There is considerable pressure across the UK on how land is used to meet priorities across food production, energy and infrastructure. There is also increasing demand to draw on and amplify the benefits that the natural environment provides through healthy ecosystems. Decisions on land use are challenging, involving multiple actors across a range of scales. JNCC’s latest Signpost publication – Integrating nature’s value into land-use decisions across the UK – provides a proposed approach to enable this.

In the UK, land-use decisions are the responsibility of the devolved governments, but decisions within each country potentially alter dependencies on imports from other parts of the UK and even international trade. These implications need to be considered. Ensuring engagement with, and support for, decisions is also key to enable effectiveness. All of this relies on robust evidence to underpin the process.