Landscape Statement – Vision

The Inner Forth Futures (IFF) partnership aims to make the Inner Forth a better place to live, work, visit and invest in, by helping to promote its natural and cultural heritage, and sustainable transport options. We also want to support communities so that they feel confident to take a greater role in managing and promoting the area’s heritage for themselves.

Our vision is that the sense of connection, purpose and place that put the Inner Forth at the forefront of the industrial development of Scotland will be revitalised.  We aim to achieve this using a landscape-scale approach with heritage at its core to engage people in new ways in its future management.

The initiative will achieve this vision by delivering four objectives:

• Deliver a strong legacy from the Inner Forth Landscape Initiative that maintains  and builds on the success of this previous project.
• Make the Inner Forth a better area to live, work, visit and invest in by stimulating the promotion and awareness of its natural and cultural heritage assets and sustainable transport options.
• Support communities so that they feel confident and empowered to take a greater role in management and promotion of the area’s heritage.
• Pilot partnership approaches to delivering habitat networks and climate adaptation.

Climate FORTH is the current project being delivered by the Inner Forth Futures Partnership.

Previous projects:

• Inner Forth Landscape Initiative (IFLI)
• Wanderings & Windings

Current live projects:

• Climate FORTH
• Inner Forth Habitat Network Call to Action and Concept Maps.

---

How does this project deliver the principles of the charter?

1. Collaboration

Inner Forth Futures is based on a collaborative and cross-sectoral approach. Within the partnership are nine organisations including local authorities, statutory agencies and third sector organisations.  We engage with and work through local community groups, individuals and businesses to develop and deliver projects.

IFF is a strong collaboration of organisations that have worked together around the upper Firth of Forth in Central Scotland to celebrate, enhance and make heritage relevant since 2012. Together with Inner Forth communities, volunteers and other project lead organisations, IFF delivered the NLHF-funded Inner Forth Landscape Initiative (2014-18), which our external evaluators noted as demonstrating, ‘one of the best, if not the best, example of a partnership working together that we have encountered.’

IFF convenes the Inner Forth Natural Heritage Working Group that focuses on facilitating collaboration to benefit natural heritage projects and working around the upper Firth of Forth. This group is responsible for the Inner Forth Habitat Network Call to Action and Concept Maps. We believe that promoting opportunities to deliver Scotland’s Nature Network at a regional scale, such as the Inner Forth, will empower land managers, decision makers, organisations and businesses to take effective action.

Connecting and collaborating with as wide an audience as possible is at the heart of the IFF partnership. Our projects aim to facilitate and empower local authorities, communities, and business in progressing their skills, awareness and understanding of the landscape and heritage, so that they can positively engage with and adapt their local area for generations to come.

2. Dynamism

IFF’s Inner Forth Habitat Network (IFHN) is working to landscape-scale visions within a dynamic landscape shaped both by the forces of the River and humans.

Inner Forth Habitat Network:

We believe that promoting opportunities to deliver Scotland’s Nature Network at a regional scale, such as the Inner Forth, will empower land managers, decision makers, organisations and businesses to take effective action. In 2019 we facilitated an engagement process that identified five key habitat types for the Inner Forth. The IFHN Call to Action last updated in 2022 reflects achievements to deliver the network and new opportunities. The IFHN concept maps and user guide describes how to locate where the conservation, restoration and management of an existing habitat is the priority for the coherence of the habitat network, and where the Opportunity Network is located i.e. places to strengthen the habitat network.

3. Diversity

The Firth of Forth is one of Scotland’s largest and most strategically important estuaries due to its plentiful natural resources and its easy access to sea transport routes. At a landscape-scale, the Inner Forth is a region of rich heritage, that supports internationally important wildlife and, for hundreds of years, trading, industrial and leisure activity. It was a cradle of the industrial revolution and although extractive industries, such as coal and salt, have now gone, their legacy remains in landscape features and ongoing manufacturing-sector employment. Despite this diversity of heritage, many heritage features are overlooked and under-used. Social challenges in our area include social problems, including unemployment, health inequalities and areas of multiple deprivation.

Through the IFF current project, Climate FORTH, we seek to ensure that adapting to change in the Inner Forth is part of a just transition – at the core of our project is supporting our most at-risk communities, notably young people and those facing environmental deprivation and inequality, to increase their resilience, wellbeing and access to opportunities.

 We work with communities to help them develop long-term approaches to looking after their local natural, cultural and built heritage with the aim to create a greater appreciation and awareness of the area’s rich heritage.

The partnership continues to provide volunteering and ‘visiteering’ opportunities, where locals and visitors to the area can positively contribute to the landscape they are enjoying.  Upskilling sessions have also been provided so communities can maintain their local area e.g. community orchard creation and skills sessions.

---

What's Next

The Inner Forth Futures partnership is currently in delivery phase of the Climate FORTH (Furthering Our Resilience Through Heritage) project (July 2023 – October 2026).

The IFF partnership is committed to ensuring the legacy of Climate FORTH by managing and maintaining outputs for a period of time agreed with our core funder, NLHF. This is also the case for our previous landscape-scale NLHF-funded programme the Inner Forth Landscape Initiative. Management and maintenance is carried out or managed by IFF Partners.

More about this project

Image Credits:

Inner Forth Futures