Scottish Government Rural and Environmental Science and Analytical Services Division (RESAS) paper: EIR release

Information requested

The Scottish Government Rural and Environmental Science and Analytical Services Division (RESAS) funded a paper with the title:

'Transformative land use change towards net zero: balancing emissions through woodland expansion and livestock reduction in Scotland'

This paper was published in Science of the Total Environment, Volume 1012, 15 January 2026.

Please could the Scottish Government provide this paper, state how much funding was awarded for this paper, and who this funding was awarded to.”

Response

As the information you have requested is ‘environmental information’ for the purposes of the Environmental Information (Scotland) Regulations 2004 (EIRs), we are required to deal with your  request under those Regulations. We are applying the exemption at section 39(2) of the Freedom of Information (Scotland) Act 2002 (FOISA), so that we do not also have to deal with your request under FOISA.

This exemption is subject to the ‘public interest test’. Therefore, taking account of all the circumstances of this case, we have considered if the public interest in disclosing the information outweighs the public interest in applying the exemption. We have found that, on balance, the public interest lies in favour of upholding the exemption, because there is no public interest in dealing with the same request under two different regimes. This is essentially a technical point and has no material effect on the outcome of your request.

Request for information in relation to the ‘Transformative land use change towards net zero: balancing emissions through woodland expansion and livestock reduction in Scotland’ research paper

Under regulation 6(1)(b) of the EIRs, we do not have to give you information which is already publicly available and easily accessible to you in another form or format. Where information is already publicly available, I have provided you with the links to the relevant websites. If, however, you do not have internet access to obtain this information from the websites listed, then please contact me again and I will send you a paper copy.

A copy of the research paper referred to in your request can be found here.

I also wish to highlight that the above noted research paper was not funded in isolation, rather, this was funded as part of the wider JHI-C5-1 project of the Environment,natural resources and agriculture (ENRA) Strategic Research Programme 2022-2027 and a breakdown of projects from the programme including amounts awarded, research organisations involved and additional information can be found here. You may wish to review line 22 of the aforementioned project breakdown as this provides details of funding awarded to the James Hutton Institute for work on the broader JHI-C5-1 project with the research paper referred to in your request being one of the outputs academics have chosen to publish from this work.

About FOI

The Scottish Government is committed to publishing all information released in response to Freedom of Information requests. View all FOI responses at https://www.gov.scot/foi-responses.