Welcome to the Green Alliance podcast.

We're the charity and think tank that's all about achieving ambitious leadership for the environment.

I'm Jim Elliott, senior policy advisor here at Green Alliance.

How we use land across the UK is changing, with the urgent need to tackle the climate and nature emergencies,

leading to new farming practices,

as well as tree planting and restoration of more natural habitats. Private investment by businesses

who are looking to reduce risks in their supply chains, or offset emissions, is having more

impact on these changes and sometimes causing controversy, with some reports of local communities

feeling that change is being imposed upon them by big business.

Today, we're hearing about two approaches which aim to avoid this controversy by helping local communities to take a more leading role in decisions about how the land around them is used.

I'm joined by Angela Williams, who's the development manager at Taras Valley Nature Reserve

near the town of Langham in southern Scotland, which is being created on land that's been bought

out by the local community.

Not everybody thinks it's wonderful, though some people are a bit scared about it.

How do we actually get them involved in developing the action plan, in the different plans

to actually take this forward

as a nature reserve.

And by Jenny Phelps, MBE, who has led work for the Farming and Wildlife Advisory Group on an

approach called Integrated Local Delivery, which brings together all the interested parties at a local

level to take an active part in protecting the environment.

You create a sort of forum of organisations that can actually then collaborate to be able

to bring their funding expertise, resource knowledge of their expertise to actually combine that

...