
Kirsty BlackstockJames Hutton Institute · Social, Economic and Geographical Sciences Group
Kirsty Blackstock
MA hon Sociology and Gender Studies; PhD Sociology
About
114
Publications
0
Reads
How we measure 'reads'
A 'read' is counted each time someone views a publication summary (such as the title, abstract, and list of authors), clicks on a figure, or views or downloads the full-text. Learn more
5,876
Citations
Introduction
Skills and Expertise
Additional affiliations
June 2003 - present
Publications
Publications (114)
1. Nature-based Solutions (NbS) offer the potential to address societal, economic
and environmental challenges: MERLIN emphasises NbS that go beyond traditional conservation-focused restoration by integrating solutions that enhance biodiversity, support climate adaptation, contribute to societal well-being, while also addressing new economic opport...
1. Using Value Chain Analysis to Promote NbS
This report applies Value Chain Analysis (VCA) to key economic sectors within the MERLIN project, exploring how Nature-based Solutions (NbS) can be integrated into freshwater ecosystem restoration. The focus of VCA is to understand and illustrate the mechanisms through which value is created across secto...
The aim of this project was to provide summaries of future predictions of water scarcity in Scotland and the impacts this may have, tailored to three groups
of abstractors: crop producers, livestock producers and distilleries.
The key questions addressed included:
1. How will water scarcity in Scotland impact the availability of surface waters and...
Post-Normal Science (PNS) emphasises the need for scientists and policy-makers to iteratively co-analyse and learn together, as part of an extended peer community. However, the roles and implications for scientific experts when interacting with policy-makers are not well understood. Informed by insights from science and technology studies (STS) on...
There is increasing recognition of the wicked nature of the intertwined climate, biodiversity and economic crises, and the need for adaptive, multi-scale approaches to understanding the complexity of both the problems and potential responses. Most science underpinning policy responses to sustainability issues, however, remains overtly apolitical an...
MERLIN Deliverable D4.1 2 MERLIN Key messages 1. Mainstreaming aquatic restoration using Nature-based Solutions (NbS) requires involving all relevant stakeholders and understanding their connection with rivers and wetlands. We work with six economic 'MERLIN' sectors (Agriculture, Hydropower, Insurance, Navigation, Peat Extraction and Water Supply a...
The survey aimed to understand the opportunities and challenges to implementing nature-based solutions across Europe based on the views of economic sector experts. In addition to the six economic sectors of MERLIN, the responses were received from other complementary sectors such as forestry, fishery, water management and nature conservation. The f...
Robust demonstration case-studies are needed to evaluate whether improvements in ecosystem condition are translated into improvements in ecosystem services. This research is essential for effectively scaling-up nature-based solutions across Europe and providing the evidence to support transformation agendas in society and industries, and ultimately...
Demonstrating best-practice restoration: For 17 flagship restoration projects across Europe, the EU-funded project MERLIN* explores social, economic and environmental success factors, generating a blueprint for the proficient implementation of Nature-based Solutions suited for immediate replication. With investing more than 10 million € in further...
Whether pursuing the breadth of the UN's Sustainable Development Goalsor delivering joined-up approaches within a single environmental domain, it isincreasingly important to understand how policy objectives, policy design andpolicy implementation cohere vertically (within policy) and horizontally(between policies). However, policy coherence remains...
Since the publication of the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment (MEA 2005), the way in which natural resources are viewed in policy has changed. The MEA introduced a new conceptual framework that linked ecosystem services and human well-being. The MEA framework has not only influenced scientific communities but also policy and practice communities. Ef...
The purpose of this note is to develop a guideline for stakeholder mapping for H2020 MERLIN case studies in Work Package (WP) 1 and 2 to establish Case Study Boards (CSB).
The paper presents insights from carrying out a pan-EU sustainability assessment using Farm Accountancy Data Network (FADN) data (the old wine) with societal metabolism accounting (SMA) processes (the new bottles). The SMA was deployed as part of a transdisciplinary study with EU policy stakeholders of how EU policy may need to change to deliver su...
Stakeholder participation is increasingly aspired to, if not required, in environmental management, but what it means and how to achieve it are not often discussed in detail by those promoting river restoration. Experiences in the fields of natural resource management and water management show that participation can enhance the effectiveness, effic...
Forest regeneration is a major land-use change in European uplands, and whether or not this is a desirable change for biodiversity is disputed. While this debate seems to be largely situated in the field of natural sciences, this paper aims to also examine its social dimensions. To do so, we adopt a comparative discourse analysis with four cases of...
Formalised knowledge systems, including universities and research institutes, are important for contemporary societies. They are, however, also arguably failing humanity when their impact is measured against the level of progress being made in stimulating the societal changes needed to address challenges like climate change. In this research we use...
