Scotland's Socio- and Ecological Challenges

Welcome to this series of blog posts, where we’ll be delving into some thinking I’ve been doing over the past half-year or so. This thinking, specifically, relates to the ecological and sociological challenges that Scotland faces — their intersection, their trajectories, and their solutions.

Those challenges are multifarious: Scotland for the most part exhibits the equivalent of an ecological hellscape. Its land and seas are degraded beyond the bounds of imagination our forebears held — forests more than decimated; peatlands heavily degraded; rivers empty of life and forced to follow artificial pathways; seas, once teeming with diversity, now a wetter desert than terrestrial Scotland itself. The picture I paint here is purposefully dire, and purposefully pessimistic. While progress is being made and while projects around the country aim to restore that which has been lost, the sheer extent of decline relative to the current and projected extent of restoration humbles current approaches to Scotland’s ecological challenges: we rank 212th out of 240 countries in biodiversity intactness for a reason. To move further and to move faster, particularly within the context of the climatic and biodiversity crises, new accelerating strategies are needed.

Limited ecological diversity matters — it isn’t, and shouldn’t be, some kind of abstract concern. Diversity ensures resilience. The more simplified ecological systems become, the more vulnerable they are to shocks — consider the vulnerability our simplified food systems exhibit to climatic changes, or the vulnerabilities pandemics expose(d). This applies to physical landscapes too: the more a particular patch of land looks a particular, singular, way — say, a grouse moor or livestock monoculture — the less it is able to deal with the diversity of challenges it faces: whether that be flooding, fire, or erosion. Our simplification of the ecosystems we participate in and landscapes we inhabit, then, has made us increasingly vulnerable.

Scotland’s sociological challenges mirror this. Much as ecological diversity was stripped from our hills, glens, lochs, and riverbanks, human diversity — diversity of human tenure — was done so in a similarly systematic manner. Whether expressed through historic clearances or financialisation of rural land, human habitation has been reduced and simplified. Today, this is evidenced in deeply unequal and iniquitous land ownership — expressive of the profound lack of agency many rural communities have over their surroundings’ fate. Half the country is owned by just over 400 bodies — individuals, trusts, companies, partnerships, and other organisations. 60% is owned by just under 1,000 of these, and 70% by just over 2,500. This is shockingly unequal, and deeply problematic for Scotland’s social, political, and economic health.

Just like ecological systems necessitate diversity to function effectively and resiliently, sociopolitical and economic systems rely on a degree of diversity to ensure that the levers of power and production aren’t excessively concentrated in the hands of a few. When 400-odd bodies control half of a country’s land, its use becomes privately regulated — monopolised. With economic activity in rural areas often intrinsically linked with that land, that monopolisation becomes stifling — landowners’ dictation of its use is essentially a dictation of how and even whether local communities are and can be employed, and where and whether they can build their homes. Monopolisation of land use, or rather land control and decision-making, isn’t just deeply inefficient — mirroring the pernicious effects monopolisation brings to any industry. It also just simply isn’t right, on a fundamental level. It strips communities of their agency, of their ability to decide their fate.

The ecological and sociological problems Scotland — and arguably the world — faces, then, are intrinsically interlinked. And they clearly need addressed. In the coming blog posts, I’ll be discussing existing solutions, their strengths, and their shortcomings. I’ll also be discussing an alternative solution that addresses those shortcomings and capitalises on those strengths. Please do stay tuned, and pop me a message if you have any comments in the meantime!

Note: my approach in these writings is not exhaustive. Plenty of folk have written about these matters previously, and I don’t intend to repeat what they’ve said. I instead intend to add my personal spin — my interpretation — to these analyses.

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