Working With Others at Landscape Scale

People and engagement 

Landscape Scale Agreements  

• Having completed the checklist below and identified who the stakeholders are and how they will be involved with developing an ELM agreement you need to bring together the stakeholders to explore the potential for collaboration at landscape scale  

  https://foundationforcommonland.org.uk/toolkit/stakeholder-checklist?rq=checklist

• Meet with each stakeholder individually to identify concerns, aspirations and areas of expertise for future ELM schemes, this will help address concerns and identify commonalities when looking forward to scheme design.  

• Bring together key stakeholders to build upon shared aims and objectives; depending on the scale of the proposed scheme area it may be useful to group stakeholders according to the checklist. Local dynamics will influence who you bring together initially.  

• Identify key policies and documents which will impact on the design of the scheme and use these as a basis for the conversation. Including areas which have designations.  

  For example; management decisions could be heavily influenced by a Special Area of Conservation (SAC) plan and all land owners work towards the same management objectives, which could provide an excellent basis for exploring landscape scale scheme options.  

• Explore how/if collaborative landscape scale management would enhance the delivery of the public goods.  

  For example; where a wetland restoration project flows through multiple land ownership areas.  

• Collate a list of incentives for participation.  

  Think about what would engage each stakeholder in the scheme and encourage them to sign up. These could be direct or indirect incentives.  

  A good starting point would be to encourage participants to identify the elements of previous schemes which have worked well or conversely elements which they would not like to see in a future scheme.  

• Identify potential conflicts/perverse incentives.  

• Identify key staff within each organisation who would need to collaborate under a landscape scale scheme especially those with responsibility for governance, ecology, practical delivery, communication.  

• Explore potential areas of conflict.

  It is important to understand the issues in order to find solutions to overcome them. Historical conflicts between commoners/landowners and statutory bodies can impact negatively if not carefully addressed and recognised.  

Next steps:  

Mapping: Use the mapping resources in the Toolkit to map the areas which could be included in the scheme and the stakeholders with management responsibility for that area.  

Governance: use the governance resources to explore options for Landscape Scale scheme governance