The Community Empowerment and Landscape Decision-Making Network is open to anyone who supports our shared purpose (below). If you would like to find out more and get involved, please contact us. We welcome new members so please do get in touch, whatever your background.
You can also follow the network on Twitter.
What is the purpose of the network?
As a network, we support wider efforts to empower people in sparsely-populated areas of Scotland in decisions about the land where they live. In particular, we are investigating how cultures of decision-making affect people’s ability and opportunities to participate in land decisions.
Being able to take part in decisions which affect you, your community and your place is important in and of itself, as a matter of human dignity and wellbeing. Broad democratic participation in land decisions is also fundamental to achieving wider societal aims, such as repopulation, responding to the climate and biodiversity emergencies, delivering a Just Transition to net zero, achieving the Sustainable Development Goals, and protecting and fulfilling people’s human rights.
In Scotland, laws and policies relating to land and the environment recognise that people have a right to participate in decisions affecting them and the places they live. But the principle of participation is not being realised fully in practice and many people remain disenfranchised. There are many reasons for this, some of which are better known than others. We feel that the cultural aspects of land decisions are not sufficiently recognised or understood.
Together, we are exploring cultures of decision-making, by which we mean the (often implicit) attitudes, habits of thoughts, ways of working, values and priorities which influence decisions and how they are made. These cultural factors shape how the law and policy are interpreted and implemented in practice. They also shape how people go about the many day-to-day activities and decisions relating to land which are not regulated in any detail.
We recognise that ‘cultures’ are not monolithic and static. We are interested in deeply-rooted ways of thinking and doing, and in the new cultures which are emerging as land reform progresses. We are interested in the diverse habits, attitudes and practices found within and across the public institutions, landowners and managers, local communities and communities of interest which relate to land in Scotland’s sparsely populated areas.
We believe that there is a need to understand better the positive and negative impacts of different cultures of decision-making on outcomes for people and nature. There is a need to share positive stories that can inspire wider change in practice, and that can help to normalise the principles of the Scottish Land Rights & Responsibilities Statement.
The network is contributing by sharing people’s lived experiences of cultures of decision-making, and by supporting discussions of what we can learn from these experiences. This is about listening to diverse voices, stories and testimonies, reflecting on what they tell us about the cultural dimensions of land decisions and their effects, and identifying – through collective deliberation – the key lessons for improving decision-making cultures relating to the land.
Who’s in the network and what’s happened so far?
Members currently include people affiliated with community landowners and community development trusts, the Scottish Government, the Scottish Parliament, the Scottish Land Commission, Forestry & Land Scotland, Highlands & Islands Enterprise, landowning conservation NGOs and a number of universities and research institutes in Scotland and England, as well as individuals with no affiliation.
The network was launched in March 2020, when we held our first workshop in Inverness. That workshop was invaluable in helping to define the purpose and direction of the network. In particular, there was strong support, across the range of participants, in focusing on sharing people’s lived experiences of cultures of decision-making and supporting discussions of what we can learn from these experiences. Understanding of these lived experiences is felt to be lacking and the network’s members believe that addressing this gap will make a valuable contribution.
We had intended to hold a series of further events across Scotland in 2020 and 2021, but those plans had to be paused due to the Covid-19 pandemic. During the hiatus, we have developed the Land Decisions podcast series to begin to capture and share people’s stories. The network’s programme of events will resume in 2022.
How is the network funded and coordinated?
The network is supported by a grant from the Arts & Humanities Research Council, as part of the funding programme Changing Landscapes: Towards a new Decision Making Framework for UK Landscapes and Land Assets.
The network is coordinated by:
Community Land Scotland is the national voice for community landowners, with almost 100 member organisations across Scotland, ranging from community landowners of major crofting estates in the Western Isles to inner city community hubs in diverse communities such as Kinning Park in Glasgow. We are at the forefront of advocating for land reform as a way to help deliver a fairer, greener and more sustainable Scotland and we promote community ownership of land and associated assets as central to delivering that overarching objective.
The Global Academy of Agriculture and Food Security at the University of Edinburgh is focused on transforming food systems. It brings together inter-disciplinary expertise across the University of Edinburgh to support the transformation of agri-food systems though agenda-setting, impactful, inter-disciplinary research, teaching and translation to policy and practice, with local and global partners.
Inherit – the Institute for Heritage & Sustainable Human Development – is part of the York Archaeological Trust (a charity). We help people to safeguard their heritage and to use it to improve their lives and the places they live. We define heritage broadly to include land and people’s relationships with the land. We work with communities, with other non-profit organisations and with public sector and academic institutions in Scotland, across the UK and around the world.
Located in the vibrant capital of the North East of England, the School of History, Classics and Archaeology at Newcastle University studies the past to inform the future, addressing local and global challenges around social justice, environment/landscape and textual and material cultures. Our expertise covers all regions and time periods of human history. Our research is collaborative, inter-disciplinary and world-leading as we work together to address global challenges. All members of our community share a passion for a deeper understanding of the human past.
