The climate emergency and landownership in Scotland

In 2019, the Scottish Government declared a climate emergency, legally mandating a transition to net zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2045. Land use is a significant source of emissions. Therefore, land use change is necessary for emissions reduction. Property is a fundamental determinant of land use. Therefore, it is essential to critically assess its role in both contributing to, and reducing, emissions. In Scotland, the property paradigm is predicated on what is termed the ‘ownership model’. This model is characterised by three core, interrelated tropes: it is abstract (severed from the material realities of land), extractive (commodifying land and separating the benefits of land use – sent to a diffuse range of corporate interests – from the material impacts), and individualistic (privileging an absolute right of use of the owner and enforcing a rigid public/private divide). These tropes facilitate land use practices which contribute to climate change while inhibiting effective regulation of those practices. In the context of the climate emergency, the property paradigm itself must change if land use is to change to mitigate that emergency. Against this backdrop, and drawing from legal geography, the thesis critically analyses three Scottish land use policies, evaluating their capacity to mitigate climate change by examining how they reinforce or challenge the ownership model. These sit on a spectrum of state intervention, from market-led approaches (voluntary carbon markets); to regulatory measures aimed at operationalising certain obligations in ownership (compulsory land management plans); to redistributive measures (the community rights to buy land). This analysis highlights that voluntary carbon markets rely on, and entrench, the tropes of the ownership model. Despite claiming to address emissions, these markets may inadvertently worsen the crisis by reinforcing harmful property practices. Land management plans offer a moderate challenge to the ownership model by imposing some obligations on landowners, but they stop short of embedding climate-related responsibilities deeply within ownership structures. The most transformative potential lies in the community rights to buy; by enabling democratic, place-based decision-making and integrating local knowledge, these rights allow for more ecologically grounded and socially equitable land use. They challenge the abstract and exclusionary nature of property by rooting it in relationships of care and responsibility within environmental limits. This analysis has broader implications for property law in general, arguing that for the paradigm to change to fully contribute to mitigating the climate emergency, it must be grounded in the material conditions of Earth systems. This thesis argues that for land use policy to truly support climate mitigation it must facilitate new ‘performances’ of property; practices that reframe ownership as embedded within socio-ecological systems. Such shifts would destabilise the current ownership model, redistribute power and reimagine property not as an absolute right but as a situated obligation tied material realities. This thesis ultimately exposes the political choices embedded in property law and their far-reaching consequences for addressing the climate emergency.