Launch of Royal Society Multifunctional Landscapes report

There is increasing pressure on UK landscapes to feed, house and power a growing population, to tackle climate change and biodiversity loss and to build a greener, more equal and resilient economy.

Join us at the launch of the Royal Society’s new report, Multifunctional Landscapes, which advises on the use of science to increase the productivity of land and makes recommendations on the data and analytics, innovation, skills and policy mechanisms required to create multifunctional landscapes which raise productivity whilst meeting society’s needs efficiently and sustainably.

Make five recommendations:

1. Land use decision-making needs to embrace a multifunctional approach that considers multiple market and non-market land-based outputs
2. Research and innovation is needed to improve the sustainable productivity of all land-based outputs
3. New infrastructure will be needed to provide skills, training and advice for land managers to enable them to adapt their businesses and thrive on delivering multiple outputs from their land.
4. A novel data science-driven approach is needed to develop a high-quality common evidence base to underpin land use decisions.
5. The UK countries should develop and coordinate spatially explicit national land use frameworks to ensure coherence across different areas of land use policy and between national and local scales.​

Have also launched an interactive land use map (https://royalsociety.org/assets/multifunctional_land/index.html) to help people understand the trade offs of different land uses for producing food, whilst also protecting and enhancing the environment and providing leisure facilities.