Scottish land policy gets the Dark Matter Labs treatment: Crofting 2.0, Layered Commoning and the Land Relationships Register

‘Layered commoning”, from the Scottish Land Commission/Dark Matter Labs paper (see below)

Here’s a very promising paper, jointly written by the Scottish Land Commission and our long-standing friends Dark Matter Labs, titled Land Governance Futures: Towards Common Relationships.

Both parties are pursuing the “reimagining of our relationship with land”; both are interested in “diversifying” form of ownership and governance from the current models. And both have eye on the challenges of climate to land - who gets the benefits of regenerative land development, under a future of planetary limits.

The paper stakes out its key concepts here:

By considering the problems created by our existing approach to land, and how some of these begin to be addressed through precedents from Scotland and beyond, we coalesced around a set of emerging principles for a future vision of land governance:

1. Land is not bounded, but exists in a network of relationships Understanding land as bounded plots tends to divide everything between the interests of the owner, and ‘externalities’. How can future land governance recognise the interconnected and overlapping relationships of land and the wider systems of which it is a part?

2. New modes of relating to land need to be reciprocal. Property rights are often treated as abstract entitlements, but this does not recognise these rights are created by the responsibilities of other parties, and in turn the responsibility that comes with the privilege of exercising these rights. How can we move towards a mutualistic approach to land governance?

3. Land and natural systems should be recognised as having their own agency. Treating land and nature as property risks reducing them to inert objects, whereas in reality, the flora, fauna and earth systems themselves are interdependent parts in an ecosystem with their own agency. How might a future land system recognise the agency of each part of the ecosystem?

Land Governance Futures · Towards Common Relationships

We summarised these principles as a shift from treating land as “property”, to developing “proper ties” with land, a future governance that recognises the world as a system of agents engaged in a network of interdependent relationships:

When we use the word ‘relationships’, we define them to have certain characteristics:

Agent-to-agent: a relationship connects two or more agents, which can be humans or non-humans, living or not; e.g. the relationship between the homeowner and their next door neighbour, the relationship between the loch and all the fish that live in it, including salmon and trout.

Value and directionality: a relationship between agents often convey value provided from one party to another, e.g. the value of shelter provided by a forest to animals, the value of carbon sequestration provided by a forest to humanity.

Greater than the sum of its parts: in a system that reflects the complexity of the world, the aggregation of many relationships also creates an emergent value of its own.

More here. Scottish readers who are versed in land policy and struggles would be delighted that the importance of relationships and mutuality is high here - no doubt reinforced by Scottish Land Commission’s input. Though surprisingly, there’s no mention of how the Gaelic words dùthchas, dùthaich and dualchas express perfectly this relational, ecological perspective on land, community and ownership.

From an essay by Mairi McFadyean:

The modern assumption, then, that it is normal for a single individual to own a large area of land – a hill or a forest, perhaps – contrasts starkly with the Highland worldview in which ‘people belong to places, rather than places belong to people.’ Gaelic culture expresses a fundamentally different way of relating to the land, or dùthaich.

This is perhaps best expressed in the concept of dùthchas, which encompasses the idea of ecological interrelationship between land, all living things, people, language and culture – a concept familiar to many of the world’s indigenous cultures.

It can be understood as a cultural, ethical and reciprocal relationship with place, speaking both to a sense of belonging to and responsible stewardship of the land for future generations, acknowledging that humans are a fundamental part of the ecology of a place.

Dùthchas is also richly associated with the concept of dualchas, often poorly translated as ‘heritage.’ It constitutes what might be better understood as traditional ecological knowledge, encompassing a cultural inheritance in the form of traditions, practices and shared knowledge deeply rooted in the landscape. These three Gaelic words – dùthchas, dùthaich and dualchas – are all connected: together they form a matrix in which land, language and people – an tir, an canan ’s na daoine – are inseparable.

More here (and more on the concepts here). Though in the paper’s list of provocations, we’re delighted to see an attempt at Crofting 2.0. Recognising that in Scotland, this is already a complex form of “land governance” - with the Crofting Commission involved in certifying legitimate crofters - the DML suggest that there could be “civic crofts” and “ecosystem crofts” encouraged.

The former is incentivised to make use of buildings (like churches and village halls) fallen into non-use. The latter could transform the “purposeful use” clause demanded by the Crofting Commission:

[The clause could be] proactively expanded to the provision of ecosystem services (e.g. such as carbon sequestration, natural flood management, biodiversity restoration)? Can crofting as a model allow ecosystem services to be provided in a way that recognises how these service impact local communities and ecologies?

Some researchers have explored the viability of costed business models for peatland restoration crofting using revenues from carbon credits. The 32km residency requirement for the crofter [how close they have to live to their croft] could help ensure integration into the local community and the consideration of its needs when developing nature-based solutions.

More from the paper here, including layered communing and the Land Relationships Register. We will be keen to see how this partnership develops.