Current Scottish Land Reform and Reclaiming the Commons: Building Community Resilience

Abstract

Scotland has been addressing the highest European concentrations of land ownership through land reform legislation, encouraging communities to buy out the lairds. Collective efforts to take ownership of the commons are explored through application of theories on governance, regional development and institutions. Experiences of Inner and Outer Hebridean islanders under private and then community ownership, paying special attention to the case of the Isle of Eigg, are considered. Their collective tenacity, flexibility and confidence in securing a community future despite continuing challenges to remote small island living are offered as keystone examples from Scotland of small island enterprise, social development and collective community actions.

Romance and resilience: The assets and ambition of Scottish ‘remote rural’ enterprise contexts

“…Nonetheless, although outwith the remit of this article, we expect the significance of specific contexts and local animateurs does not necessarily mean this model is replicable throughout Scotland. Our complementary work on regulatory reform of land ownership and 'the commons' (Danson and Burnett, 2021a) argues that this model of rural entrepreneurship cannot be implemented in many contemporary communities where monopoly ownership of land prevails (Danson, 2020(Danson, , 2022, though the peculiar successes in Unst point to complexities beyond ownership alone.…”

“…Remote rural places of Scotland, notably the highlands and indeed the various offshore island communities to the north and west, have been positioned and experienced as ‘margins’ and peripheral in socio-economic terms for a considerable period of modern history (Burnett 2017; Danson 2022; Danson and Burnett 2021a, 2021b). It is only in recent decades of the late twentieth century that there has been significant reassessment and indeed a realisation of a bespoke sustained economic policy of dedicated support and development.…”

“…It has been argued that this degree of concentration in ownership in the hands of, often absentee and disengaged, lairds accrues monopoly powers in use and management of the land and local resources with negative effects on the economy, environment and societies at local and national levels (Danson, 2020; Glass et al 2019). This imbalance in ownership, and so in use and management, stifles enterprise, constraining communities to develop sustainably and for the commons (Danson and Burnett, 2021a). For the last two decades, land reform has been promoted to offer an institutional context to meet these challenges, facilitated by state and higher governmental agencies such as HIE (Highlands and Islands Enterprise), Scottish Government, National Performance Framework, Sustainable Development Goals (Macleod, 2021), but there remain major barriers to change due to geography and other factors.…”

“…Ideological questions of land ownership in Scotland remains a key field for debate, activism and animation. Deep inequities persist in Scotland, a necessary backdrop to understanding contexts of land, assets and ‘the commons’ and critically informing of how enterprise is narrativized as well as its animation and realisation in the remote rural setting (Danson and Burnett, 2021a). Furthermore, like its geology Scotland offers a complex patterning of spatial planning categorisation yet currently under review.…”