The SLA held the online launch event of Landscape and Place for Success on 20th October 2020 which coincided with the 20th anniversary of the European Landscape Convention and International Landscape Day.

The event highlighted the need for continued support to ensure a collective focus on the importance of landscape and place in delivering its many future benefits that are essential to Scotland’s National Outcomes and a Green Recovery.

Agenda

• 10.30 Welcome and Aims of the Event: Gillian Martin MSP and and Convenor of the Environment, Climate Change and Land Reform Committee
• 10.40 Landscape and Place for Success – The Journey and Key Outcomes: Rachel Tennant, Co-Chair Scotland’s Landscape Alliance
• 10.50 Landscape and Resilience to Environmental Challenges – Deryck Irving – Director of Strategy and Development, Green Action Trust. Chair of SLA Working Group
• 11.00 Landscape for Health and Wellbeing: Dr Matthew Lowther, Head of Service for Place and Equity, Public Health Scotland and Chair of SLA Working Group
• 11.10 Landscape, Land Use and the Economy: David Miller – Knowledge Exchange Co-ordinator, James Hutton Institute and Chair of SLA Working Group
• 11.25 Facilitated Delegate Discussion: Key Actions and Solutions for debate
• 12.00 Summing up and Next Steps: Stuart Brooks, Co-Chair Scotland’s Landscape Alliance

The recording of the event can be accessed (here) as well as the speaker presentations (here).

There were 85 attendees prompting a good debate as well as the chat room discussions demonstrating a desire to progress the agenda of the SLA.

Summary of the Event

1. The SLA has prepared a high level statement Landscape and Place for Success as well three interlinked Position Statements:

• Landscape and Resilience to Environmental Challenges
• Landscape for Health and Wellbeing
• Landscape, Land Use and the Economy

2. Aims:-

• share the outcomes and recommendations from the working groups and encourage the SLA members and wider landscape community to use the published documents as a resource.
• highlight the 10 overarching outcomes that the SLA wish to achieve over the next 5 years
• Prioritise the top outcomes and kickstart the next stage of the journey to turn the recommendations into action.

Agreed priority outcomes

3. Based on the pre-event survey there was support for all outcomes but the top 3 priorities were:

I. There is leadership and recognition amongst key stakeholders of landscape’s many benefits and the need to protect and care for Scotland’s landscape in order to deliver them.

II. Policies impacting on the landscape are shaped to positively contribute to the environmental, health and economic challenges of our time.

III. There is better integration of regulation and policy for landscape and biodiversity, recognising their mutual dependencies and co-benefits.

Summing up and Next Actions

4. The SLA is committed to taking outcomes forward and will prepare a prioritized action plan.
5. The SLA will seek contributions from different organisations to achieve broad representation across agreed priority outcomes.