The Scottish Government is ready to seize an “immediate window of opportunity” to ensure communities benefit from a boom in land values created by so-called “green lairds”.
Land Reform Minister Màiri McAllan raised the prospect as she promised that a “package of work” was being developed to help find a “pathway” that would balance community rights with the need for private investment in the push to reach net zero.
She was speaking as MSPs debated a motion from Rhoda Grant, Labour MSP for the Highlands and Islands, which called for tighter regulation of the land market.
Ms Grant has been among the voices raising concerns that communities will be priced out of owning and benefitting from local land as a result of the burgeoning interest from “green lairds”.
The term has been used to describe businesses seeking to offset their carbon emissions and take advantage of government grants by buying land for initiatives such as tree planting, as well as investors focused on generating returns through trading in carbon credits.
Ms Grant called for “radical action”, saying: “The emergence of the so-called green lairds shines a light on the inadequacy of our land laws, and it also shines a light on how we subsidise the creation of private wealth from owning land, when we could be building community wealth instead.”
Net zero
The minister responded by highlighting the “real opportunities” for rural and island communities in the transition to net zero.
Ms McAllan said: “We will need a blend of public and private investment to realise these benefits because frankly the public sector cannot do this alone.
“But we must seize these opportunities and mitigate the risks at the same time.
“I think there is an immediate window of opportunity to take action to ensure that increasing levels of natural capital value are harnessed in a way that benefits communities.”
I think there is an immediate window of opportunity to take action to ensure that increasing levels of natural capital value are harnessed in a way that benefits communities.”
She confirmed that the Scottish Land Commission (SLC) was taking forward a “package of work in this area as a matter of priority”.
“This work will help us find a pathway that balances the need for private sector investment, which has been discussed, with community rights, and with that legal commitment to a just transition, which this government is committed to,” the minister said.
SLC chief executive Hamish Trench has recently spoken about the “option” of establishing community wealth funds, as well as other potential proposals.
Earlier in the debate on Thursday, the SNP’s Emma Roddick criticised “indulgent, conscience-easing vanity-project for big business” in the Highlands and Islands.
‘Self-congratulatory press releases’
“I can’t tell you how many times in the last few years I’ve let out another sigh at the newest in a line of self-congratulatory press releases from companies who have bought up land in the Highlands and plan on filling it with trees,” she said.
“Because they know better than the local community what the right use of the land is, and because they have the money to collect our land for use as an asset to their business, to offset the damage that they are doing to the climate elsewhere.
“The complete lack of self-awareness of many do-gooders when failing to recognise that they are just another wealthy private buyer of our land, who is contributing to the continuation of a skewed and unjust land market, is astounding.”
The complete lack of self-awareness of many do-gooders when failing to recognise that they are just another wealthy private buyer of our land, who is contributing to the continuation of a skewed and unjust land market, is astounding.”
The Highlands and Islands MSP also warned proponents of rewilding not to “dream up your big rewilding ideas based on a romantic – or even Cumberlandesque – vision of a sparse, deserted Highlands”.
Calls for radical action also came from Labour MSP Mercedes Villalba, who suggested caps on private land holdings and a land value tax.
Standard Life Investments Property Income Trust (SLIPIT) recently announced it had spent £7.5 million buying 1,447 hectares in the Cairngorm National Park, to be used as part of the company’s carbon strategy.
Benefits
Conservative MSP Dean Lockhart said: “I think it’s important to highlight the benefit of these investments.
“For example the Standard Life investment is a project that will restore woodland and peatland areas over almost 1,500 hectares, planting over 1.5million trees, with between 50 and 100 people working on the project over the next six years, using land which has no existing agriculture or other value.
“So I think that land use and the benefits that come with that investment are to be encouraged.”
He added: “Additional land market regulation and controls, as set out in the motion today, are not the answer I believe.”