Environment, Natural Resources and Agriculture (ENRA) research strategy 2027-2032: consultation
Draft strategy for the Environment, Natural Resources and Agriculture (ENRA) Research Programme from 2027 to 2032 is available for public consultation. The programme covers a broad range of issues critical to Scotland's environmental and agricultural futures.
Closed
This consultation closed 24 October 2025.
View this consultation on consult.gov.scot, including responses once published.
2.0 Outcome Focused Research: Missions
The ENRA Research Programme takes a mission-oriented approach to ensure research is delivered in a systematic and outcome-focused manner.
A Mission is a portfolio of projects that target key policy outcomes. Missions can span sectors and scientific/analytical disciplines and are designed to achieve outcomes that surpass what individual projects could accomplish independently.
The following Missions have been created to ensure alignment to Scottish Government priorities and key policy drivers are:
Delivering sustainable and regenerative agriculture and food systems
Focused on safeguarding plant and animal health, improving agricultural practices, and promoting resilient food systems. It also encompasses innovation in disease control, climate adaptation, strengthening food safety and sustainable farming to reduce environmental pollution and boost productivity.
Delivering climate-positive and resilient landscapes
Focused on creating climate-resilient landscapes through optimised land use, and climate positive landscapes through research to reduce emissions and enhance natural carbon sinks. Emphasises systems thinking and leveraging data, modelling, and decision-support tools to mitigate climate impacts, enhance land management, and promote a just transition.
Restoring nature and protecting our environment
Focused on safeguarding and enhancing Scotland’s natural resources — its air, land, water, plants and wildlife — so they can continue to support thriving communities, nature, and the economy in a changing climate.
Enhancing rural and islands communities
Focused on strengthening Scotland’s rural and island communities, by improving our understanding of service delivery, investment and land reform, alongside the characteristics of diverse rural and island areas. Aims to empower rural and island communities through innovative and place-based research methods, and provision of the right data and tools, to ensure that they can thrive.
Building the circular economy
Focused on advancing circular economy practices through systems thinking, behavioural insights, and material analysis.
Missions are connected, and therefore our funded research needs to build appropriate links across Missions and alignment across projects. The Mission structure (Figure 1) will not only drive our approach but will be used as an overarching structure to steer, align and focus research across our entire research programme and all funding streams.
A set of supporting Challenges have been identified to support the Missions. For instance, the Mission to ‘Deliver regenerative and sustainable agriculture and food systems’ has Challenges focused on: maintaining high plant health status, promoting crop and livestock improvement, and protecting food system resilience. The Challenges are in turn underpinned by Areas of Research Interest (ARIs), indicating where project outcomes are expected to generate significant impact. Further information on the approach to developing ARIs is provided in Box 1.
Missions: A portfolio of interdisciplinary projects
Challenges: A more granular grouping of interdisciplinary projects
Areas of Research Interest: Specific priority questions that the government is interested in
Research Projects: A piece of work that will answer the identifies ARIs
Research will address one or more ARIs and contribute to meeting one or more Challenges, and one or more Missions.
Box 1 - Areas of Research Interest (ARIs)
ARIs are specific research topics or questions that reflect the evidence needs of the Scottish Government. These ARIs identify key priorities where research can support policy development, enhance decision-making, and drive innovation. The following criteria were considered when identifying a priority ARI:
a. Uniqueness to Scotland – an ARI must be directly applicable to Scotland's policy, landscape and/or communities.
b. Multiple Co-Benefits – the ARIs that are the highest priority will have co-benefits and/or serve numerous stakeholders.
c. Links to Scottish Policy - an ARI should have a line of sight to a relevant policy, legislative or delivery challenge for the Scottish Government.
d. Economic Opportunities - The programme should support opportunities for the biotech industry, agri-tech industry, environmental and food and drink sectors.
e. Supporting key research capacity – supporting underpinning expertise to deliver
national priorities for Scotland, statutory duties or international commitments.
The full list of ARIs underpinning the strategy is provided in Annex A: Areas of Research Interest and below is a summary of the cross-linkages between Missions and Challenges (Figure 2). The majority of the ARIs align to themes and priorities in the current research cycle. However, several new areas of interest are also captured. These include:
- Developing approaches to assess the risks of wildfire in Scotland.
- Identifying the impact of climate-related food safety risks.
- Investigating barriers to achieving Scottish Dietary Goals.
- Strengthening Scotland’s food system resilience.
- Tackling mis/disinformation while promoting healthier, safe and sustainable food choices.
- Maximising use and value of LiDAR data to better understand our landscape, target policy interventions and optimise land-use.
- Understanding and resolving human-wildlife conflicts to enable nature restoration.
- Developing an approach within Scottish policy to prioritizing chemicals that pose a risk to environmental quality and human health.
- Developing adaptive management approaches for grazers for nature positive and net zero land use outcomes.
- Advancing soil sustainability: developing national monitoring, studying long- term soil amendments, climate impacts, and new methods to detect emerging soil contaminants.
- Exploring private finance options for nature restoration.
Figure 2: Demonstrating the cross-linkages between Missions and Challenges.
Mission: Delivering climate-positive and resilient landscapes Challenges:
- Adapting to climate change
- Protecting and restoring soils & peatland
- Maximising the circular economy and reducing waste
- Protecting and enhancing biodiversity
- Investing in Scotland's natural capital
- Optimising Scotland's land use
Mission: Delivering sustainable and regenerative agriculture and food systems Challenges:
- Ensuring Scotland's food safety
- Maintaining high plant health
- Promoting crop & livestock improvement
- Protecting our food system resilience
- Protecting and restoring soils & peatland
- Protecting and enhancing biodiversity
- Maximising the circular economy and reducing waste
- Reforming Scotland's agricultural system
- Promoting healthy and sustainable food in Scotland
- Improving animal health and animal welfare
Mission: Restoring nature and protecting our environment Challenges:
- Protecting and enhancing biodiversity
- Enhancing Scotland's environment
- Protecting and restoring soils & peatland
- Reforming Scotland's agricultural system
- Maintaining high plant health
- Investing in Scotland's natural capital
Mission: Enhancing rural and island communities Challenges:
- Reforming Scotland's land system
- Adapting to climate change
- Supporting rural & island communities & economies
Mission: Building the circular economy
Challenges:
- Maximising the circular economy and reducing waste
- Reforming Scotland's agricultural system
- Protecting our food system resilience