Author: MCDC

A community on the west coast of Scotland will officially launch the UK’s largest community-owned hydropower scheme today as it also prepares to open a community hub and new housing.

The Barr River hydropower scheme was completed in July 2021 on a site deep in the forest, 11 miles from the village of Lochaline.

The projects have been delivered by the Morvern Community Development Company (MCDC) with support from local development officer, Lilia Dobrokhodova, whose post is funded by Highlands and Islands Enterprise (HIE).

Kate Forbes, MSP for Skye, Lochaber and Badenoch, has been invited by MCDC to mark the official opening of the projects alongside local school student Isla MacKechnie.

Lilia Dobrokhodova said: “2021 has been an exceptional year for us with the completion of three major projects that are already providing tangible benefits to the community.

“It is great to see the years of planning come to fruition, despite the added challenges of the COVID-19 pandemic. As the largest community-owned hydro scheme in the UK, it is a project that we are rightly proud of, and one that offers huge future potential to the community.”

The 1.6Mw hydropower scheme is 100% owned by the community and is expected to generate almost 4.3m kWh each year – enough to power over 1,000 homes.

Initial support for the project was secured through the Scottish Government’s Community and Renewable Energy Scheme (CARES). The final funding package of £6.5 million also included £2.23m from the Energy Investment Fund, which is administered by Scottish Enterprise on behalf of the Scottish Government.

Work on the community hub, which includes workspace and a cafe, finished earlier this year and it opened to the public in July 2021. Three new one-bedroom houses were also completed, and the new tenants have moved in.  

Jane Stuart-Smith, chair, MCDC, said: “Morvern is a delightful place to live and work, and its sustainability as a remote rural location has been bolstered by MCDC’s strong track record in creating and delivering fantastic local infrastructure projects.

“The income from the scheme will be an important source of investment into local development priorities. Its development also gives the Morvern community a strategic stake in the energy supply on the peninsula.

“Of course, none of this would have been possible without the thousands of hours of volunteer effort given by members of the local community – a massive thank you to all involved.”

The local development officer post at MCDC has been funded by HIE for over ten years. Lilia has overseen a range of ambitious community benefit projects during that time, including notably the pontoon and shoreside developments at Cala Loch Àlainn.

Ian Philp, account manager at HIE, said: “Having worked with MCDC for over a decade, we are delighted to see how much the community has achieved, and the benefits for local people.

“As local development officer Lilia has been fantastic at bringing these projects to life and supporting our aim of developing resilient communities, particularly in fragile areas like the Morvern peninsula.”

Author: Kat Jones, SCCS

A look back at COP, and the two years of preparation that came before. Kat Jones asks what has been achieved and wonders ‘what next?’ for Scotland and Glasgow.

It has been wonderful, these last few days, as people leave Glasgow at the end of COP, to see the twitter messages thanking the people of the city for the welcome, warmth and for making this COP a bit special. Many note the contrast between the official COP spaces and the vibrant, welcoming and inclusive civil-society-run activities and spaces.

As a longtime resident of Glasgow, the city’s famous friendliness and the strength of grassroots organising and history of social movements, was at the front of my mind when SCCS started organising for COP26 back in September 2019. We knew that Glasgow’s people would rise to the challenge of being the hosts of COP26.

It’s not just the friendliness of the city that made Glas ghu, the ‘Dear Green Place’ a significant place for a COP. Her foundation myths concern a robin, a salmon, a tree, and a bell, but the city became the engine of the industrial revolution, funded by riches gained from being the second city of the empire. The COP26 discussions were held on the infilled docks where ships laden with steam engines and machinery would have been sent all around the world.

Knowing that being the host city of a COP can burn out local civil society groups we wondered, how could we help create a movement around COP that didn’t burn people out, but would build energy and connections and momentum in Glasgow, and which could truly embody the city’s motto, ‘Let Glasgow Flourish’.  

So with a vision to provide welcome, resources and facilities for those travelling to COP to help campaigners do the best job they could, while also building up and expanding the climate movement in Scotland, we started.

Knowing Glasgow’s incredible grassroots organisers, arts community and active civil society, and having extremely limited budget (we didn’t get our first major grant to support work related to COP until we’d been organising for 8 months), we focused on creating platforms to connect efforts and join people up: bringing the goodwill and enthusiasm to be involved in COP to where it was needed.  

To start with it was important to us that we brought together the full breadth of the climate movement in Scotland, and opened up space for people and organisations new to climate campaigning, wherever they stood on the political spectrum. 

Heavily inspired by the Edinburgh Fringe whose founding principle is ‘to be an open access festival that accommodates anyone with a desire to perform and a venue willing to host them’,  and recognising that there would be so much going on that no-one would be able to keep track of it, we created the Climate Fringe.

The Climate Fringe is an events platform designed to be open, warm and welcoming, with a distinct sense of place in Scotland and where anyone in civil society could upload their event and feel part of something bigger. In fact, a key element was that you didn’t even need to know it existed to be part of it – we went out and searched for climate and environment-related events, on twitter, eventbrite and through our networks, uploading them and declaring them all part of the Climate Fringe.  