Formalised knowledge systems, including universities and research institutes, are important for contemporary societies. They are, however, also arguably failing humanity when their impact is measured against the level of progress being made in stimulating the societal changes needed to address challenges like climate change. In this research we use...
Green Infrastructure (GI) research tends to focus on the need for GI to enhance ecological processes, its potential to provide health and economic benefits, and on the barriers preventing its uptake. Yet there has been inadequate focus on the social aspects of GI. In the United Kingdom (UK) the need for GI is well established, such that policymaker...
The Demonstration Test Catchment (DTC) project was commissioned in 2009 through Defra’s Agriculture and Water Quality team to test the hypothesis that ‘it is possible to cost-effectively reduce the impact of agricultural diffuse water pollution on ecological function while maintaining food security through the implementation of multiple on-farm mit...
The mixture of public goods that arise from rural land is shaped by multiple policy instruments, such as regulations and economic incentives. Whilst there is a vast literature focusing on categories of policy instruments, there remains the need for a deeper exploration of the interaction between these instruments and the consequences for managing p...
The ecosystem services framework has now been embodied in policy and practice, creating the need for governance structures that allow science, policy and practice to come together and facilitate shared learning. We describe five years of progress in developing an Ecosystem Services Community of Practice in Scotland, which brings together over 600 i...
Surface runoff, erosion, compaction and the leaching of potential pollutants from land can degrade the soil resource and damage the water environment, reducing crop yields, causing loss of valuable nutrients and organic matter, together with increasing flood risk. Increasingly, it is recognised that scientific information must be translated into pr...
Recent years have witnessed a growing interest in the water-energy-food (WEF) nexus in both academia and policy. This concept draws attention to the link between different environmental and societal domains, and potentially entails substantive shifts in governance processes. As a consequence, policy-makers and scientists have started to develop met...
Natural capital is the stock of natural assets that underpins the flow of ecosystem services that benefit human society and the economy. Natural capital accounting (NCA) is a process of quantifying those natural capital stocks and service flows to determine the nature and scale of those benefits to determine how they vary over time and whether our...
Inadequate Monitoring and Evaluation (M&E) is often thought to hinder adaptive management of socio-ecological systems. A key influence on environmental management practices are environmental policies: however, their consequences for M&E practices have not been well-examined.
We examine three policy areas - the Water Framework Directive, the Natura...
Integrated water resource management (IWRM) is a well-established goal, but there is little evidence about processes of integration linked to water policies. To address this, in 2016-2018 we used a content analysis, a survey and interviews with key actors leading the creation of plans to implement Europe's Water Framework Directive and the Floods D...
The data presented in this DiB article provide an overview of Monitoring and Evaluation (M&E) carried out for 3 European environmental policies (the Water Framework Directive, the Natura 2000 network of protected areas, and Agri-Environment Schemes implemented under the Common Agricultural Policy), as implemented in 9 cases (Catalonia (Spain), Esto...
Abstract
The Water Framework Directive (WFD) is a pioneering piece of legislation that aims to protect and enhance aquatic ecosystems and promote sustainable water use across Europe. There is growing concern that the objective of good status, or higher, in all EU waters by 2027 is a long way from being achieved in many countries. Through questionn...
final recommendations
El proceso de implementación de la Directiva Marco del Agua (DMA) continúa a la vez que Europa cambia, aparecen nuevos retos al hacer el camino y tensiones entre países y escalas de gobernanza ¿Cómo describen la Directiva aquellos actores encargados de supervisar su implementación en la actualidad? ¿Qué dificultades y retos se perciben en dicha imp...
The report is summarising the preliminary findings: Blackstock K.L. et al. (2017) Monitoring and Evaluation for Ecosystem Management (MEEM), Technical Report, James Hutton Institute, 96 pages.
This paper draws attention to the neglected sociological concept of authority, arguing that fresh attention to authority, and its relationship with legitimacy, is needed to extend our understanding of the practices and outcomes of rural governance. However, the foundational theory of authority needs updating to recognise the multiple modes of autho...
Recommendations for improving environmental management often advocate a holistic approach that supports both social and environmental objectives. This should be reflected in approaches to monitoring and evaluation; however, monitoring is often inadequate and hence limits our ability to implement adaptive management. It is important to understand if...
Environmental change requires adaptive responses that are innovative, forward-looking and anticipatory, in order to meet goals for sustainability in socio-ecological systems. This implies transformative shifts in understanding as conceptualised by the idea of ‘double’- or ‘triple-loop learning’. Achieving this can be difficult as communities often...
