Success Criteria: Evaluating Land Governance Structures

Welcome back. This week’s edition will be picking up right where we left off. I’ll be discussing the criteria that solutions to the challenges previously discussed should be judged by. To recap quickly, those challenges are two-fold. First, a simplified, degraded, land- and seascape lacking biological diversity; and second, a simplified, degraded, and concentrated system of land ownership. For those interested, you can re-read that post by clicking here.

To be clear, the merits of increased ecological diversity and nature restoration will be considered axiomatic — all existing and alternative solutions judged accordingly. The ability of existing and alternative solutions to maximise restoration while balancing sociological outcomes — essentially ensuring that existing land ownership inequality is reversed, or at the very least not entrenched — is paramount. To be doubly clear, the inherent good of nature restoration does not necessarily mean that other land use is inappropriate: I am exclusively discussing trajectory, and direction. Were Scotland’s area theoretically increased in size, covering that additional land in forestry monoculture or sheep grazing would make little sense — there is a lesser need to scale these than there is to scale nature restoration.

One additional clarification: my focus is not on financing mechanisms for the actual act of nature restoration, whether that be in the form of biodiversity- or carbon-linked credits, philanthropic efforts, or government-funded schemes. My focus is on the governance structures we use to manage land and landscapes: less on how things will be financed, more on what structures that financing is funnelled through. I do, though, touch on financing mechanisms for land acquisition specifically. So let’s get into it!

The criteria to judge solutions by are five-fold. Firstly, they need to offer a degree of agglomerated decision-making, wherein a central body can ensure — and at times prescribe — certain, desirable outcomes. See this as a way of setting ground rules that actors the central body represents adhere by. Simultaneously, though, solutions must offer a degree of disagglomerated decision-making, wherein that central body cannot dictate overweeningly. This ensures that if those prescriptions are even partly misguided, the consequences of their complete application are mitigated — risk must be spread out amongst actors.

Let’s use a concrete example to illustrate this: the relationship between government and private actors, consisting of individuals, firms, and other organisations. A government sets regulatory and legislative ground rules that actors have to adhere by. Each actor (in our case being a landowner) then acts within those rules, implementing their respective agendas within the provisions set out by them. Think regulations on pollution and nutrient runoff, or specific planning requirements for proposed developments. In the case of nature restoration, ground rules requiring that restoration would have to be set out, alongside protections for those restoration projects in the long-run. Importantly, a system of hybrid agglomerated-disagglomerated decision-making allows for a level of dynamism that a system that would either be centrally- or locally-planned in entirety cannot: ecological systems are inherently dynamic, and this dynamism must be mirrored in the organisational structures we use to manage land.

Edit (12/01/2025): This example of government can be expanded directly to land-use decisions. A particular community’s priorities might not align directly with the nation’s, while the nation’s priorities might not align directly with the community’s. Governance structures, then, that reflect this tension and lead to its resolution are necessary — one only has to look at the NIMBY-YIMBY divide on infrastructure construction to make this real. On ecological systems’ dynamism: governance structures simply have to reflect their inherent lack of fixity. A peatland, for example, is hardly a fixed entity. Restoring and managing it purely for carbon is short-sighted — ignoring the potential for its later metamorphosis. This is particularly pertinent in the seriously long-term: 500+ years, horizons worth considering when we are discussing climatic and ecological histories.

Secondly, solutions need to overcome the inherent parcellisation private land ownership — and the idea of land ownership in the first place — entails. This relates to ecological, inter-parcel, connectivity, ensuring that habitats are durably continuous and that non-human actors can move freely between different areas — thereby ensuring greater ecosystem diversity and resilience.¹ It also relates to the ability to coordinate nature restoration practically: it makes little sense for a bunch of separate landowners to work to restore their particular patches, when the natural world clearly does not recognise the artificial borders we write into our deeds and draw on our maps. Existing initiatives recognise these problems: Cairngorms Connect, Loch Abar Mòr, the Torridon Partnership, and Affric Highlands, to name a few, go a long way to addressing them. They also allow for greater economies of scale, coordinating high-input conservation measures like deer culling, fence building, and tree planting. Despite these great efforts, inefficiencies remain: reaching agreement on the extent of restoration is notoriously difficult, and ensuring that restored land remains so is still up to individual owners and their descendants. On top of this, these coordinating projects do not question the fundamental calculus of private land ownership, nor question who owns that land in the first place.

