Understanding decision-making in British restoration and rewilding initiatives: a science-driven or selective approach?

With UK governments committing to 30 by 30 targets, alongside calls by lobbying groups for Scotland to become the world’s first ‘rewilding nation’ (The Scottish Rewilding Alliance 2024), there is significant potential for upscaling rewilding in Britain. Framed as a ‘triple-win’ solution which combats global biodiversity loss, climate change, and improves livelihoods, rewilding becomes purportedly self-evident, as a normative science-derived solution. However, this risks removing decision-making power from local actors as certain interventions become fixed as all win solutions, with little room for alternative knowledge systems and little discussion of trade-offs. This has implications for social-ecological justice.

Despite extensive research attention focused on restoration and rewilding (Carver et al. 2021; Hart et al. 2023; Mutillod et al. 2024), the decision-making processes themselves behind these initiatives are yet to be thoroughly investigated and understood. Is it purely a science-based exercise, or are other factors considered? Understanding decision-making in this context is important as decisions which use nature-based interventions as a response to environmental change often conceal epistemic (knowledge-related) and power dimensions (Woroniecki et al. 2020). Furthermore, critical analysis of decision-making is a tenet of social justice (Turnhout 2024).

This research studies empirically how stakeholder decision making is linked to the implementation of restoration and rewilding initiatives in Britain and their ability to deliver a range of social and environmental outcomes. By uncovering how different types of knowledge are included, excluded or legitimised in rewilding and restoration decisions, it aims to determine the basis on which decisions are made.

To do this, we employ a hybrid social science approach. We combine document analysis, field walk interviews and place-based fieldwork with a quantitative survey to ascertain the different factors considered, the knowledge(s) used, the people involved, and the extent to which decision-makers’ own values influence rewilding decision-making. Through the study of such local rewilding conditions, this work aims to understand whether rewilding knowledge- and decision-making is remote and detached from local geographies, to determine if and how rewilding can deliver its transformative potential, without reinforcing existing injustices.