WHILE there is much to be applauded about a new rewilding scheme for a private estate on the banks of Loch Ness, it highlights wider issues around land ownership in Scotland.
Former scientific director of Greenpeace and solar energy entrepreneur Jeremy Leggett plans to turn his newly purchased 500-hectare Bunloit Estate into an “open natural laboratory”, working closely with Rewilding Europe to restore peatlands and native woodlands to nurture biodiversity and combat climate change.
He intends to employ local rangers to manage the estate and hopes to build a small number of eco-homes made from the estate’s harvested wood and constructed by local business Makar, of which Leggett is a board member.
An environmentally sound recalibration of land use and a benevolent owner who has earned his stripes at the frontline of protecting the natural world seems like a step in the right direction for Scotland’s sustainable future. However, Leggett’s positive action plan is a mere drop in the ocean of vital and progressive changes that need to be made in how we use our land, who owns and benefits from it, and how we play our part in the bigger climate-change picture.
Land is one of our most important assets and is vital to our nation’s health, wealth and wellbeing. Now, as we face the long haul of our post-pandemic economic recovery and the challenges of climate change, it seems crucial to open up discussions on modernising land ownership for the greater good and address current levels of power over land use as a block to regeneration.
In a report for the Scottish Government last year, the Scottish Land Commission (SLC) recommended new powers and radical reform to combat the large amount of land ownership in just a few hands in Scotland, a scenario which they argue decreases economic opportunities and diversity. While they highlighted the positive actions of certain owners in their job creation, involvement of local communities and land sales to increase wider ownership and small holdings, the SLC did not hold back in describing aspects of monopoly power as “socially corrosive”.
Scotland has one of the highest amounts of private land ownership in Europe, with almost one-fifth of land used for hunting and shooting grouse. Half of Scotland’s privately owned land is held by just 432 owners, while 16 of these owners own a 10% share.
The Bunloit Estate’s 500 hectares is small fry when compared to the 80,000 owned by the Buccleuch estate, for instance, or indeed a similar-sized land mass owned by Danish billionaire Anders Povlsen. In contrast, the SLC may well approve of Leggett’s ownership and land values as part of their recommendations to the Scottish Government to find new ways to increase the number of small, privately owned estates, farms and forests.
In examining responsible and inclusive ownership, we have much to learn from our past struggles to reclaim land when large swathes of our landscape remained captive to the notions of one wealthy and influential owner.
One of the most symbolic events in this history can be summed up in the story of the Seven Men of Knoydart, a tale which started with the whims of a solitary landowner and ultimately ended with the whim of another. Back in 1948, seven ex-servicemen made the last land raid in Scotland to reclaim back territories in the beautiful Knoydart peninsula from the then landowner Lord Brocket. Invoking the Land Settlement Act, which allowed returning servicemen to take over land which was underused and farm it as their own, these men argued for the rightful return of an area of the estate to cultivate, after subsequent landowners had appropriated it for sheep farming during the Clearances. Unfortunately, they were unsuccessful, and Lord Brocket kept his land. It took until 1999 for the Knoydart people to get it back, and only because the last landowner, a Surrey property developer, decided to sell off sections of the estate, leading finally to a successful community buyout.
In the intervening years, we have witnessed further successful community buyouts, across the water from Knoydart on the Island of Eigg, for instance, where the locals have just secured additional national lottery funding to redevelop their community hub to build on securing their economic, social and cultural future. This redistribution of resources and opportunities is crucial for the creation of resilient communities as part of a wider “well-being” economy and to build back better.
The Common Weal think-and-do tank has published some innovative ideas on creating a new National Land Agency to oversee the management of land in Scotland, as well as addressing diversification of ownership as part of their overarching Common Home Plan and Green New Deal. They point out that “land is crucial to social justice”; for Scotland to overcome inequality and inefficiency, we must rely on what our land produces in terms of food, materials and renewable energy sources as well as creating sustainable and diverse environments for our native species. This is an impossible task if huge areas of Scottish land continue to be privately owned by a small number of people, some of whom may well take a leaf out of the former Greenpeace director’s book, while others pursue an entirely different agenda.
Although Leggett’s blueprint for his new Highland estate is welcome in its ambition and aim, it must be viewed as part of a much bigger and far-reaching redistribution of land ownership where communities and small investors are empowered to find innovative ways to manage their land with economically viable and sustainable solutions. It’s only through this kind of radical transformation and joined-up thinking that we can future-proof Scotland and play our vital role in addressing climate change. We must ensure that the values of equality and fairness which underpin our governing ambitions are applied to how we own the very soil beneath our feet.
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