This brings me to the third criterion. Beyond addressing ecological challenges, a potential solution needs to credibly address the sociological problems facing Scotland. Concentrated land ownership, with all its associated ills, cannot and should not be exacerbated — nor be allowed to continue at current levels. A solution must go some way to changing this pattern of ownership. It should strive to remove — or rather dilute — the levers of control that only a few individuals presently have. A solution must also recognise that if that change in pattern, and if that removal and dilution, is to ever occur, now is the time to do it. We are experiencing a phase change in land use classes: from typically extractive forms, expressed by raw material or energy production, to restorative forms, typified by nature restoration. With that phase change comes a degree of instability — spelling an opportunity for genuine reform of existing land ownership and land use decision-making structures. Whether that opportunity is seized on to increase the share of land held by incorporated community bodies or other organisations is a separate matter — a change in that share, though, along the lines of the first criterion, is necessary.

Fourthly, solutions must offer credible long-term protection measures of land which is being or has been restored. These protection measures currently take diverse forms. A typical tool used internationally is a conservation covenant — otherwise known as a conservation easement, burden, or servitude. This is essentially a management responsibility provision placed on a property’s deed by initiative of the existing owner. This responsibility passes on to any future owner, meaning they would have to ensure that the piece of land is managed with particular conservation outcomes in mind. These responsibilities are enforced by a third-party which can vary in form — I won’t get into that level of detail here. But one other aspect to keep in mind is that covenants are by their nature static instruments, so changes in management practices and ecological understanding may be harder to integrate down the line.

Edit (12/01/2025): Covenants and legal instruments of this kind are static, too, in that they rely entirely on statute. They do not necessarily foster a dynamic, discursive, relationship between local human and non-human communities — a relationship that can prevent later shifts in local and national political whims through deep-rooted support. This makes them more durable and reliable, particularly in that they don’t rely on a state’s capacity to facilitate legal disputes and challenges. Support, here, is organic rather than legalistically forced.

Another long-term protection measure is a specialised ownership vehicle that creates ground rules for how that vehicle’s assets should be managed. If the asset in question, for example, is a piece of land, a provision in the vehicle’s founding documentation could require that it be managed for nature restoration alone. The vehicle can take the form of a charity with a constitution, or the form of a trust with a deed, that requires this. The Barrahormid Trust, having acquired 625 hectares of the Tayvallich Estate from Highlands Rewilding back in June of this year, is a good example of this. Weaknesses of these models, though, remain. Covenants rely on the existence of supportive legislation: should a future government decide that they are unnecessarily burdensome they could be removed unilaterally. On truly long-term time horizons, then, they become a risky instrument if relied upon in entirety. The Barrahormid or NCIP model also poses problems: not necessarily being compatible with the first, second, and third criteria outlined above.

Fifthly, lastly, and more practically, solutions need to be financially scaleable in the short- and medium-term. If we are to address the socio- and ecological challenges Scotland faces, we must do so quickly. This is especially the case for the latter: we can’t wait a few decades to get our ducks in a row — restoration at scale must start now. To ensure the transfer of unsympathetically-managed land into sympathetic hands, any financing mechanism must recognise this. Community purchases of land at scale, for example, are at present not a credible solution — simply because available financing, primarily in the form of the Scottish Land Fund and lottery funding, is so limited. A floated land tax to expand this funding would take far too long to implement, and take far too long for its proceeds to accrue in value, to be a viable solution. Private acquisition of land, too, obviously doesn’t fly with some of the other criteria mentioned above, nor do national and local government purchases.

With all of these criteria in mind, I will be examining existing solutions in greater depth in the coming posts, before moving on to a potential alternative I’ve crafted. See these criteria as a framework to review these solutions systematically: some might seem convincing in some respects, but could be lacking elsewhere. Anyways — please do stay tuned, and pop me a message or comment below if you have any thoughts or questions in the meantime!

Note: as you’ll have noticed, my focus is on the terrestrial. I’ll eventually turn my attention towards seascapes, but I’ll have to wrap my head around them first!

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

1. For those unsure what I mean by a non-human actor, think any living being that isn’t us; flora, fauna, or fungi.