With the Community-Based Landscape Regeneration Toolkit, we identified opportunities to develop community-based approaches to landscape restoration in several areas, drawing on promising examples of community initiatives in the Cairngorms. At the same time, substantial challenges and barriers remain to enhanced community involvement and leadership in regenerating the land. Land reform is central to communities having the power to make decisions on the land and to equitable land governance in Scotland. Yet, our research identified other intersecting factors that impede community development, including limited community capacities, local democratic gaps, and a lack of social infrastructure. There are gaps in the support communities require to navigate this challenging landscape, some of which were highlighted further in our ‘community and environments’ toolkit review.

Drawing on the findings and stories, we propose aims and corresponding action points to enhance and strengthen community-based landscape regeneration. The aims and actions coalesce through co-creation workshops, interviews, site visits, and community-based peer review, which contributed to and sharpened this guidance. The aims map onto, and are organised according to, our five-part structure, connecting to the key takeaways summarised at the end of each story thematic section and arising from community input and suggestions gathered from interviews, workshops, field visits and ongoing conversations. More specifically, the action points were co-developed in a feedback workshop. These aims and action points focus on the Cairngorms area, while also providing relevance for the rest of Scotland and are applicable to a range of different stakeholders.

First, the toolkit provides aims and actions for supporting third-sector organisations and networks, NGOs, large landowners, policy bodies, elected representatives, and local, regional and national governmental organisations. The aims and actions can be used to facilitate approaches to landscape regeneration which centre and empower communities as part of democratic and inclusive land governance arrangements, and show how these groups can support that process.

Second, these aims and actions can be used by diverse communities, including but not limited to farmers, crofters, community-based organisations, community councils, development trusts, mountaineering and outdoor tourism professionals, and youth conservation groups. While some aims and actions may be outside the direct locus of community control, they can be drawn upon by community groups and community councils as campaign materials for advocating on specific issues around community and land to policy bodies, local authorities and wider supporting organisations. The aims can also be used as building blocks and supporting materials for communities to develop visions, planning or other forms of collective expression, and to guide next steps in that work.