Social forestry

The programme uses social science approaches to address organisational, institutional and societal questions across the whole forestry sector. The research includes work with individuals, social groups and communities and also organisations, institutions and processes such as land-use planning and EC funding programmes.  The programme is closely linked to the Forestry Commission's economic and statistical research.

The principal areas of investigation within Forest Research are:

• The development of methods for engaging with communities;
• An exploration of the part that recreation in Forestry Commission forests plays in sustaining businesses in the rural economy;
• The institutional context for forestry: managing change and maintaining good governance; 
• Development of methods for evaluating forestry activities and social initiatives;
• Forestry and human health;
• Understanding how visitors to forests use woodlands, their information needs and their preferences for different spatial and aesthetic combinations.

Externally commissioned research draws on the skills of some of the UK's leading social research institutions and includes a number of PhD studentships co-funded with the Economic and Social Research Council. The research is intended to identify ways in which the Forestry Commission's work can tie in to major Government policy themes:

• Inclusive access and use of forests;
• Forestry as a resource in maintaining sustainable communities;
• Forests as a resource for health and wellbeing;
• Governance of forestry at a time of rapid institutional change and;
• Consumerism as a driver of public attitudes towards the environment.

The underlying aims of the research are 1) to understand how forestry policy can align with wider social policy, and the activities and supporting conditions that this requires and 2) to understand the human factors that influence forestry. The programme therefore combines theoretical and practical approaches.

Commissioned reports

Date: May 1998
Title: Review of research in landscape and woodland perceptions, aesthetics and experience
Author: Catharine Ward Thompson
Full report: HTML

Summary:

The brief from the Forestry Commission asked for a review of research in the following areas:

a) landscape perceptions, especially those of forests and woodlands;

b) landscape aesthetics, especially those of forests and woodlands and the experience of being in them.

The review was to avoid the areas of landscape preference unless these were linked specifically to perception.

In addition, the consultants were asked to "recommend potentially fruitful areas of research for the Forestry Commission to pursue and areas to be avoided because there is little further to be gained".