So this gave a place that, in theory, anyone in civil society could connect what they were doing to COP, and to each other, and gave the potential for a unifying feel for civil-society activity around COP. We wanted to give people in Scotland, and particularly Glasgow, a ‘help-yourself’, open access way to be involved in COP, with the lowest possible barriers to taking part. 

And, amazingly, it happened – there were more than 1000 civil-society events uploaded on the Climate Fringe over the two weeks of COP, and the site rose to the top of the search rankings for ‘Events at COP26’, pipped only at number one by the UK Government official COP website. Given the big money that is invested by corporations, countries and global NGOs to get their messages heard at COP, this felt like a real achievement for a website that cost £3,500 to set up, and with no advertising budget.  

Glasgow is filled with welcoming, friendly people and we wanted to create a platform to link local people and their hospitality to international visitors.

The COP26 Homestay Network, created with Human Hotel and COP26 Coalition,  connected people who wanted to make a difference for COP and could offer a spare room or a sofa bed, to those campaigners from the global south, indigenous groups and young people, who would be least likely to have the resources to travel to COP.

The Homestay Network created a warmth and home-from-home to give civil-society participants support in the unrelenting work of COP while also giving the opportunity for hosts to feel more connected to COP, through their guests. From our initial evaluation it is clear that the network, which had more than 1200 hosts and helped 1600 guests, allowed many people to come to COP who would otherwise not have been able to afford it, and we have heard so many stories of relationships built, and of local people drawn into the climate movement by their guests.  

Helping COP visitors to find information of the numerous and amazing locally and community-run cafés, restaurants, community projects and gardens, bike shops and zero-waste shops was also an important part of creating the welcome. We used an open source mapping system, Green Maps, to create a crowd-sourced map to help activists and delegates find sustainable community and locally-run places to eat and shop, bringing income into Glasgow’s local communities and showing COP visitors the very best of Glasgow’s friendly, local gems. The entries on the Glasgow Green Map snowballed in the months ahead of COP with nearly 300 places listed and it had at least 6500 visits during COP.  

The most challenging part of the job in bringing together the facilities and welcome for civil society coming to COP, was trying to tie down venues for civil society activity.  So much money floods into a COP city and all the large commercial venues were booked for far more money than we could imagine raising. Covid and other challenges compounded our issues with tying down adequate dedicated space for us to act as the main COP civil society hub and for other space for key groups.

Just ahead of COP we created ‘Climate Fringe Week’ at the end of September, to coincide with New York Climate Week when the world’s leaders gather in an important pre-COP UN meeting. In England and Wales at the same time our sister organisation TCC was running Great Big Green Week. We had over 200 events across Scotland, with the largest concentration happening in Glasgow, and most delivered by grassroots and community groups. 

A key aim for Climate Fringe week was to channel the enthusiasm in local groups who wanted to deliver events during COP, and divert it to a month ahead of COP. This meant that they would get the best media hit, create a buzz in the COP run-up, creating more awareness of COP than we could create ourselves in local communities, and, most importantly for our planning, to ensure that community venues and community energy in Glasgow were freed up during COP for supporting the international climate movement.  

This element, of helping keep local community-managed venues in the city available during COP, became really important when it came to providing the spaces for events and meetings that visiting civil society groups need during COP when we lost a key venue with weeks to go. 

We changed our approach and, instead, gathered a network of community venues and church halls (the Spaces for Change network) that had availability during COP and put all the information relevant onto our website and a map. Groups looking for a space for meetings or events during COP booked directly with the venues.  We had 70 rooms on the list and the webpage received 5300 hits between the start of September and the end of COP.  I am hoping that we can gather more feedback from these venues about the connections made and the events and activities that happened, but from what we already know, some very significant activities took place because they found a venue via ‘Spaces for Change’ (eg. the food resilience hub and a community kitchen that fed activists during the two weeks of COP).

But we still needed hubs and spaces for civil society to gather and work and meet and be welcomed, and space for the COP26 Coalition to use for their People’s Summit, and this is where Glasgow’s civil society and grass-roots really stepped up and created something special.

We still had Adelaide Place that we transformed into a warm, welcoming and relaxing café-hub during the day for working and meeting and sharing delicious food. A place where the daily COP26 Coalition Movement assemblies could take place, followed by our Open Mic Ceilidh Nights. 

But what astounded me was how civil society hubs sprung up across Glasgow – from the Food Resilience hub at  the Salvation Army right beside the COP venue itself, to a Youth Hub, and Arts hubs at the Dream Machine and the Briggiat. The Landing Hub, a giant marquee space sprung up along the Clyde which became home to many of the People’s Summit events, the Quakers offered space for reflection and stillness, and the GalGael Trust declared the Free State of Govan as a living alternative to our current earth-destructive systems.  In all, we listed 17 community-run hubs on the Climate Fringe Website and there could have been more we didn’t know about.

Glasgow became a melting pot of creative, alternative, community-centred and bottom-up ways of living, the antidote to COP, the anti-COP. If COP was about talking, these spaces were about acting, and making it happen. Today. 

The importance of culture and the arts in these non-COP spaces was very clear and one moment that will stick with me was listening to the children of Govan and the Joyous choir (of refugee and asylum seeker women) sing Karine Polwart’s song written for COP, Enough is Enough, as STORM, the four-storey high puppet awoke by the Clyde and walked through Govan towards COP to meet Little Amal, the puppet of a refugee child who has walked across a continent, from Syria. A physical meeting of the climate struggle and the struggle for migrant justice.  

