Across Scotland, communities are increasingly calling for a more active role in the caring for their local seas, whether through co-managing local marine areas, leading conservation projects, or shaping the decisions that affect their coasts. These ambitions reflect a wider global movement toward more inclusive, locally grounded approaches to nature restoration and environmental governance.
Scotland’s policy landscape echoes these ambitions. The National Performance Framework seeks “inclusive, empowered, resilient and safe” communities, while the Scottish Blue Economy Vision sets out an ambition for Scotland to become an “ocean literate and aware nation” where people feel part of a coastal country and are empowered to participate in decision-making.
Community engagement is not just a democratic ideal. Done properly, it leads to more trusted, adaptive, and context-specific outcomes. Empowered communities can strengthen both social and ecological resilience, making national biodiversity and sustainability more achievable.
Recognising this, Scottish Environment LINK, with support from the Esmée Fairbairn Foundation, commissioned Howell Marine Consulting (HMC) to explore how Scotland can better support community leadership in marine management through policy.
Where are we now?
Scotland already has legislation and policies that establish participation as a principle of governance, such as:
- The Scotland Act 1998 embedded power-sharing and openness as core to devolved decision-making.
- The Community Empowerment (Scotland) Act 2015 aimed to give communities greater influence over decisions and local assets.
- Marine and Coastal Access Act 2009 (MACAA) requires a Statement of Public Participation (SPP) for marine plans.
- The Marine (Scotland) Act 2010 provides powers to develop a National Marine Plan (NMP) and Regional Marine Plans (RMPs), with Marine Planning Partnerships (MPPs) intended as spaces for communities to shape how local seas are managed.
Supporting this legislative framework are practical tools such as the Participation Handbook, the National Standards for Community Engagement (NSCE), and guidance on effective engagement in Local Development Planning. Collectively, these offer pathways for communities to be more involved in marine stewardship, and the report highlights a range of case studies showing what this can look like in practice.
Key gaps between ambition and reality
Despite the strong framework, meaningful community participation remains patchy in practice. Too often it is:
- Optional – dependent on the goodwill or priorities of individual leaders rather than a guaranteed right.
- Under-resourced – with limited funding, staffing, or institutional support to make participation feasible or sustainable.
- Unmeasured – with little evaluation of whether participation is happening or how effective it is.
Leadership across sectors and government portfolios has not consistently embraced or implemented the mechanisms already available to support community involvement. Even the government’s own Participation Handbook concedes that meaningful participation can be too resource-intensive for officials to lead leaving communities initiate processes themselves, often without the resources they need.
Marine Planning: A key opportunity
Marine planning is an approach for balancing the multiple uses of the marine space, including human activities and environmental needs. Marine planning in Scotland offers a particularly important pathway for improving marine and coastal issues. Scotland’s first National Marine Plan (NMP), 2015, includes principles for stakeholder engagement. In parallel, 11 legally recognised marine regions for which Regional Marine plans (RMPs) could be developed and should be undertaken by Marine Planning Partnerships (MPP) were established. These partnerships have the potential to bring local voices directly into marine decision-making.
The draft National Marine Plan 2 (NMP2) is supported by a stakeholder engagement strategy and Statement of Public Participation (SPP). However, much of the engagement outlined is limited to informing or consulting, rather than enabling meaningful collaboration. Meanwhile, progress on RMPs has stalled: there is no legal duty to produce them, and the Scottish Government has paused development until NMP2 is finalised – which has already been significantly delayed – leaving many regions in limbo.
LINK Recommendations.
Key concerns remain related to the resources available within government and the rapid pace of decision-making. This disconnect between ambition and implementation underscores the need for clearer accountability, better resourcing, and stronger leadership to realise the full potential of community involvement in managing Scotland’s marine environment. To address these gaps, LINK thinks the Scottish Government should:
- Get Regional Marine plans up and running across Scotland – By 2030, all 11 marine regions should have properly resourced Regional Marine Planning Partnerships. While the National Marine Plan can set high-level objectives for stakeholder and community engagement, RMPs offer a clear route to give communities a real say in decisions, make restoration funding more strategic and ensure that benefits for people and nature go hand in hand.
- Create a national fund for community-led management – A dedicated pot of money would allow communities to step up their role in shaping the future of their seas, through training, capacity building and turning local knowledge into policy influence.
- Expand successful co-management pilots – The Crown Estate Scotland pilot in Orkney showed how trust and transparency can grow when local people share responsibility for managing their seas. This model should be rolled out more widely, potentially including new approaches.
- Build ocean literacy and process literacy – Ocean literacy is the understanding of the ocean’s influence on people, and people’s influence on the ocean. Scotland needs an Ocean Literacy Strategy to ensure people understand not only why the sea matters, but how decisions about it are made and how to get involved. This could mean school programmes, community training, accessible tools and strong links to regional marine planning.
- Strengthen and align frameworks for co-management – Community engagement tends to be fragmented and tokenistic. Scotland needs clearer, more consistent rules that set real standards for participation and co-management, aligned with existing land reform and empowerment processes, and fully recognising coastal and island communities.
The full report can be read here: Report: Marine Community Engagement Advocacy Support
LINK’s briefing note on the report can be read here: LINK Briefing Note on Community Engagement Advocacy Support report
Photo credits: “Harbour View” by Jim Nix on Flickr | Sunset over the Sound of Jura by Adam Brooker
Fanny Royanez, LINK Marine Policy and Engagement Officer, and Esther Brooker, Senior Marine Advocacy Officer.