Community Participation for Community Benefits From Natural Capital Projects : A Review for the Facility for Investment Ready Nature in Scotland Programme

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Hannon, Matthew and Gowens, Rebecca and Roberts, Jennifer J. and Major, Laura and Cairns, Iain (2024) Community Participation for Community Benefits From Natural Capital Projects : A Review for the Facility for Investment Ready Nature in Scotland Programme. University of Strathclyde, Glasgow.

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Abstract

Despite the growing volume and scale of natural capital investments, it remains unclear if, and how, these projects to maintain and restore the ecosystem will empower and enrich communities. This report is a core output from the project, Community Benefits Standard for the UK Nature Investment Market, developed in Scotland, which is funded by the Facility for Investment Ready Nature in Scotland (FIRNS). The FIRNS programme is delivered by NatureScot, in collaboration with the Scottish Government and in partnership with the National Lottery Heritage Fund. It provides a review of academic and practitioner literature to explore best practice approaches for facilitating community inclusion and participation in order to generate lasting community benefit from nature-based projects. Such approaches can build and sustain two-way relationships between developers and community groups; helping developers to both understand and act upon the needs or issues that communities experience in relation to natural capital investments and to align with community priorities. These approaches can also contribute towards broader community wealth building and justice objectives. However, such co-benefits are not guaranteed. We offer a number of lessons, grounded in robust academic evidence, about how best to approach participation for community benefit creation.

ORCID iDs

Hannon, Matthew ORCID logoORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-7811-3991, Gowens, Rebecca, Roberts, Jennifer J. ORCID logoORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-4505-8524, Major, Laura ORCID logoORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-7327-3101 and Cairns, Iain ORCID logoORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-0753-9589;
CORE (COnnecting REpositories)