When we were in the difficult months ahead of COP, when it still felt like we had 10,000 miles to travel, and our energy was flagging after 18 months of working from home and trying to keep the fires of the vision alive amongst the uncertainty, a friend shared a Maori Whakataukī (proverb) with me.

“With your basket and my basket the people will flourish”

And it has, amazingly, turned out that way.  Looking back on those two weeks of COP it felt like everyone brought their basket, whether it was a spare bed for the homestay network, showing up to the march, volunteering for SCCS and the COP26 Coalition, offering space for an event in their community hall, putting a few of their local gems onto the Glasgow Green Map, bringing a poem or a song to the Open Mic Ceilidh to share, or creating a hub and a fortnight of events and activities.

It seems that Glasgow has more than stepped up as local hosts of COP. They have re-written the story of COP26, bringing a narrative of a future held by the people, and in the hands of communities who choose to change the direction of travel. It brought, despite the challenges of covid, an organised chaos of an authentic COP, a Conference of the People, to the outside spaces of COP26, to the Climate Fringe. I heard more than one person say that Glasgow will never be the same after this moment of collective effort. Glasgow Flourished.

It was only when I went back to a poem I had read during the first lockdown – ‘Natural Resources’ by Adrienne Rich – that I was able to understand what had happened in Glasgow during COP26. Glasgow’s communities and people, while world leaders talked and their negotiators tussled over wording in a statement, had been busily, quietly, reconstituting the world.

My heart is moved by all I cannot save

So much has been destroyed

I have to cast my lot with those, who, age after age,

Perversely, with no extraordinary

Power, reconstitute the world.

ADRIENNE RICH, “NATURAL RESOURCES”

Author: The Royal Scottish Geographical Society

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Scotland is one of the leading nations in climate change policy.

Over a decade ago, one of the largest coalitions the nation has ever seen, formed to demand tougher targets on climate from their leaders. This powerful movement spurred Scotland into action, and a ripple of positive change echoed out across the country, touching everything from the biggest companies to the smallest communities.

This documentary, presented by The Royal Scottish Geographical Society, charts that journey to date. Narrated by individuals from across the country, all contributing to help battle climate change, be they leaders of the industry, activists, or community organisers.

Scotlands progress so far is undeniable, but it still has much to do. As the film uncovers the journey of policy, industries, communities, farmers, and scientists, we’ll learn that through enacting solutions, technological innovation, an engaged core of NGO and youth activism, and the will for a fair and just transition into greener and more sustainable practices, Scotland already possesses the tools and expertise needed to fight this crisis.

‍The time to act is now. Will we wake up to the realities of climate change before it’s too late?

An insightful and fascinating journey across a nation, pulling together to tackle climate change, this film will leave viewers with a sense of hope, inspiration, and renewed strength for the fight ahead.

This is Scotland’s climate journey – our climate journey.

REQUEST A SCREENING

If you would like to host the film for your local community or business, please get in touch here.

Author: SCCAN

“When we focus on wellbeing, we start a conversation that provokes profound and fundamental questions – what really matters to us in our lives. What do we value in the communities that we live in, what kind of country, what kind of society do we really want to be…..?” Nicola Sturgeon speaking at TED Global, July 2019

What role can communities play in enabling everyone to thrive in a flourishing environment? This short article is an attempt to define the key infrastructure that needs to be in place and the resources that communities need in order to really unleash action for transformational change -to build local wellbeing economies, from the bottom up.

In the aftermath of Covid, we have a real opportunity to join up a raft of policy agendas and reimagine a society that places wellbeing at its heart. Tackling inequality and disadvantage of all kinds can be achieved hand in hand with the creation of resilient, zero-carbon communities that nurture  the formal and informal associations of local people , where nature flourishes, and where people live, work and play in ways that respect the wellbeing of all people and the whole planet.

This transition should be based on 5 key principles¹:

1. Dignity: Everyone has enough to live in comfort, safety and happiness

2. Nature: A restored and safe natural world for all life

3. Connection: A sense of belonging and institutions that serve the common good

4. Fairness: Justice in all its dimensions at the heart of economic systems, and the gap between the richest and poorest greatly reduced

5. Participation: Citizens are actively engaged in their communities and locally rooted economies

A sense of belonging, as part of a vibrant community is vital for our individual wellbeing. Re-localisation of our economy provides huge opportunities to achieve multiple goals and to provide numerous, meaningful and creative livelihoods.

Back in 2014, Scottish Community Climate Action Network  members distilled a vision of a re-localised future which is equally valid today. Seven years on, there are many examples of how elements of this vision are being realised in different communities across Scotland. We now have a better understanding of what basic infrastructure each community needs in order for these wellbeing economies to emerge. We don’t need to keep reinventing the wheel but we do need to remove barriers to local action, ensure that communities have access to the resources that they need and are able to tap into local knowledge and collective intelligence to develop the detail of, and implement, local solutions appropriate for their particular context.

What do communities need to take action? 

Community organising: The time of experienced and skilled development staff to engage and link across communities, make key connections within communities and to outside bodies and to catalyse the change process.

