Community Land Ownership: The Solution to Scotland's Socio- and Ecological Challenges?

Welcome back! This week we’ll begin diving into existing solutions to the socio- and ecological challenges Scotland faces. These challenges, for those interested, were outlined in the first post of this series. And those solutions will be assessed by the criteria set out in the second post, which, to recap briefly, are:

• Levels of agglomerated and disagglomerated control — the need for a mix of centralised and decentralised control to ensure diverse implementation with overarching goals and oversight.

• The need to overcome parcellisation: linking disparate bits of land to facilitate true landscape-scale nature restoration.

• Addressing the deep sociological inequities and economic inefficiencies Scotland faces as a result of concentrated land ownership.

• Offering credible long-term protection measures of land that is restored, or is on the journey to restoration: offering dynamic organisational structures that mirror the functioning of ecological systems and our uncertain knowledge of them.¹

• Practical scaleability: the viability of financing mechanisms to scale a system of land governance — through acquisition — that adheres to the need for nature restoration.

I’d recommend reading this post in two sittings, and referring to the footnotes only if you feel like it! It’s accordingly split into two sections — context and assessment — so you can grab a cup of tea or coffee midway through. I’ll be introducing two current solutions, but only discussing one in depth. The other will be the subject of next week’s post.

I’d also like to pre-empt this post by recognising that land reform is a sociopolitically sensitive matter in Scotland: I’ll be viewing things apolitically, in line with the challenges and according to the criteria discussed previously.

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Context

So — what are the existing solutions? I’ll be setting up a useful false dichotomy here, simplifying — or rather distilling — a set of diverse solutions into two approaches. These are communal and private.² The communal approach lays emphasis on local communities acquiring surrounding land themselves, and committing this land to nature restoration. The private approach lays emphasis on private bodies purchasing land directly, and potentially systematically, to commit it to nature restoration. This approach has a number of different sub-approaches: private bodies, for this purpose, will be considered diverse. They could be wealthy private philanthropists ideologically committed to deep-green rewilding — think, here, of the Povlsens or Rausings. They could also be financial services firms like abrdn or Gresham House, utilising light-green financing schemes like the Woodland and Peatland Codes to either purchase land directly or partner with existing landowners to deliver similar outcomes. And they could be the central government, via Forestry and Land Scotland (FLS), purchasing large estates themselves on a commercial basis — refer here to the recent acquisition of Glen Prosen and consider the fact that FLS owns 9% of Scotland as a whole.³

The communal approach to addressing Scotland’s socio- and ecological challenges is that of direct land acquisition: it involves communities purchasing the land that surrounds them, in our case for nature restoration. Community buyouts are increasingly common in Scotland — more than 500 have been conducted to date, both in urban and rural areas. Perhaps the most famous example is that of the Isle of Eigg, where residents formed the Eigg Heritage Trust to purchase the island in 1997 — after publicly raising £1.5 million. This buyout predated the first Land Reform Act of 2003, which itself precipitated one of the largest rural community buyouts in Scotland: that of Assynt, in the northwest of the country, by the Assynt Foundation in 2005, amounting to 44,000 acres. A more recent example, and one most relevant to nature restoration, is that of Langholm, where the local community impressively purchased more than 10,000 acres in two goes to form the Tarras Valley Nature Reserve. Despite all of these seeming successes, community land ownership in Scotland as a proportion of its total landmass still stands in the low single digits. Worse still, the legal mechanisms that the Land Reform Acts of 2003 and 2016 provide have only resulted in the transfer of 0.24% of Scotland’s land in the past twenty years.

