The role of property, ownership and land tenure on landscape decision making: The case of Scotland's 'low carbon farming' policies

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'Research Synthesis Fellowship'The proposed research synthesis investigates how land access, ownership patterns and tenure arrangements shape, constrain or enable landscape decision making. The stated goal of the Landscape Decisions Programme of delivering "better, evidence-based decisions within UK landscapes" must contend with who has the power or authority to decide what happens on the land. There are many ways to achieve land use changes, but land tenure is the key to understanding which way is the most distributive. In the context of the UK, the power to decide is wrapped up in socio-cultural notions of ownership, how they have been shaped over time, the legal commitments that shape property law and proposed land reforms are changing a dominant private property paradigm. Some existing land tenure regimes may be better suited than others for the new ecological and agronomic pressures on land users. For those ill-suited, the aim of 'better decisions' demands either new decision frameworks, new innovative tenure regimes or a combination of both. This proposal addresses these concerns through an extended legal geographic analysis of four case studies of differing land tenure regimes in Scotland, each reacting to the same goal of meeting climate related agri-food targets. The proposal is motivated by new policy incentives toward climate-oriented agriculture, including a £40 million funding promise to transform Scotland's Agriculture, a binding 2045 net zero target and Scotland's likely continued alignment with EU CAP climate farming targets. These regulatory moves to encourage low carbon farming decisions will only result in meaningful and just land-use change if the historical, legal and socio-political role of land tenure is adequately studied, theorised and considered in policy. This proposal works closely with two current Landscape Decisions Programme funded projects that develop the artistic, cultural and historical drivers of landscape decisions in Scotland. The research generates impact by: 1) stimulating new land tenure innovations across the growing Landscape Decisions Programme networks; 2) providing new evidence from the case studies to better align emerging land use policies with the complexities of entrenched tenure relations and; 3) Surfacing the role of land tenure in decision making through a public facing Landscapes podcast.