Local Energy Economies: Trusted, knowledgeable, energy advisors to provide detailed, tailored advice on sensitive but deep retrofitting of homes to drastically reduce energy demand. Trusted, skilled tradespeople/enterprises able to implement home retrofit measures. Finance for home retrofitting. Technical support and training for community participation in smart, local, renewable energy projects and networks. Access to land for renewable energy generation and storage.

Local Food Economies: Access to land. Workspace for local food processing and distribution. Retail space. Technical support and training. Closed loop waste composting.

Local Circular and Sharing Economies: Flexible, affordable workshop and other workspaces incl. for tool libraries, repair cafes, reuse and upcycling hubs, cosmo-local manufacture, co-working hubs etc. Car and e-bike share schemes.

Local Democracy: Skills in facilitating deliberative, participatory processes (incl. budgeting) and spaces for deliberating on local issues and concerns and bringing together diverse perspectives and viewpoints in creative ways. Powers over local spatial planning, incl. allocation of land for community-led housing (self-build, co-housing, eco-villages, housing co-ops etc), community gardens and active travel infrastructure.

Local Finance: Access to a fair share of tax revenue. Local financial structures for retaining and mobilising local financial resources/wealth. eg Community Bonds, Community Shares, locally focused loan & start up funds, Crowdfunding etc

Local Enterprise: Accessible and locally appropriate support focussed on planning and development of social and community enterprise and community wealth building. Access to affordable, flexible workspaces and land.

Local Skills Training: Access to practical, ‘green’ skills training and skills sharing opportunities, locally and across other communities.

Local Spaces/one-stop shops: Spaces to use eg. for Climate Cafes, discussion groups and meetings and as one-stop information/advice shops

Local Community Anchor Organisation²: Can provide a key support structure to enable and nurture much of the above as well as providing a key link into wider support networks, intermediary organisations and the public sector.

Support Networks³: Strong links to properly resourced regional and national networks for mutual support and inspiration, access to relevant experience and knowledge and technical expertise.

Philip Revell, December 2021

Please do get in touch with any thoughts or comments on the above. What is not quite right? What is missing?

convenorATscottishcommunitiescan.org.uk

Notes:

1. weall.org/scotland
2. scottishcommunityalliance.org.uk/about/anchor-orgs/
3. There is a huge range of expertise held across the 23 networks that comprise the Scottish Community Alliance. Between them, they hold many of the pieces of the puzzle required for enabling local wellbeing economies to emerge.

Author: Scottish Government

Land Rights and Responsibilities Statement review: consultation

Scottish Land Issues in 2021

2.1. Much has changed in Scotland and around the world since the preparation and publication of the first Land Rights and Responsibilities Statement in 2017. This new context includes the Covid-19 pandemic and the resultant economic and social impacts, in addition to the impacts of EU exit. There has also been increasing worldwide focus on the twin climate and nature crises and the urgency of the transition to a net-zero economy. The role of Scotland’s natural capital has become increasingly prominent as its importance in achieving a just transition to net zero has become more widely recognised. All of these contexts need to be considered in re-evaluating how the Land Rights and Responsibilities Statement can support a healthy relationship between the land and people of Scotland.

Covid Recovery

2.2. The pandemic has taken something from us all and so much from some. Covid-19 is having an enduring impact as individuals, communities and businesses across our nation continue to suffer in many ways. But this time has also seen people spend more time in the natural world, taking solace in green space. Communities have come together, often using community assets, to provide support and local resilience.

2.3. Land reform can support a greener and fairer recovery by seeking to ensure that people are at the centre of our environmental ambitions and that communities benefit from our natural capital. Land is an important asset for both our urban and rural communities. It can support economic growth and community resilience and contribute to a just transition. Land provides space for local communities to live, work and develop skills, while supporting biodiversity, sequestering carbon and reducing adverse climate impacts like flooding, overheating and air pollution.

2.4. The responsible ownership and management of land with a focus on community rights can further sustainable development and help to restore the economic health of rural and urban communities. We are keen that the Land Rights and Responsibilities Statement, supported by the implementation work of the SLC, supports post-Covid economic recovery for communities, tenants and land owners across Scotland.

Climate Change

2.5. Scottish Ministers have committed to ending Scotland’s contribution to climate change within a generation, reaching national net zero by 2045. Our approach on climate change is underpinned by a steadfast and legal commitment to delivery of a just transition. A just transition means reaching a net zero and climate resilient economy, in a way that delivers fairness and tackles inequality and injustice. Scotland’s climate legislation requires that just transition principles are reflected in plans to mitigate emissions[3].

2.6. To date, a just transition has typically been considered in the context of the energy sector, often in relation to managing the economic and social impacts of the phase-out of coal power generation. But its relevance as a concept is far broader and will be vital to managing many of the issues relating to land use in Scotland in the context of the demands placed on it by the net zero transition.

2.7. Natural capital is a concept that recognises our natural environment as an asset that provides vital benefits to our society and economy. Natural capital assets come in many different forms: from populations of wild species (e.g. birds, fungi, animals); to soils and minerals; to the ability of landscapes to absorb and store carbon or protect us from flooding.

