Inner Forth: £1.6m project to improve climate resilience

Climate FORTH (Furthering Our Resilience Through Heritage) is the latest project from Inner Forth Futures, a landscape-scale partnership which has been operating across the coastal areas of Clackmannanshire, Stirling, Falkirk and Fife since 2012.

Since the partnership’s inception, it has delivered both the Inner Forth Landscape Initiative (IFLI) and Wanderings and Windings projects, enhancing and celebrating the local area’s heritage while improving access through a series of waymarked walking and cycling trails. 

The new project will build on these successes by piloting methods of increasing resilience to climate and other changes in the local area’s natural and built heritage, such as Clackmannanshire's towers, and in its most at-risk communities.  

Climate FORTH project manager, Kate Fuller, said: “We’re delighted to have been awarded this Heritage Fund support that will allow us to show how the diverse natural and cultural assets of the Inner Forth can be adapted to tackle the threats of climate change."

The project will soon begin work on the delivery of several new initiatives, including green skill training for young people and community groups, enhancement of sustainable travel options around the local area, and capital works at locations across the project area, including the important community building Cochrane Hall in Alva. 

One of the first activities to get underway will be a rebranding of sections of the National Cycle Network which pass through the Inner Forth. Supported by Sustrans, this work aims to encourage more people to make use of the network.  

The project aims to increase resilience to climate change throughout the Inner Forth area. (Image: Inner Forth Futures)

Cosmo Blake, Sustrans Scotland network engagement manager, said: “As well as creating a new brand identity, we are also developing eight new day trips with maps, directional signage and additional bike parking and maintenance stations at local heritage sites and transport hubs.

“We hope this will encourage more people to walk, wheel and cycle and make sustainable choices when visiting the Inner Forth.”

Several communities, including Kincardine and the Hawkhill area of Alloa, have been identified as being key to the project’s goals, with members playing an active role in decisions involving their local area through the co-design of local resilience plans.

RSPB Scotland is one of the Inner Forth Futures partners. Operations director Dave Beaumont said estuaries such as the Forth were seeing impacts from climate change right now – with sea levels rising, storm intensities increasing and rivers flowing into our seas carrying floodwaters much more frequently. 

He added: "The communities and the incredible wildlife found in and around our estuaries are more fragile than ever and this project will continue our efforts to make them more resilient to the changes ahead.”

For more information, visit innerforthlandscape.co.uk.