Environment, Natural Resources and Agriculture Research Strategy 2027 - 2032

Cairngorms Nation­al Park Author­ity 14 The Square Grant­own on Spey PH26 3HG

T: 01479 873 535

20 Octo­ber 2025

Rur­al and Envir­on­ment Sci­ence and Ana­lyt­ic­al Ser­vices (RESAS) Scot­tish Gov­ern­ment Q Spur Saughton House Edin­burgh EH11 3XD

Envir­on­ment, Nat­ur­al Resources and Agri­cul­ture Research Strategy

2027 – 32 – Con­sulta­tion response

The Cairngorms Nation­al Park has a sig­ni­fic­ant role to play in the col­lect­ive and over­arch­ing deliv­ery of many of the Envir­on­ment Strategy out­comes. The Nation­al Park Part­ner­ship Plan looks to pro­mote the Nation­al Park as a place to innov­ate, tri­al solu­tions and new ways of think­ing to tackle some of the most press­ing issues facing Scotland’s envir­on­ment, land use and rur­al com­munit­ies. The Park Author­ity con­siders the Mis­sions, Chal­lenges and Areas of Research Interest out­lined in the con­sulta­tion doc­u­ment to cov­er the right issues which would sup­port deliv­ery of the Park Plan and us to act with the speed and scale neces­sary to tackle the twin crises. Man­aging risk will be crit­ic­al in find­ing the right bal­ance between the urgency which we need to apply in many cases and tak­ing a pre­cau­tion­ary approach. We hope the research con­duc­ted will also take into con­sid­er­a­tion the very real risks of not acting.

We par­tic­u­larly wel­come the sys­tems-based think­ing which can be applied to sup­port a place-based approach and the mul­tiple demands placed on par­cels of land. The areas

of research accur­ately reflect the chan­ging demands on land in the Park and out­puts will sup­port ambi­tions in the Park Plan.

We would like to see the inform­a­tion that leads from the research being read­ily applic­able in sup­port­ing land-use decision mak­ing at the region­al level; guid­ing rur­al pay­ments, grants and incent­ives towards the deliv­ery of region­al pri­or­it­ies in the nation­al con­text. In this con­text, there could be stronger, more overt links between the ENRA Research Strategy and fur­ther devel­op­ment of the Scot­tish Land Use Strategy.

Optim­ising land use to deliv­er mul­tiple out­comes in the Park requires con­sid­er­a­tion of the mul­tiple bene­fits of dif­fer­ent forms of land use and of their loc­al, region­al and nation­al sig­ni­fic­ance. We wel­come all work that con­tin­ues to quanti­fy the mul­tiple benefits.

Land use change will impact, to vary­ing degrees, on the sus­tain­ab­il­ity and prof­it­ab­il­ity of land-based busi­nesses. It is import­ant that research invest­ig­ates what the poten­tial costs and oppor­tun­it­ies might be and inform the devel­op­ment of future sup­port schemes, for example the poten­tial impact on farm­ing sys­tems in build­ing resi­li­ence in water management.

Finally, we would like to acknow­ledge the oppor­tun­it­ies to work in the Nation­al Park as a test bed for innov­a­tion, for example as an Uplands Liv­ing Lab. A sys­tems-based, place pro­type approach can be read­ily applied around the agreed out­comes in the Nation­al Park Part­ner­ship Plan that are well estab­lished and com­ple­ment many of the out­comes in the ENRA Research Strategy.

Yours sin­cerely

Andy Ford Dir­ect­or of Nature and Cli­mate Change