2.8. Scotland’s rich natural capital means that we are ideally placed to lead the way in adopting nature-based approaches to tackling the climate emergency whilst simultaneously addressing the biodiversity crisis. This includes measures like peatland restoration, woodland creation and sustainable agriculture.

2.9. The Scottish Government is taking major steps to invest in natural capital in support of our climate change and biodiversity goals. We have committed £250M over ten years for peatland restoration and an additional £150M over five years to support woodland creation.

2.10. However, we know that public investment will not be sufficient on its own. The huge level of land use change needed to meet our climate change and biodiversity goals will require new and additional sources of investment to meet the pace and scale of the challenge. This will necessarily include a significant contribution from the private sector.

2.11. Private investment in Scotland’s natural capital, including carbon offsetting, and the impact of this on communities is an emerging and complex issue that needs to happen in a socially responsible way, to support a just transition. Scottish Government is committed to taking action to ensure that the increasing levels of natural capital investment in Scotland deliver benefits for local communities, and wider society, in line with just transition principles and our land reform objectives.

2.12. The SLC is now taking forward a package of work[4] to provide advice to the Scottish Government on finding a pathway that balances the need for private sector investment in natural capital with community rights and our legal requirement to deliver a just transition.

2.13. Landowners and managers in Scotland have access to two existing UK voluntary carbon codes that provide a quality assurance standard for the generation of independently verified carbon credits: (i) the Woodland Carbon Code[5]; and (ii) the Peatland Code[6]. These codes provide a robust mechanism for landowners and managers to sell verified carbon credits to private companies participating in the voluntary carbon offsets market.

2.14. The importance of land use and land reform to achieving a just transition in Scotland was recognised in the Just Transition Commission’s report published in March 2021. The Commission brought together a broad coalition of academics, trade unions, environmental NGO’s and sectoral representatives to make recommendations on how to put just transition principles into practice in Scotland[7]. In relation to land, the Just Transition Commission identified two main considerations: the need to acknowledge and manage the competing priorities for how land is managed, and the need to ensure the benefits of carbon sequestration are felt by rural communities.

2.15. The Just Transition Commission recommendations included one supporting the development of a statutory public interest test as part of the forthcoming land reform bill, and one supporting further roll out of regional land use partnerships. The Scottish Government accepted all of the Commission’s recommendations and has published a response to the Just Transition Commission’s report, setting out how we intend to take forward this work over the upcoming Parliamentary term[8].

2.16. The Scottish Government is committed to delivering a just transition, and we want the Land Rights and Responsibilities Statement to play a strong role in this.

Author: Mary Sinclair, SENScot

Full report

With Pockets & Prospects funding from Scottish Community Alliance, in late 2020, SENScot, CHEX & Scottish Communities for Health & Wellbeing (SCHW) developed a collaborative approach to address the mental health & wellbeing challenge that has emerged from the Covid19 crisis. 

This involved both community organisations and social enterprise suppliers offering mental health & wellbeing focused activities and services. Our approach was based on the model developed by SENScot & Glasgow SEN for the Glasgow Pockets & Prospects Project which aimed to tackle loneliness and to mitigate the negative impacts of welfare reform. 

Addressing mental health issues emerged as a key aspect of the Glasgow project, with community organisations reporting positive results for local people through accessing activities and services from social enterprise suppliers.

 It was also successful in that social enterprise suppliers reported a range of benefits, including increased trade and becoming more sustainable. Based on the previous success of the model and the comparable issues being addressed (i.e. increased mental health & wellbeing issues within communities and a loss of income for social enterprises as a result of covid-19) we were confident that this approach would provide a valuable lifeline to both local communities and social enterprise at a time of significant need.

 We worked together to identify / invite 15 community organisations who would have a strong awareness and understanding of the mental health & wellbeing needs within their workforce, people who access their activities and services and their wider community. At the same time, we called out to social enterprise suppliers, inviting them to submit fully costed offers that we collated as a menu of activities and services that could be viewed and accessed by the community organisations.

Given the extent of interest from suppliers and the expectation of the need to regularly update this menu, the menu of activities & services was accessible via a website https://collaboratingincommunities.org/ rather than a pdf brochure

Author: Calum Macleod

‘Community wealth building’ is increasingly viewed as a policy idea whose time has come as a way of achieving a fairer, greener Scotland.  In the Scottish Government, Tom Arthur MSP has ‘community wealth’ alongside ‘public finance’ and ‘planning’ in his Ministerial job title.  Community wealth building projects are underway in Ayrshire, Clackmannanshire, the Western Isles, the South of Scotland, Glasgow City Region and in relation to the Tay Cities Deal.   There’s also a Government commitment to introduce a Community Wealth Building Bill in the current session of Parliament.

The idea of community wealth building was first developed by the Democracy Collaborative in the United States and subsequently championed in the UK by the Centre for Local Economic Strategies (CLES).  The latter describes it as “a new people-centred approach to local economic development, which redirects wealth back into the local economy, and places control and benefits into the hands of local people”.      

