Whose Scotland?
The super-rich landowners of Scotland and their scandalous abuses of power around the world
Scotland’s land ownership is notoriously unequal and has been described as “the most concentrated, most inequitable, most unreformed and most undemocratic land ownership system in the entire developed world”
Our new research exposes some of the super-rich, global capitalists who own vast tracts of land in Scotland, and unearths some unsavoury connections between those land owners and scandals of worker exploitation, human rights abuses and disregard for the environment around the world.
We’ve found examples of seven big landowners across Scotland who have been involved in unregulated fracking, land grabs and privatisation of national parks in Africa, large scale trade union busting and job cuts in Mexico and Brazil, abuse of workers’ rights in the UK, or human rights abuses around the world. Click on the map below to see for yourself.
We’ve released our research to coincide with the OurLand festival in Scotland, which Global Justice Now is supporting. The festival is calling on the Scottish Parliament to be braver on land reform, and has five key asks of Scottish politicians:
- Transparency: everyone should know who owns land
- Productivity: policy should encourage land to be used productively
- Affordability: tax should help make land more affordable
- Availability: more people should have more chance of buying more land
- Accountability: public land should be used for public good
Communities across Scotland are organising events locally aimed at highlighting problems in their localities whilst also showing the continuing thirst for greater land reform in Scotland.
