Community-based land reform: Lessons from Scotland

In recent years, the Scottish Highlands have become the epicentre of a land reform significant for its strong embrace of culture and community. Close inspection of the Scottish land reform—wherein communities are granted the right to purchase lands to which they historically enjoyed only conditional access—leads to a series of questions about the relationship between land reform and community. We argue that most land reforms have paid insufficient attention to community strengthening as an end in itself and are the weaker for it. Drawing on insights from community-based natural resource management and local development, we offer qualified evidence suggesting that, as in the current Scottish case, community-centric land reform has a promising future. We trace the pre-reform history of community buy-outs in Scotland and pose various issues that must be addressed if Scotland's land reform legislation is to succeed.