In turn, that ‘people-centred approach’ to local economic development is underpinned by five core principles.  They include: shared ownership of the local economy, by supporting and growing business models (including locally owned and social enterprises) that generate wealth for local communities; progressive procurement that develops local supply chains supporting local employment; fair employment and just labour markets, using ‘anchor institutions’ to improve local peoples’ prospects; making financial power work for local places by increasing flows of investment within local economies; and ensuring socially just use of land and property, by developing the functions and ownership of local assets held by anchor organisations to enable local communities to benefit from financial and social gain.  

Against that background, it’s easy to see the progressive appeal of community wealth building as an antidote to the highly extractive nature of conventional economic development models and the resulting inequalities in wealth distribution.  By that measure, the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) estimates the UK to be the fifth most inequitable country in the world, with 44% of the wealth owned by just 10% of the population.  In Scotland, much of that wealth inequality is embedded in and symbolised by the nation’s unusually concentrated pattern of rural land ownership, 67% of which is said to be owned by 0.025% of the population.      

It doesn’t take a quantum leap of policy imagination to spot the close links between Scotland’s community wealth building and land reform agendas.    As the Centre for Local Economic Strategies notes, “land ownership matters because it is an expression of economic and political power”.   In some instances, concentrated large-scale land ownership has the potential to tip over into an expression of negative monopoly economic power, corroding the social fabric and resilience of local communities.  

Consider, by way of example, the Scottish Land Commission’s 2019 report on issues associated with large-scale and concentrated land ownership in Scotland, which notes “fear of going against the landowner” expressed by some research respondents.  The report states that “this fear was rooted firmly in the concentration of power in some communities and the perceived ability of landowners to inflict consequences such as eviction or blacklisting for employment/contracts on residents, should they so wish”.  It’s a glimpse through the looking glass into some people’s lived experience of concentrated land ownership that’s about as far removed from the idea of community wealth building as it’s possible to get.

That is not to suggest that all large-scale private landowners behave in such an economically and socially damaging manner.  There will be some who argue that they make important contributions to the local economy through the provision of employment and affordable local housing, for example.   That may well be the case.  However, it misses the crucial point that concentration of rural land ownership in the hands of only a few people is a structural problem when it results in the extraction of wealth from local communities that is both to their detriment and that of the wider public interest.  

That why diversifying Scotland’s concentrated pattern of rural land ownership has been a well-established public policy objective for several decades.   In the midst of the climate emergency, the extractive nature of that pattern of ownership, together with its capacity to undermine the scope to build community wealth is perhaps best illustrated Scotland’s largely unregulated land market.  A market in which aspiring and existing ‘green lairds’ are given free rein to capitalise on the financial returns associated with the transition to a net zero carbon economy without necessarily troubling themselves to consider local community benefits.          

Amongst its many novel features, community wealth building emphasises the key strategic role of mainly public sector institutions such as local authorities and the NHS as ‘anchor organisations’ through which to put the idea’s core principles into practice.  Increasing the scope for community trusts to act as local anchor organisations though ownership of land and other assets urgently needs to form a central part of community wealth building too. 

That requires some lateral policy thinking to join the dots between the evolving community wealth building and land reform agendas, as they relate to the Scottish Government’s legislative and other policy commitments due to be rolled out during the current session of Parliament.  

Aside from the promised Community Wealth Building Bill, these commitments include a new Human Rights Bill incorporating five UN Treaties, including economic, social and cultural rights for everyone and the right to a healthy environment, into Scots law.  The Bill therefore has potentially important implications for how individual property rights are interpreted within a land reform context.  

A new Land Reform Bill, containing a Public Interest Test to be applied to large-scale land transfers, is scheduled to be introduced by the end of 2023.  There is also a commitment to review the Community Empowerment (Scotland) Act 2015.  That Act matters because it introduced the Community Right to Buy Abandoned, Neglected or Detrimental Land and asset transfer provisions to enable community bodies to request to take control of land and built assets from Scottish public authorities.    

The Land Rights and Responsibilities Statement, introduced within the Land Reform (Scotland) Act 2016, is also being reviewed by the Scottish Government.  Depending on the findings from that review, there may be scope to modify its underpinning principles to help ensure both a just transition to net zero carbon emissions and community wealth building in practice. The Government has also committed to increasing the annual budget of the Scottish Land Fund, which provides financial support towards the purchase costs of community buyouts of land and built assets, from £10 million to £20 million by the end of the current Parliamentary session. 

The sequencing of these various commitments is important for them to have maximum policy impact within a crowded legislative timetable.  Ideally the Human Rights Bill should precede the Land Reform Bill because of its implications for what the Public Interest Test contained in the latter Bill might entail.  It would also be sensible to conclude the review of the Community Empowerment (Scotland) Act 2015 before the Land Reform Bill is introduced, to enable any necessary amendments to existing community right to buy and community asset transfer provisions to be included in the new Land Reform Act. 

These myriad commitments undoubtedly contain substantial technical and political challenges for Government and Parliament to navigate if they are to play a full part in building community wealth.  Several commitments, most obviously a public interest test on large-scale land transfers, will be vehemently opposed by vested landed interests who need no reminding that land ownership is both economic and political power.   

Aside from the above, a unique opportunity to tangibly demonstrate its commitment to both community wealth building and land reform will shortly be within the Scottish Government’s grasp.  In August Community Land Scotland wrote to the First Minister, Nicola Sturgeon, urging that at least £100 million of the projected £860 million of revenue soon to be generated through the first round of Crown Estate Scotland’s ‘Scotwind’ seabed leasing programme for new offshore renewable wind energy sites be used to establish a Community Wealth Fund.  