It is worth, then, going into these mechanisms. They relate primarily to Parts 2, 3A, and 5 of the Land Reform Acts.⁴ These are legal provisions that give local, geographically-delimited, ‘communities of place’ the ability to place pre-emption rights on, and even compulsorily purchase, land.⁵ Part 2 is the most often-used, relating to pre-emption rights. This means that communities can, through a specific government-facilitated process, have ‘first dibs’ on land before it goes to market. They are then, should they wish to, able to purchase it at market value, as ascertained by an independent valuation. Parts 3A and 5 relate to compulsory purchase. 3A relates to purchase of land being detrimentally managed, as defined by harm being done to the community in question, and 5 relates to purchase for the specific aim of sustainable development. To date, only a handful of applications to compulsorily purchase land have been submitted — all, to my knowledge, being unsuccessful.⁶ Part 2 has been a little more successful, although it usually acts more as an enabler for negotiated purchase outside the Land Reform Act’s framework, pre-emption rights being rarely redeemed in practice.⁷

It is also worth nothing that a revised Land Reform Act is currently making its way through the Scottish Parliament. I won’t dwell on this too much as it won’t have much of an impact on the mechanisms communities have to acquire land — other than the potential provision to sell large estates in lots under a public interest test. In the grand scheme of things, though, it acts more as a regulatory force, ensuring that estates of a certain size — exceeding 3,000 hectares — publish land management plans in consultation with local communities.⁸

How are communal land purchases funded? This depends. The biggest funder is the Scottish Land Fund (SLF), a government-backed pool of money that supports buyouts across the country. Capitalised at £10 million a year, this barely scratches the surface for larger acquisitions: Glen Prosen, for example, the 3,500 hectare Angus estate purchased by FLS around two years ago, costed £17.5 million. The National Lottery provides a bit of funding here and there too, but as with the SLF, this is hardly scaleable, nor reliable. Community and other discrete fundraising is a third source: at Langholm, the SLF provided £1 million for the second, 5,300 acre, parcel, supplemented by £200,000 in fundraising by 4,000 individuals around the world, and £200,000 in funding from the Woodland Trust, amongst others.⁹ It goes without saying that all these fundraising mechanisms are complex, with numerous hoops to jump through, and entail a number of conditions that have to be adhered to.

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Assessment

So how does the communal approach score on our five criteria? I’ll be comparing it to the status quo.

1. Levels of Agglomeration and Disagglomeration

In all likelihood, levels of central oversight would reduce. In the absence of further government guidance and regulation, land ownership would — in a theoretical world where the communal approach has unlimited funding — become fragmented. This is great for local agency, but makes it harder to coordinate large-scale restoration, and would result in competing local interests displacing the needs, and interests, of the whole. With fewer owners to target and with estates likely being smaller, fewer parcels of land would be subject to land management plans too.

Bringing us back to the practical goal of scaling rewilding, a theoretical Scotland broken up into disparate chunks of land is hardly conducive with large-scale restoration. It makes coordinating and financing that restoration more difficult.

2. Overcoming Parcellisation

That difficulty, then, brings us to the problem of parcellisation. Mass communal ownership does not fulfil this criterion by any means: as with agglomeration-disagglomeration, the problems and inefficiencies parcellisation entail would likely be exacerbated. Existing schemes, like Cairngorms Connect and Affric Highlands, would be made more difficult, tedious, and administrative by increasing the number of participants — from its current contingent of primarily large, well-resourced, landowners.

In the long-run, too, mass communal land ownership suffers from the same problems of mass, albeit more concentrated, private land ownership. The borders put up by the parcels of land that are owned — ownership being an ecologically artificial idea — are not and cannot be conducive with the needs of non-human inhabitants.

One other aspect of overcoming parcellisation is the ability to strategically plan land acquisition according to the needs of landscape-scale restoration: the individualised nature of communal acquisition does not allow for this by any means. The overall score, then, stands below that of the status quo.

3. Sociological Inequities

This criterion is where this approach stands its own, and vastly outscores the status quo. Mass communal land acquisition and ownership would overcome centuries of appropriation and concentration, and reverse centuries of historical inequity. Democratising the structures used to make decisions around land use would radically reshape the power imbalances of Scotland.

It is important to keep in mind, though, that the democratisation of land use decisions does not entirely equate to mass rewilding. An attempted, fully-funded, buyout on the Morvern peninsula failed at the last hurdle — its community, some favouring sheep grazing, split on the restoration-centric plans for the land.

