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The UK government has pledged to achieve net-zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2050. Ambitious targets have been set to plant nearly a million hectares of new woodland in the UK by 2050 to meet these net-zero commitments. More than 70% of UK's land is used for agricultural production and to meet these targets the Climate Change Committee has estimated that by 2050 approximately 21% of agricultural land will be required for tree planting, agroforestry and the extension of farm hedges. Achieving this creates a potential conflict between land for food production and land for carbon sequestration. However, trees and woodlands, when integrated into farming systems, can be multifunctional and play a significant role in helping farmers adapt and become more resilient in the face of climate change. Over the last 100 years numerous government policies and incentive schemes have endeavoured to encourage more tree planting activities amongst farmers and landowners with varying degrees of success. This paper reviews the role of policy in determining the presence of trees in the UK's agricultural landscape over the past 100 years. We quantify the current extent of woodland and tree cover and aim to put the UK's net-zero tree planting targets in the context of historical agricultural land use patterns. We evaluate drivers behind the current extent of trees, woodland and agroforestry on UK farms and identify key elements of success in current and previous policies and incentive schemes to help inform future policy mechanisms for the UK to meet its tree planting targets. Farmers are increasingly under pressure to deliver a wide range of environmental goals as well as producing food. The effectiveness of financial incentives to influence tree planting is dependent on the pre-existing interest and values of the farmer or landowner and grants alone may not be sufficient to encourage farmers to plant trees. Scheme complexity, bureaucracy and insufficient payment rates are barriers to the success of woodland grants and agri-environment schemes. Simplicity is important to encourage uptake, however oversimplification of schemes can lead to unintended consequences. Advice and guidance are key elements in the successful adoption of any new land management methods. A key to future progress will be scheme flexibility to enable farmers to choose to plant trees where it best suits local conditions, to align policy tools with farmer values and to ensure that farmers and landowners have the knowledge and support to make these decisions. • The effectiveness of financial incentives to influence tree planting depends on the pre-existing interest and values of the farmer or landowner. • Key to future progress will be enabling farmers to choose to plant trees where it best suits local conditions. • Tree planting grants co-designed with stakeholders, ensuring barriers are considered are likely to have improved uptake. • Scheme simplicity and flexibility are important, but care is needed that a simplification of schemes does not allow for undesirable outcomes. • Policy tools need to be aligned with farmer values and tailored high-quality advice and guidance available. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Woodland expansion and related targets are central to the Scottish Forestry Strategy (2019–2029). However, planting rates over the last decade have mostly fallen short of targets and, with the majority of Scottish land in private ownership, estates could play an influential role in achieving these targets. The current political (e.g. Brexit) and ecological (e.g. climate and biodiversity emergencies) uncertainty impacting the UK presents both opportunities and potential threats to the forestry sector and environmental policies. This research used walking interviews with estate managers to gain insights into perceptions of forestry and woodland culture on private sporting estates. Co-planning of new planting areas involved discussions with a mixture of estate owners, factors and land managers from neighbouring estates, along with the researcher. The co-planning process provided scope to navigate the uncertainty between estate priorities, woodland expansion targets and wider management issues by exploring the local culture and land capability from the perspective of individual land managers. A range of constraints and opportunities were identified including the influence of deeply embedded perceptions of past and current woodland creation schemes that continue to impact the estates, market instability, and the desire to design and create beneficial integrated deer and amenity areas. These are counterbalanced with a clear passion for trees among some managers, but a relatively low interest in extensive woodland management, which was underpinned by a widespread lack of in-house forestry knowledge. The woodland planning exercise resulted in managers identifying explicit areas for potential woodland expansion on every estate, favouring mixed native woodlands with limited productive objectives. Woodfuel production was viewed as an output from early woodland thinnings with the potential to increase short-term profitability and offset management costs. This paper highlights that strengthening personal connections between land managers and woodland management, through knowledge building and contact with up-to-date forestry knowledge from a trusted provider, could further opportunities for expanding and enhancing woodland culture, and become a more significant part of the rationale that drives decision-making. Facilitating local knowledge of the estate and local community involvement in woodland design and planning, even on a small-scale, offers potential to support the expansion and integration of woodland on some private estates that have lost or reduced woodland culture. • Private estate managers are influenced by past and current woodland design, as well as expected value of woodlands. • Uncertainty such as climate change and BREXIT presents opportunities for land use integration but can also impede action. • Face-to-face engagement and co-planning can increase the likelihood of managers implementing woodland expansion. • Loss of woodland management knowledge and local experience on estates and communities influence resistance toward expansion. • Perceived challenges relating to long-term investment, space and relative value, outweigh perceived benefits. • Changing narratives from targets to primary benefits, practicalities and personal motivations facilitates greater acceptance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Managed realignment—the deliberate process of realigning river, estuary or coastal defences—is increasingly seen as a key element to sustainable long term flood and coastal management in the UK and other parts of the world, given current trends of sea level rise, and increasing costs of flood and coastal defence. This paper presents results of an extensive consultation of key stakeholders in England and Wales on what they consider to be the main drivers, of and obstacles to, managed realignment. It reveals why managed realignment has not taken place on a larger scale so far, and suggests new directions for a long-term strategic approach to river and coastal flood management. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Abstract: The paper examines drivers of change in agricultural land use in order to identify data requirements and assess data suitability. In order to assess the fitness for purpose of available data, the paper provides an overview of the sources of data for agriculture and land use in the UK, in both a contemporary and historical context. It provides a brief assessment of the state of scientific knowledge on the analysis of land use change, combined with a consideration of some of the possible advances promised by the new land use science. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Abstract: The management of land-use change has been achieved in Britain through the development control system. Set up in its modern form in 1947, the system has remained substantially unchanged in spite of a radically altered policy environment. This paper considers the nature of the system and notes both its robustness and its flexibility as well as the accusations of delay and uncertainty that are levelled at it. It considers the drivers for change which are likely to affect the system, and in particular the challenge of climate change, the rights of third parties, the question of major infrastructure projects, and the desire for neighbourhood protection. The paper concludes by asserting that there is a need to refocus the debate on the quality of outcomes rather than on the process. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Abstract: This paper reviews the relationships between land use and climate change. It explores how land use decisions will be affected by future changes in the climate, but also the feedbacks from land use change to the global climate system through greenhouse gas (GHG) fluxes. Past changes in land use were characterised by decreasing areas of agricultural use and increasing areas of forested and urbanised land. This has led to UK land use being a net sink for GHGs, mostly due to forestation. However, existing forests have on average passed their age for maximum net removals of carbon from the atmosphere. In the next decade at least, net removals from UK forests are likely to decrease significantly. Longer term scenarios of future land use change are consistent in their expectation of further declines in the agricultural area used for food production – offset to some extent by increased bioenergy cropping – along with increases in forested and urban areas. These trends are broadly consistent with the observed past land use change, but are calculated from various assumptions about future changes in drivers rather than by extrapolation from the past. Socio-economic and technological changes are likely to be the most important drivers for land use, with climate change having a smaller influence. The land use changes represented in these scenarios would likely reduce GHG emissions and enhance carbon sinks. These trends would be reinforced by small future changes in the climate, but large climatic changes are likely to cause net GHG fluxes to switch from being a sink to a source. Land use change will also be moderated by potential policy goals that seek to reduce GHG emissions from land and/or increase the size of land-based sinks. This includes strategies to reduce carbon and nitrogen emissions through increased efficiency, afforestation and biofuel production. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]