Towards New Land Commons in the UK

Discussion

Michelle Grant:

"Bringing land back into community stewardship via an interstitial commons parallel to, or symbiotically with the state (Ryan, 2013) would be a fundamental step forward in providing access to land for agroecology.

Private property rules rely on alienability – the right to sell land – in a market that favours large, often institutional investors, based on purchasing power and potential profit, excluding many on the basis of wealth, class, gender and race (Oldham, 2022). Speculative inflation, due to location desirability rather than improvements to the land or its dwellings, has caused land values to increase exponentially, with no penalty for leaving land idle, housing empty, or use-change from agricultural to residential (Monbiot et al., 2019).

A new Land Commons would utilise a mutual credit mechanism (a collaborative credit accounting framework) (Slater and Jenkin, 2016; Fleischman et al., 2020), to buy parcels of land without accruing debt by selling inflation-proof vouchers (Mutual Credit Services, no date) denominated in land area, at a discount to investors.

Inalienable, with strong asset locks, the land would be under Land Commons stewardship and rented to tenants (also Commoners), who would pay for rights to use the land in a way that supports and expands the vision of the Commons. Vouchers could be sold by investors, including to tenants, to realise a return on investment (Darby, 2023; Green, 2023).

Overlapping, small-scale usage Rights and Responsibilities would be decided upon by all Commoners, potentially varying between locations, creating a land use ecosystem with Commoners’ responsibilities to the land and each other forming strong material interdependence, a resilient, meaningful basis for communities to build adaptive capacity (Green, 2023). A new Land Commons would be nimble, with legal and regulatory mechanisms developed to work within the parameters of the capitalist paradigm in a minimal way - legally viable, difficult to subvert by legislative change, and allowing non-essential decisions to be developed democratically by and between Commoners (Green, 2023).

A diversity of peer governance approaches will likely be necessary (Green, 2023), and could include Sociocracy – nested, circular groups with double linking for multi-directional networking (several members existing in both smaller and main groups), and decision-making by consent (Owen and Buck, 2020); deliberative democracy – a mode of citizen engagement valuing the process of collective decisions made by and for citizens, with outcomes for the common good (Flinders and Curry, 2008); and an evolving, recursive organisational form responding when needed to structural transition in the direction of its vision and according to its ethics (Green, 2023).

The Land Commons would be nested in a larger Commons socio-economic system (Wall, 2017), and could be federated horizontally with Commons in other locations, each group retaining its autonomy but enabling sharing of knowledge, and the ability to trade (Darby, 2023).

* Enabling factors:

There are a multitude of enabling factors that could facilitate the flourishing of a new Land Commons.

Better support for planning officials to understand agroecological farming, and when living on-site is essential, could enable small-scale farmers to create viable enterprises within strict ecological guidelines, following Wales’ One Planet Development Policy (Wach, 2017). Developing locally relevant plans with councils could release land for agroecology (Wach, 2017), and saving or recreating County Farms could provide equitable access (Monbiot et al., 2019). A new Land Commons working with grassroots movements such as Land In Our Names on justice and reparations could increase access for racialised groups (Wach, 2023).

Stopping use-change of agricultural buildings by removing Class Q Permitted Development Rights would protect agricultural ties (Monbiot et al., 2019). Large landholders could be encouraged to release a percentage of land to create affordable smallholdings (CPRE, 2016). Subsidies that lock out small-scale farmers leading to consolidation and increasing speculative accumulation could be revised (Monbiot et al., 2019). Working with government could open a pathway to the state being a symbiotic contributor by adjusting policies, rather than an arbitrator (Russell et al., 2023). Pre-emptive Community Right to Buy could unlock tracts of land from entrenched ownership patterns and challenge power dynamics (Calo et al., 2023). In Scotland, this has been strengthened to allow communities to buy unused properties or land for sustainable development, even when it isn’t market available (Wach, 2023), and could be further supported by Compulsory Sale Orders (Pollard, 2018).

Increased gift or estate taxes could stop land automatically passing down to children upon death (Smaje, 2020), and a Land Value Tax, proposed by many as a solution to speculation, would discourage land from being left idle, encouraging improvement or circulation back into the market, lowering land prices and reducing inequalities (Wightman, 2013).

Implementing a new Land Commons and creating collective agreements within inherently social relationships will be complicated and challenging, with a high level of energy required to maintain them given the need for ongoing and majority consent (Smaje, 2020). As an iterative process there will be constant adjustments, as the Commons adapts to new patterns and events. Building and maintaining a common resource runs counter to capitalist investment culture, and there may be attempts to re-enclose or co-opt it (Green, 2023), and attempts to subvert its decentralising force through media, regulation, and taxes. Starting locally then federating horizontally could ensure Commons groups are harder to attack and disable (Darby, 2023).

Commoning is a transformational process, with a long-term agenda of emergence and systems change beginning at a local, relational level using novel mechanisms (Green, 2023). Like agroecology, it promotes life within the earth’s carrying capacity, tackling growth feedback loops that exacerbate social and ecological crises (Bollier and Helfrich, 2019), with the potential to accelerate rapidly through replication (Green, 2023). It nests humans in a larger whole, allowing meaningful relationships and co-creation that transcend ideological binaries (Bollier and Helfrich, 2019; Green, 2023), fostering resilience and organisational skills that can help communities weather crisis and disruption (Darby, 2023)."

(https://cms.lowimpact.org/wp-content/uploads/CommonsAgroecology_Report.pdf)