4. Long-Term Protection Measures

In this regard, the communal approach is as limited as that of the status quo. Protection measures are up to individual landowners, and as this approach is not fully compatible with the first and second criteria, there may not be much to protect in the first place. Tools available would remain static and up to individual owners’ wishes: conservation burdens being an example of this.

The democratic nature of this approach may be a limiting factor too. As community buyouts are usually made by communities of place — particularly under the Land Reform Act — membership is open to all who live there. Should there be a change in communal priorities, then, the protection of once restored land would be at stake — much as with the status quo.

5. Scaleability

The limits, on this front, are clear — and already outlined. Financing is limited at best, and this is unlikely to improve anytime soon. Another aspect unaddressed thus far is the issue of capacity. Scaling communal land acquisition is in itself a difficulty: it requires a great deal of time, and a great deal of expertise. Members of some communities may struggle on one or both of these fronts.

One advantage that the communal approach holds is its unique legal means. It would be worth experimenting with the compulsory purchase provisions set out under Parts 3A and 5 — as large estates rarely come on the market, this would overcome the problem of land liquidity. It is, though, a legally untested and potentially risky approach, given broad yet strict definitions for detriment and sustainable development. It also does not overcome the base financial and capacity barriers mentioned above.

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To conclude quickly, then, the communal approach doesn’t sufficiently address the socio- and ecological challenges Scotland faces. If you’ve gotten to the end of this post, thank you, truly! I’d love to hear your feedback, and I’d love to hear how you would rate the communal approach according to the five criteria. Next week we’ll be exploring the ‘private’ approach. Do stay tuned, and please share this series with anyone you think might be interested.

Note: just a reminder that you can read more about my thoughts on these matters in the brief I wrote a while back here — worth looking at, particularly if you want a sneak peek of my proposed solution.

Image Credit to Joe Payne, a good friend of mine and a great landscape photographer! See his Flickr and IG for more.

1. I would like to note that this characterisation of restoration is overly simplistic. Land and its ecologies are never truly restored. There is no fixed endpoint: it is about establishing healthy, resilient, self-perpetuating ecosystems.

2. While this distinction works for the purposes of this series, it is far from complete. Systems of land tenure (encompassing freehold, leasehold, and other arrangements) are about as diverse as humanity itself. The Scottish Land Commission has done some work on this in the past, as has the Lincoln Institute. Indigenous forms of land management abound, and the example of community conservancies in Kenya comes to mind too.

3. The distinction between the communal and the private, here, may seem slightly arbitrary. It stands purely on the level of separation between the owner and the area of land concerned — the degrees of separation between the decision-maker and the affected. It is also, though, grounded in the context of the Scottish land reform movement: the legislative mechanisms introduced by successive Land Reform Acts almost exclusively cater to local communities.

4. Crofting communities have particular rights under other provisions of the Land Reform Acts, but given the agricultural prescribed use of crofting lands I won’t discuss these here.

5. Land, here, includes the assets located thereon, whether buildings or otherwise.

6. The bar of evidencing detrimental management and subsequent harm, as well as evidencing the need for sustainable development, is high — relative to the rights accorded to landowners under the European Convention on Human Rights.

7. The Land Reform Acts’ provisions have a strong democratic footing, requiring communities to vote on purchases at a number of stages. Part 2 requires a minimum of 10% support ascertained by a survey to place a pre-emption right in the first place. If redeemed, a vote over 50% is needed — this process is managed independently through a community-wide ballot. That 50% threshold holds true for Parts 3A and 5 too.

8. You can read more about this on Andy Wightman’s blog here. See his posts named Land Reform (Scotland) Bill, numbered 1 to 6.

9. Despite repeated promises to increase funding for the SLF, its value has decline in real terms — particularly after recent years’ land price rises (although this has tapered slightly in the last year). A floated idea to further fund the SLF through a land value tax is likely not on the horizon for some time yet, so won’t address this shortcoming in the near-term.