WHO OWNS THE LAND?
In response, bestselling author Guy Shrubsole, calls
for practical interventions to the management of the countryside for both the
people and environment.
In England, just 1 per cent own half the land. Yet arguments
to change property rights, replacing it with a legal duty of stewardship, thus
introducing public accountability, occupy the fringes of political discourse.
It is contended that land needs to be owned to be looked
after.
Shrubsole highlights this lie with examples of damage to
land. Some are ancient. The Cambridgeshire peat soil fens supply one third of
England’s fresh vegetables. Drained around 400 years ago they continue sinking with
the Holme Fen approaching 3 metres below sea level as the peat drains causing its
carbon to oxidise with the air to form CO2 in massive quantities.
Remaining peat will be washed away over the next 30 to 100
years, ending vital food cultivation unless there is a switch to wetter farming
with vegetable harvesting transferred elsewhere across East Anglia.
Peat is also being destroyed to facilitate grouse shooting
on subsidised upland estates. During heavy downpours this causes large escapes
of water downhill, causing flooding of homes and businesses.
In Scotland, grouse shooting has recently terminated at Langholm when over 10,000 acres of ancient wood pasture and windswept hills owned by the Duke of Buccleuch was bought by the local community with support from the Scottish Land Fund which has made possible many similar buyouts elsewhere. Already young trees are naturally regenerating the Langholm hillsides.
The Scottish land reform movement continues organising for
collective land ownership.
Shrubsole urges the new Labour Government to back similar
initiatives in England. He knows there will be opposition with even small plans
to reintroduce the native British beaver, whose building of leaky dams slows
water flow downstream, drawing the ire of the landowning establishment
including James Dyson and King Charles.
The book concludes with 10 urgent changes to be fought for
including banning moorland burning, a community right to buy land in England,
the establishment of a Public Nature Estate, making polluting landowners pay a
carbon land tax, making national parks serve the interests of nature and the
continuing opening up of data on land.
Invite Shrubsole to your meeting as this is a book worth
discussing.
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