The European Union (EU) Water Framework Directive (WFD) requires EU member states to produce and implement river basin management plans, which are to be designed and updated via participatory processes that inform, consult with, and actively involve all interested stakeholders. The assumption of the European Commission is that stakeholder participa...
Supplementary Materials: Transforming European Water Governance? Participation and River Basin
Management under the EU Water Framework Directive in 13 Member States.
The supporting information provides the variable descriptions and a detailed account of the
data aggregation procedures employed during the analysis, as well as a list of literature so...
The importance of cultural ecosystem services This chapter argues that peatlands across the world provide many types of cultural ecosystem services, and so these should be reflected in peatland management. Chapters 2-5 and 17 convincingly demonstrate how peatlands provide essential provisioning and regulating services, but as human well-being is a...
Community-based natural resource management (CBNRM) is a concept critical to managing social-ecological systems but whose implementation needs strengthening. Scenario planning is one approach that may offer benefits relevant to CBNRM but whose potential is not yet well understood. Therefore, we designed, trialed, and evaluated a scenario-planning m...
The capacity of agritourism to generate private economic benefits for farmers has been established in a range of international contexts. We also find that agritourism in its predominant form is a financially important opportunity for diversifying farmers in Scotland. However, by exploring motivations associated with the supply and demand of differe...
There are many recommendations for environmental management practices to adopt more holistic or systems-based approaches, and to strengthen stakeholder participation. However, management practices do not always match or achieve these ideals. This paper explores why theory may not be reflected by practice, by exploring experiences of projects seekin...
This comprehensive volume describes how ecosystem services-based approaches can assist in addressing major global and regional water challenges, such as climate change, biodiversity loss, and water security in the developing world, by integrating scientific knowledge from different disciplines, such as hydrological modelling, environmental economic...
The need for stakeholder participation in natural resource management is widely acknowledged. Many have noted that real-life processes fall short of theoretical ideals in the literature, but less attention is given to understanding if and how participation may produce positive outcomes within these imperfect processes. For example, policies prescri...
Private water supplies provide ~3% of the Scottish population with their main source of drinking water. Many more people encounter private supplies when they stay in holiday accommodation and visit the more remote parts of Scotland, although PWS can be found in urban areas. The quality of these supplies is variable; many have adequate treatment and...
Some of the latest global paradigms in sustainable water governance revolve around ideas of promoting greater integration within policy implementation processes that impact on land and water. The EU Water Framework Directive (WFD), seen by many as a ‘Sustainability Directive’, reflects this trend, and places particular emphasis on building linkages...
This paper explores the tensions and opportunities involved in becoming a ‘critical friend’ to government agency planners trying to practise more inclusive forms of governance. It thus tackles two interrelated issues: how to build and manage rapport while retaining a critical research agenda, and how to locate niches for further democratising parti...
The ecosystem approach-as endorsed by the Convention on Biological Diversity (CDB) in 2000-is a strategy for holistic, sustainable, and equitable natural resource management, to be implemented via the 12 Malawi Principles. These principles describe the need to manage nature in terms of dynamic ecosystems, while fully engaging with local peoples. It...
The relationship between governance and representation is examined using the development of river basin management plans (RBMPs) in Scotland as a case study. We used a longitudinal ethnographic approach to explore the (1) remit and rationale for representation choices; (2) representative characteristics and claims; and (3) influence of nonparticipa...
Within the natural resource management and environmental governance literature, a number of authors have argued that there is a need to pay better attention to how the social processes of planning and management influence the outcomes of such processes. These outcomes are often measured through the quality of their outputs (plans or strategies) as...
In recent decades, international studies have improved understanding of how agritourism is practiced. However, studies are founded on a range of definitions based on different combinations of key characteristics, which have been synthesised in our recent typology (Phillip, Hunter, & Blackstock, 2010). The typology provides a foundation for this stu...
Numerous drivers are encouraging greater integration between spatial planning systems and the river basin planning systems associated with the European Water Framework Directive (WFD). However, there is often limited understanding of how this might be accomplished in practical terms. This paper presents one facet of a wider project that examined th...
There is increasing emphasis on the need for effective ways of sharing knowledge to enhance environmental management and sustainability. Knowledge exchange (KE) are processes that generate, share and/or use knowledge through various methods appropriate to the context, purpose, and participants involved. KE includes concepts such as sharing, generat...
Recent decades have seen the emergence and increasing prominence of a range of public and private sector providers of agricultural information and advice, owing to state transition away from direct provision of agricultural advisory services. In this paper, we evaluate the establishment of trust in agri-environmental agricultural advisory services...
