Land for the Common Good: Community Land Scotland’s Manifesto for a Sustainable Scotland

We live in unprecedented times. Covid-19 has laid bare our shared global interdependencies and vulnerabilities as never before. The pandemic has shone an unforgiving light on structural economic and social inequalities in Scotland, transformed our ways of working and living and undermined the livelihoods and life-chances of many of our people. Simultaneously the climate emergency remains the overarching, ever-present existential threat to the future of the planet, requiring urgent action for a just transition to a net zero carbon economy.

Against that backdrop the central challenge facing the Scottish Parliament after the Holyrood election in May 2021 will be to chart a path through the pandemic’s
aftermath and the climate emergency towards a greener, fairer, more prosperous and sustainable Scotland. That necessitates a renewed focus on land reform – encompassing changes to the ways in which land is owned and used in the public interest – as a crucial foundation stone from which to build towards that better future with its emphasis on the common good.