Enabling on the Ground Transition Topic Advisory Group

We know from extensive research that social, economic, political and technical factors interact at different scales to create enabling conditions for (and barriers to) transition. At the macro scale these include governance, institutions, (dis)incentives, economic and market opportunities and knowledge and innovation support systems. At the micro scale these include individual capacities (extent of lock-in: knowledge, culture, economic, agency) and motivations (attitudes, values, habits) which determine behaviours.

Given the urgency of the situation we need to build on this knowledge and incorporate insights from contemporary practice, drawing from on the ground success stories to understand why and how net zero and similar initiatives and interventions have or have not been successful. With this we can identify effective principles that are transferable to other contexts.

We need to identify gaps in research and ask: Where do researchers need to focus attention? What evidence is needed? How do we capture on the ground experiences and scale up and scale out effective practice?

 This TAG will focus on three main areas:

• Ensuring strong governance for net zero in land use requires all actors to contribute to the transition. Understanding how to build confidence and trust in public policy and private sector mechanisms through enhanced governance (underpinned by integrity and transparency) will be crucial, as will creating and sharing credible evidence to remove uncertainty.
•  Providing the means to change will involve addressing lock-in (economic, cultural, knowledge) and asymmetric power relations that hold back opportunities for transition; and identifying how to create appealing and resilient business models for land managers.
• Strengthening capacity across the Agricultural Knowledge and Innovation Systems (AKIS) (farmers, land managers, advisers, institutes and communities) to access, understand, evaluate and utilise knowledge about net zero solutions is an important way of leveraging change and contributing to credible net zero transition pathways. This involves rethinking the organisation of knowledge across the AKIS and enhancing net zero literacies.

The overall aim of this TAG is to establish how the research community can support transitions to net zero in land use and to identify and understand the enablers of on the ground transition to net zero. Specifically it will:

•  develop a framework for analysing and identifying effective enabling conditions and factors (scale, impact, indicators of success)
• identify what evidence (generated by academia, NGOs, industry bodies and farming sectors) exists and how this can be collated, interpreted, shared and used effectively
• harvest success stories and identify common and transferable factors and interventions
•  identify gaps in the evidence and priorities for research 

Activities will include:

• Working closely with the other WPs and TAGs, specifically on WP2 capacity building tasks and feeding into the viability index (WP1)
• Working with and consulting groups of supporting stakeholders and leading UK agricultural advice providers (e.g., ADAS, FarmingConnect, SAC Consulting), large landowners (e.g., The National Trust) to identify effective interventions
•  Co-develop with stakeholders and roll out a set of interactive resources and activities, and events such as  training days, workshop, net zero clinics,  ‘train the trainer’ modules in aspects of Net Zero
• Initiating a ‘state of play’ paper on enabling transition to net zero, identifying activities, needs, opportunities, success stories and research gaps. This paper will be used to develop a Net Zero Literacy strategy which will underpin the work that follows.