Towards a transformative approach to just rural transitions: Landscape restoration in the Scottish highlands

Brown, David, Martin, Adrian, Fisher, Janet A. and Gingembre, Mathilde (2025) Towards a transformative approach to just rural transitions: Landscape restoration in the Scottish highlands. Environment and Planning E: Nature and Space. ISSN 2514-8486

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Abstract

Driven by international policy agendas to restore landscapes, large-scale land-use changes are expected in rural areas, with significant implications for landscape characteristics, land-uses, livelihoods, economies and cultures. It is increasingly recognised that the long-term success of restoration initiatives requires integrating social considerations, yet uncertainties remain over the pathways for achieving this. This paper explores the basis for- and barriers to- a just and sustainable vision of the landscape through a case study of the Affric-Kintail area in the Scottish Highlands, a context in which environmental policy agendas and natural capital investments are driving rural landscape change. Drawing from multidimensional, empirical environmental justice, this paper investigates the diverse justice claims voiced by rural communities. The research highlights a spectrum of justice concerns tied to diverse, contested meanings and practices of just transitions, where we distinguish between socio-technical and transformative approaches to just transition. As a result, our case study points to fundamental structural and socio-economic barriers to realising just transformation in rural Scotland, rooted in vast inequalities in power, wealth and landownership, and a depth of justice concerns around rural landscape transformations which have so far been left aside by restoration agendas and just transition policy discourses.

Item Type:	Article
Additional Information:	Data availability statement: The data that has been used is confidential. Funding information: This work was supported by the JPI Climate- SOLSTICE programme (SOLSTICE Consortium Agreement, 2020-12-1) and the UK Natural Environment Research Council Landscape Decisions Fellowship (grant no. NE/V007904/1).
Uncontrolled Keywords:	environmental justice,just transitions,landscape restoration,socioecological transformation,climate change,sdg 13 - climate action,sdg 15 - life on land ,/dk/atira/pure/sustainabledevelopmentgoals/climate_action
Faculty \ School:	Faculty of Social Sciences > School of Global Development (formerly School of International Development) University of East Anglia Research Groups/Centres > Theme - ClimateUEA
UEA Research Groups:	University of East Anglia Schools > Faculty of Science > Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research Faculty of Science > Research Centres > Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research Faculty of Social Sciences > Research Groups > Global Environmental Justice
Depositing User:	LivePure Connector
Date Deposited:	08 Sep 2025 14:30
Last Modified:	08 Sep 2025 14:30
URI:	https://ueaeprints.uea.ac.uk/id/eprint/100314
DOI:	10.1177/25148486251367163

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