Carefully crafted, and in tandem with the existing policy commitments described above, the proposed Fund would be a step-change in helping communities throughout Scotland to turn the core principles of community wealth building into positive and sustainable impacts on their everyday lives.

Isn’t that what politics is supposed to be for?        

Author: Neil Clapperton

Neil Clapperton is the CEO of Lochalsh and Skye Housing Association and on the Board of Power Circle, and has spent two decades trying to reduce tenant fuel poverty and make a tiny contribution to slowing the climate crisis. In this blog he continues on from his Power to Change blog looking at fuel poverty and what can be done by the housing sector.

Fuel poverty is a national disgrace in one of the richest countries on the planet, worse for one with our embarrassment of energy riches.  There, I’ve said it.  It hurts people and we shouldn’t stand for it.  I’m not throwing blame around, this is a hugely complex or “wicked” problem that traps us all, including politicians.  The lack of progress so far is almost forgivable when you consider the challenges: getting energy demand down and reducing the cost of electricity; increasing local generation, storage and use, and designing it for tenants and communities; designing pragmatic energy management that is affordable for the state, social landlords and their tenants, and whatever the solutions are; making them flexible and inter-changeable for a very diverse Scotland.

Less of the misery tour.  I will explore what governments can do next week but it is time for courage and creativity in the housing sector.  Whilst it is relatively easy to combine technologies and work the market in new build, if you are serious about climate change and fuel poverty, tackling existing housing is the grail.  Social landlords manage over 600,000 homes, have tenants in every region, and bring capital and experience to invest.  Does that offer a chance to create something that helps government, the network operators and consumers in all sectors?  Of course it does, if there is a will to collaborate and to take some modest, intelligent risks.

You won’t be surprised to hear that the climate emergency has prompted community scale energy innovations across the UK, from Bristol to Orkney, often with housing associations and council landlords taking the lead.  I sit on the board of one such initiative, Power Circle, focusing on a fair energy transition for housing and fuel poverty reduction, based on a co-operative model, and looking for members to explore the following.

Combining smart meters and batteries with an energy services company (ESCo), a social landlord can harvest the 600% difference between the market value of electricity at the time of lowest demand (middle of the night) and the highest (6pm), and capture the full value from locally generated green energy, for instance roof photovoltaic (PV) system or community hydro.  With battery storage, you can make best use of PV even if you are not around when the sun shines.  With a smart local grid and a communal battery you can overcome differences in house type and orientation in mixed estates, and share the energy generated.  Value can be shared too, with lower, stable pricing for tenants, and the investment in batteries and PV paid for without impacting on rents.  For a social landlord blanching at the prospect of exploring a new and unknown field, risk can be managed through smart energy management, employing expertise to run the business, ideally sharing the ESCo with others, and other measures that bring the risk profile in line with social housing norms.

This is what is possible now, but it also enables aggregation of demand and storage across not just one estate but the stock of multiple landlords.  This can help: manage constraints on wind farms; network operators with balancing supply and demand; and take advantage of the peer to peer energy market, all to benefit tenants.  Much fuel poverty is found in the private rented sector and owner occupation.  This model being tenure neutral can become a community solution, and for those advocates of hydrogen or district heating as solutions, the ESCo model is also flexible around heating systems.  With almost every dwelling connected to the grid, we have a universal infrastructure, so we don’t have to dig up every road in Scotland to reach a sustainable future.  If I were Nicola, I’d jump at the chance.  If I were a social landlord, I’d be on the phone.

Author: Unboxed

ANYTHING GROWS IN OUR 21ST-CENTURY HARVEST FESTIVAL.

Dandelion is a six-month celebration of collaboration, creation and collective action. From gardens to fields, windowsills to wide, open spaces, join us to sow and grow crops of every shape and size – and then come together at harvest time to share what we’ve grown.

Dandelion is inspired by the simple concept of ‘Sow, Grow and Share’: not just food, but also new music, ideas, scientific knowledge and community. Rooted in Scotland but with an international outlook, Dandelion follows the arc of the growing season from April to September – when musicians, makers, scientists and performers will come together for hundreds of inspiring events and activities across Scotland and online.

There’ll be plenty of chances for you to get your hands dirty, too: growing your own at home, joining us at two major free festivals, and coming to a 21st-century community harvest festival – where we’ll cook up the results of our epic growing adventure with good company and new music.

A TIME TO GROW

Unexpected Gardens are springing up across Scotland in 2022. From the Borders to the Highlands, islands to inner cities, indoor spaces to the great outdoors – Dandelion’s nationwide network of gardens will bring new life to underused places and spaces that appear barren or neglected, showing that everywhere has the potential to blossom and bloom.

Dandelion’s Unexpected Gardens will be both fertile growing grounds and surprising public spaces open to all. They’ll host a huge variety of special events, installations and activities during spring and summer, led by the next generation of creative producers and musicians – and all building towards harvest.

