More with trees: Long-term learning and adaptation of urban forest governance in the Mersey Forest

Source abstract

Urban forests are vital to sustainability and climate adaptation, yet programmes are often shaped by short term funding and tree-planting targets. This paper examines the 30-year experience of the Mersey Forest, an urban forestry partnership and delivery programme in England, to understand its evolution, how governance arrangements have supported its continuity and adaptation, and how learning processes have shaped its capacity to respond to shifting drivers over time. As a long-running and respected initiative, the Mersey Forest provides an opportunity to examine how urban forest governance systems persist through changing policy, financial and environmental conditions. The mixed-methods study outlines five phases of Mersey Forest’s development and identifies the structures, planning mechanisms and practices underlying its resilience. Tree-planting rates fluctuated markedly across the period; reduced planting coincided with diversification in governance, funding, and benefits attributed to trees. The Mersey Forest Plan evolved through iterative, participatory revision while the local government Partnership provided structure and continuity. The Mersey Forest Team’s hybrid structure enabled boundary-spanning across sectors and scales, supported by a strong evidence and learning culture. By examining change over three decades, the paper contributes to understanding urban forest governance as a dynamic, place-based and social-ecological process. The study suggests that urban forest programme evaluation should combine output (planting) metrics with evidence of process indicators contributing to adaptation, including learning practices and the relational work sustaining governance. The Mersey Forest case shows how long-term programmes can combine stability with experimentation to achieve sustained impact.