Understanding Stakeholder Values for Woodland Expansion - Briefing Note

Despite woodland expansion being advocated via a number of policy documents, barriers to woodland
creation in Scotland remain. These include contested views about land use amongst multiple stakeholders,
concerns around trade-offs with other land uses, and a lack of synergy between policies and plans.

This briefing note presents the results of research which used a mixed-methods approach to elicit ‘visions’
for woodland expansion. These visions form ‘positive descriptions of a desired future’, specifically relating to
how different stakeholders ideally see woodland expansion unfolding over the 21st century.

The findings highlight areas of common ground and divergence among different stakeholders’ aims for
woodland expansion. The visions provide a synthesis of potential directions to inform woodland expansion
policy to support strategic land use planning.

Vanessa Burton