We’ll be installing hundreds of Cubes of Perpetual Light – miniature vertical farms and artworks that combine design craft, technological innovation and traditional growing techniques. Scattered throughout Scotland in Unexpected Gardens, schools and beyond, the Cubes will yield a rich variety of crops during 2022 – alongside new music created and recorded for Dandelion by homegrown and international artists.

Dandelion also features sustainable food-and-music festivals in Glasgow and Inverness. Join us for workshops, talks, locally grown food and new music from artists who share Dandelion’s desire to put the culture back into agriculture.

Dandelion is commissioned by EventScotland and funded via the Scottish Government.

GET INVOLVED!

Whether you’re an experienced gardener or you’ve never planted anything before, we’re encouraging you to get growing at home. We’re giving away thousands of free plants and seedlings, and we’re also creating a free online library of resources – giving you everything you need to join our nationwide growing community in 2022 and the years to come.

We’re also inspiring the artists, activists, scientists and creative producers of the future by distributing 200 growing cubes to 100 secondary schools, plus 300,000 seed potatoes and 200 tonnes of growing medium to a further 400 schools – all in all, inviting 100,000 pupils to take part in the Dandelion School Growing Initiative.

Blending traditional growing skills with future farming techniques, these pupils will become citizen scientists in Scotland’s largest ever community growing experiment. And come the autumn, they’ll share the food they’ve produced among their school communities at hundreds of playground Harvest Festivals – alongside art, music, stories and more.

Full brochure

Uist comprises 7 inhabited islands, stretching over 60 miles and linked by causeways in the southern part of the Outer Hebrides. We are a great place to live and work. We enjoy a stunning environment, close-knit communities still rooted in the land, and, as the heartland of Gaelic, a very strong cultural heritage and identity. 

Uist also faces significant challenges, such as geographic remoteness and the legacy of demographic decline, very high fuel poverty rates and increasing housing shortages, the impacts of isolation and the economic impacts of austerity and Brexit.

Set out in the Atlantic, we are also on the frontline of impacts from the climate emergency, including rising sea levels and changes in weather patterns. The low-lying western coast of South Uist is now one of the most vulnerable coastlines in the UK. 

At the same time, we are enterprising, resourceful and resilient island communities, determined to meet the needs of all and to find our own solutions. We have long demonstrated this by the many social and community enterprises that have grown over 40 years, by some of the highest volunteering rates in Scotland and by our rapid community response to Covid.

 We are hugely confident and ambitious. 

For example: 

• We have developed many community solutions to delivering core services such as care and childcare, adult and further education, and supporting those with mental health or isolation challenges.
• We are sustaining a cultural revival from young bands to a new £7m+ cultural centre, Cnoc Soilleir, and promote our culture and environment to a global audience.
• The largest community owned estate in Scotland is in Uist, and has increased the value of its assets sevenfold in a decade, including a wind farm and new harbour.
• Increasing numbers of younger people in their 20s and 30s are choosing to return, settle or stay in Uist as a vibrant and dynamic place that delivers wellbeing and quality of life. More than 10 percent run their own businesses. These young people are at the forefront of national campaigns on diverse issues such as housing, Gaelic, crofting and local air traffic control. 

 Local research (in 2012) estimated that there was almost one social and community enterprise for every 100 people, and more than one community organisation (whether enterprise or not) for every 45 people on the islands. Our 50+ social and community enterprises range from internationally recognised centres of excellence to small community halls that provide essential local facilities. 

For over 40 years our social and community enterprises have built extensive community wealth and assets, rooted in the lived experience, knowledge and skills of our communities. Without the growth of social and community enterprises over the past decades, Uist communities wouldn’t have survived; lights here would have long gone out. 

Local coops have played a vital role in sustaining retail, crofting and fishing. The award winning community paper Am Pàipear has been published since 1976. And our social and community enterprises now deliver numerous services, from essential services like land management, post offices and shops, home and childcare, to services delivering wellbeing and cultural identity. Social and community enterprises proved critical in sustaining our island communities during the Covid pandemic. 

Further research (in 2013) by social enterprise Cothrom identified 117 development projects, planned or in progress in Uist. Community organisations, especially social and community enterprises, led or were involved in 111 of these. In 2012 the Third Sector generated 12% of jobs outside the public sector, and most of these jobs were in social enterprises. In 2018, the same organisations generated 10% of all jobs for those in their 20s and 30s, supporting population revival. 

Social enterprises have created windfarms, new harbours/marinas, centres for training, recycling, culture, heritage, and community facilities worth tens of millions of pounds. Social enterprises like Ceòlas and Taigh Chearsabhagh are at the heart of the cultural revival. Stòras Uibhist and North Uist Development Company are key players investing in infrastructure. Social enterprises like Tagsa Uibhist have developed local horticulture in response to the climate crisis. And CoDeL shone a light on positive population trends in remote rural and island communities, and most recently on the resilience of peripheral communities in times of crises, changing national and international policy perspectives.

Through our social and community enterprises, our island communities deliver and influence well beyond what might be expected of such small communities. Collectively, our experience and skills, expertise and knowledge, are a remarkable resource for sustaining our own communities as well as helping communities elsewhere. A remarkable resource also for driving insight, research and policy-making for remote rural and island communities. We seek to engage in equal partnership with our local authority and public agencies, with national organisations and networks, to deliver the best for our island communities, our land and climate.