFERTITI training kit https://trainingkit.farmdemo.eu/ 0:00 Introduction 2:25 Preparing a virtual demo event 3:48 Deliver a virtual demo event 5:54 Evaluate & follow up virtual demo events

Although evidence continues to indicate an urgent need to transition food systems away from industrialized monocultures and toward agroecological production, there is little sign of significant policy commitment toward food system transformation in global North geographies. The authors, a consortium of researchers studying the land-food nexus in global North geographies, argue that a key lock-in explaining the lack of reform arises from how most food system interventions work through dominant logics of property to achieve their goals of agroecological production. Doing so fails to recognize how land tenure systems, codified by law and performed by society, construct agricultural land use outcomes. In this perspective, the authors argue that achieving food system “resilience” requires urgent attention to the underlying property norms that drive land access regimes, especially where norms of property appear hegemonic. This paper first reviews research from political ecology, critical property law, and human geography to show how entrenched property relations in the global North frustrate the advancement of alternative models like food sovereignty and agroecology, and work to mediate acceptable forms of “sustainable agriculture.” Drawing on emerging cases of land tenure reform from the authors’ collective experience working in Scotland, France, Australia, Canada, and Japan, we next observe how contesting dominant logics of property creates space to forge deep and equitable food system transformation. Equally, these cases demonstrate how powerful actors in the food system attempt to leverage legal and cultural norms of property to legitimize their control over the resources that drive agricultural production. Our formulation suggests that visions for food system “resilience” must embrace the reform of property relations as much as it does diversified farming practices. This work calls for a joint cultural and legal reimagination of our relation to land in places where p

This report explores the extent to which place-based approaches can deliver positive economic and social outcomes in Scotland’s rural areas and small towns. We studied five case studies of place-based approaches in rural Scotland: 1. Tackling the climate emergency in Callander 2. Strengthening Communities in the Western Isles 3. A Heart for Duns: the changing role of a local development trust 4. Partnership working for place-based policy: lessons from Initiative at the Edge 5. Land reform policy and transformational community change Place-based approaches in rural Scotland have enabled community capacity building, community ownership/management of land and assets, and partnership-working to deliver local outcomes and services. A flexible national and regional place-based policy framework can be supportive of local place-based approaches, but should acknowledge different local circumstances, assets and needs, and the lived experiences of local people. Place-based approaches require financial and other development support/advice in the early stages. This might be particularly in relation to locally-led community planning to address place-based needs, acquiring local community assets and creating links between local actors and broader regional/national policy processes. More flexible place-based policy frameworks should be developed at national and regional level which facilitate cross-sectoral working, break down silos and encourage collaboration between different actors and governance levels (including communities and local authorities). The research identifies four recommendations to enhance rural place-based approaches: 1. Long-term, flexible investment in place-based approaches is needed to ensure the delivery of solutions rooted in community needs and local action. 2. Communities need to be able to operate with a degree of autonomy to increase competence, capacity and confidence at the local level. 3. This local autonomy needs support from national/regional level

This research considered the impacts of Covid-19 on rural and island communities, how resiliently they have responded; and the most effective ways forward for their recovery. Our research approach involved: interviewing people in key rural sectors then producing a map to identify factors of resilience. This map was used to identify case study communities. Interviews were undertaken in these communities to understand local perspectives. Rural and island communities have been vulnerable to the impacts of Covid. Specific factors that have increased their vulnerability include reliance on limited employment sectors, being located far from centralised services (e.g. hospitals), limited digital connectivity; and an ageing population. Communities with a more resilient response had some or all of the following features: a strong sense of community; community organisations and local businesses that have been responsive to local needs; the existence of strategic partnerships between community organisations and the public/private sector; and good digital connectivity. Covid-19 has brought rural vulnerabilities into sharp focus and these vulnerabilities are often connected. Strategic and joined-up partnerships between community, public and private sector organisations will remain important, as well as novel and flexible funding mechanisms to enable place-based and context-specific responses. This research highlighted nine actions that would assist rural and island communities to thrive in the future. These include: 1. Building on existing and new partnerships and supporting anchor organisations 2. Capitalising on and rewarding community spirit 3. Encouraging and supporting young people to move to rural and island communities 4. Retaining and enhancing digital connectivity opportunities 5. Supporting adaptable local businesses 6. Strategic partnerships with deliver place-based solutions 7. Continue to support diversification of the rural economy 8. Enhancing the knowledge base o

Community landownership in Scotland is generally understood as ownership of title to land and/or assets by a community body, linked to a defined geographic community. It is a relatively distinct category of landownership, regarded as different to public ownership of land (e.g. by government agencies and non-departmental public bodies). In contrast, the interpretation of ‘community’ or ‘communal’ ownership of land varies in other countries and is often less clearly distinguished from public ownership. Municipal ownership as a form of state ownership where the land is owned by municipal bodies (e.g. communes) at different scales, is also relevant due to the high level of community control. Communal or municipal rights to land are relatively common globally and across much of Europe, with a growing, statutory recognition of rural communities as collective owners of land. This research was commissioned to provide an overview of relevant forms of community, communal and municipal landownership in other countries, and suggest how lessons from international experiences could be applicable in Scotland.

This report presents the findings of research commissioned by the Scottish Land Commission to review the effectiveness of community ownership mechanisms and options for simplifying or improving these mechanisms to enable and support the expansion of community ownership in Scotland. This included reviewing processes relating to negotiated sales or transfers of land and/or assets to communities, as well as legislative mechanisms including the Community Right to Buy (CRtB), Crofting Community Right to Buy, the Transfer of Crofting Estates (Scotland) Act 1997 and Asset Transfer measures under the Community Empowerment (Scotland) Act 2015.