Community Landownership and Nature Recovery

Scotland has a highly concentrated pattern of landownership, but it is also home to a long-established community landownership movement. Through this model, local communities establish democratic, non-profit organisations to collectively acquire and manage land. Community landownership can give local residents greater control over land use, create opportunities for new livelihoods and enable forms of environmental management grounded in care, responsibility and long-term relationships with place.

However, community landowners also operate within a rapidly changing policy and economic environment. Public funding is increasingly constrained, while governments are encouraging private investment into nature recovery through carbon and biodiversity credit markets. These developments may create new sources of finance for ecological restoration, but they may also place pressure on communities to monetise nature and adapt their priorities to the requirements of investors and markets.

Amid this context, this project examines how Scottish community landownership may contribute to nature recovery by reshaping access to and control over land, and what political and economic conditions are variously enabling or constraining this potential. The research combines organisational ethnography, participant observation, semi-structured interviews and analysis of policy documents, organisational records and promotional materials. Fieldwork has been conducted with community landownership organisations and other nature-recovery initiatives in rural Scotland.