The Scottish model of national parks reflects wider changes in the management of special or protected landscapes. This paper uses Ingold's dwelling conceptualisation of landscape to reflect on how material and cultural processes affect stakeholders' perceptions of the Cairngorms National Park in Scotland, UK. Important to understanding different vi...
In this paper, we present a broad conceptualisation of major change in farm level trajectories. We argue that as a result of path dependency, major changes in farming practice primarily occur in response to 'trigger events', after which farm managers intensify their consideration of the options open to them, and may set a new course of action. In u...
The transition to sustainability requires institutional and individual change and in response, sustainability science is increasingly adopting participatory and collaborative research approaches. To address the dearth of systematic evaluation of the impact of these approaches, this article reports on the outcomes of an ex post evaluation of a parti...
There is increasing emphasis on the need for effective ways of sharing knowledge to enhance environmental management and sustainability. Knowledge exchange (KE) are processes that generate, share and/or use knowledge through various methods appropriate to the context, purpose, and participants involved. KE includes concepts such as sharing, generat...
The intention of this paper it to open up debate within the environmental modelling and software (EMS) community on how best to respond to the increasing desire to evaluate the success of EMS projects in terms of outcomes rather than outputs. Outcomes in these regards are changes beyond the walls of the research organisation (typically to values, a...
This paper presents a cross-sectoral analysis of land use decision-making, undertaken to provide an evidence base for government policy development. Key informant interviews and a quantitative survey were conducted with land managers across Scotland. Analysis of current attitudes towards and priorities for land use was undertaken with private, publ...
Scotland's two national parks (Cairngorms and Loch Lomond and the Trossachs) represent a new institutional approach to the governance of protected areas, with a wider focus on sustainable development and working in partnership as well as protecting natural and cultural heritage. The stated purpose of the Cairngorms national park, as presented in it...
An increase in the rights of the public to participate in environmental permitting decisions has paralleled developments in other areas of administrative decision making in Britain. It is generally accepted that one of the key objectives underlying the enhancement of participatory rights was to improve the quality of decision making through improvi...
The paper analyses the land use behaviour of Scottish land managers and the factors influencing it in the current context of the EU rural land use policies. The analysis employs a frequently used behavioural economics method, namely structural equation modelling (SEM). Central to the empirical analysis in this paper is a cross-section database cont...
Agritourism has been studied in various ways and contexts. It can be argued, however, that studies have yet to provide a clear and basic understanding of the characteristics that underpin and define agritourism. This paper proposes an original typology for defining agritourism by identifying the key characteristics currently used to define agritour...
Principles of good practice for collaborative resource management were derived from the literature and their use studied in a range of integrated catchment management processes. Desk-based reviews and interviews with participants allowed the principles to be refined and described within a framework that illustrates the interrelationships between co...
This paper explores how deliberative workshops might enhance social learning about climate change adaptation among land managers in northwest Europe (Scotland). To date, methods for enhancing social learning in the context of adaptation and climate change have been neglected. In this study, location specific agro-meteorological indicators for both...
Due to its cyclical planning process, River Basin Management Planning (RBMP) offers a route for adaptive management of a complex human–environment system. Considering how stakeholders speak about climate change provides a lens to examine social learning within RBMP. The paper explores how climate change emerged as a topic during our research and th...
IntroductionCatchments and Climate ChangeCatchments and BiodiversityCatchments and Land UseCatchments and CoastsCatchments and Ecosystem Goods and ServicesCatchments and PeopleCatchments and ScienceReferences
This paper explores the interconnections and relative importance of seven determinants implicit in the development of sustainable tourism indicators. These determinants provide a framework for understanding the process of indicator selection for sustainable tourism. This research has suggested that some of the implicit determinants may be interconn...
Diffuse pollution from agriculture remains a significant challenge to many countries seeking to improve and protect their water environments. This paper reviews literature relating to the provision of information and advice as a mechanism to encourage farmers to mitigate diffuse pollution. The paper presents findings from a literature review on inf...
"Greater integration between researchers and policy makers is required to provide an evidence base that is transparent, integrated, and adaptive to support the complexities of sustainable catchment management. Opening-up and closing-down mechanisms are equally important in creating and establishing such an evidence base. We provide examples of both...
River Basin Management Planning (RBMP) is a policy that seeks to integrate multiple objectives for water bodies, that is enacted at multiple scales and through the collaboration of multiple stakeholders, using an adaptive management cycle. Insights from spatial planning and community planning literatures illustrate how many challenges are not parti...
Descriptions of the ambivalent role that tourism plays in sustaining fragile environments, communities and cultures are well rehearsed in the tourism literature. Tourism indicators are increasingly seen as a way to measure and monitor impacts (both positive and negative) in order to practice adaptive management. Responsible tourism focuses on the c...