Exploring Diverse Stakeholder Perspectives in Restoration Landscapes - Case Study

Overview

Landscape-scale restoration projects are proliferating as expectations grow for land to deliver for both people and nature, and as the climate and biodiversity crises intensify.

Such projects invariably involve people with diverse, sometimes incompatible, perspectives on how land should be managed, and to what end. Creating space to explore stakeholder perspectives is increasingly recognised as key to delivering effective and fair restoration; however, practical guidance on how to do this has been lacking.

The Research

The Restoration Partnership Development (RPD) project created a practical, versatile and user-friendly toolkit based on social science methods for eliciting and exploring stakeholder perspectives.

Using accessible written and digital resources, the toolkit guides practitioners to:

• Collect social science data to understand the perspectives, priorities and concerns of different stakeholder groups involved in restoration projects.
• Produce easy-to-interpret visuals that highlight areas of agreement and disagreement, helping stakeholders see where perspectives align and where differences exist.
• Run structured workshops where points of agreement and disagreement can be explored respectfully and productively, creating space for meaningful dialogue.

By creating opportunities for constructive engagement, the approach increases mutual understanding and trust between stakeholder groups without ignoring or hiding from disagreement. These insights can support more inclusive restoration planning that is responsive to local contexts, sensitivities and priorities.

Key Impacts

The toolkit has:

• Been used in 18 recorded instances across England, Wales and Scotland, including seven place- or project-based cases: Cumbria Connect, East of Eden, Affric Highlands, Wilder Marches, North Ross, Cambridgeshire Fens, and the RENEW Project's 2024 Annual Biodiversity Parliament.
• Helped create a culture of engagement and reflexive practice in restoration projects, including through adoption by The Wildlife Trusts' central operating team as part of its Team Wilder way of working. A jointly convened webinar explored the toolkit's relevance to community engagement in November 2024.
• Informed the intellectual and ethical principles outlined in a British Academy discussion paper on place-sensitive nature recovery.

Reflections from Participants