Can we protect land for nature and carbon by simply buying it up? | Hacker News Reader

Can we protect land for nature and carbon by simply buying it up?

whoownsengland.org

181 pointsmooreds152 comments

In the United States, the American Prairie Reserve [1] is doing something along these lines in the area around the Wyoming/Montana border. In particular, their purchases (which often include private ranches that come up for sale) focus on building those corridors between existing public lands, effectively creating much larger continuous ecosystems that this article mentioned.

It's probably easier to do in the United States (a lot more land than in England, and with fewer entrenched ownership considerations), but I'd really be interested to see if similar projects would work in other parts of the country that are more densely populated, or in areas like the California central basin to where public water resources are being abused to farm a desert.

[1] https://www.americanprairie.org/

Wow, TIL the Missouri river flows through Montana (from the map on the American Prairie site).

It's not clear from a cursory glance at the site whether American Prairie is giving the land to the public, or whether they retain ownership and are simply allowing public access. I would think giving it to some federal parks/wildlife agency would come with stronger protections than an NGO could provide. I'm also curious if anyone can just give their private land to the public for use as a wildlife preserve?

EDIT: I also found this map of protected lands, but I'm having a hard time discerning between the different colors and I'm not colorblind. http://www.protectedlands.net/map/

> I would think giving it to some federal parks/wildlife agency would come with stronger protections than an NGO could provide.

Not really. Federal agencies sell parklands from time to time. It's easier to have an NGO that won't sell the land for a long time.

There’s two parts. The conservation easement strips the land of its development capacity, and that restriction rides with the land to future owners in perpetuity, while the non profit stewards the land and enforces those legal claims if necessary.

I hate this process. It effectively gives someone else rights over the current owners land. The person becomes a tenet farmer in effect and is responsible for the taxes and upkeep while under the control of the organization. And the land is not accessible to the public.

It's much better for the land to be organization-owned and open to public use.

Just my opinion.

The land absolutely can be open to the public in this model, it just can’t be developed.

At least in my experience, th orgs near me buy the land, place restrictions on it, then sell it. Only rarely do they hold it and open it to the public.

This seems like it would inevitably lead to a limited number of entities owning almost all the conservation land. Stripping it of development value in perpetuity ought to lower the value considerably, making it easier for an interested party to accumulate it. Maybe in hopes that some day they'll figure out how to undo that restriction.

Edit: On second thought, after doing a quick bit of research, the conservation easement can be removed. So the value will be impacted, but the land will still have some residual development value.

Generally the easement can't be removed except by the trust that owns those rights, and that's not something they will want to give up. So yes, these organizations will eventually hold the rights to vast amounts of land, with limited oversight (compared to a municipality or other democratic org), while the "owner" paying the taxes and upkeep on the land can be individuals (not the org). And yes, the value of that land tends to go down slightly. But it constrains supply which causes all the other land to increase.

I volunteer with a regional land trust, and I think you're maybe misunderstanding the conservation easement process, or at least it's typical application.

The typical process is:

Private Landowner Decides they want to conserve their land.

They work with a Land Trust to define, and put in place the restrictions of that conservation easement. Those typically restrict development (though the landowner can in some cases "carve out" future building sites), and depending on the goals of the landowner and land trust, could allow things like agriculture, forestry, recreation etc..

I'm sure there's a conservation easement somewhere that restricts public access, but I've never seen one. Most commonly, the land stays inaccessible to the public just like it was before the easement, but nothing in the legal language of the easement prohibiting future public access.

(One conservation easement manager half-joked that every easement we do has public access potential, it just might take a few generations for that potential to be realized).

Next, that easement goes through the legal process of being put into place. Now, that land is subject to the restrictions of that easement forever. And it's the job (legal responsibility) of the Land Trust that holds the easement to regularly monitor the easements they hold, and make sure they're followed.

However, the original landowner still owns the land, just like before. If they sell the land, or someone inherits, it's still (de facto) private land, just private land with restrictions as to what can be done on it.

Now, there are private landowners who want to open their land to public access, and that's amazing. (We did our first few public access-specific easements this year at our comparatively-small land trust, and we're super excited). There are also times where a landowner puts an easement on their property, and then sells it to someone like a local, regional or state institution to be managed specifically for public access. There was recently a great story about how private individuals stepped in to conserve land, and then later transferred it to Washington State Parks[1].

There are also times when a property might transfer ownership, as well as the easement, to a Land Trust. We actually have one of these that we basically operate as a public park. But, that's like less than 2% of the total easements we hold.

So, to your points, I guess I would say:

The process of conservation easements by large _increases_ the amount of land available for public access and recreation, not decreases it. And if anyone is becoming a tenant farmer, it's the landowner choosing to become a tenant themselves.

There are times when an outside entity might purchase the easement from the landowner, but again, the landowner's not forced into that transaction.

1. https://www.usnews.com/news/best-states/washington/articles/...

Thanks for the detailed information. I am curious here: After an easement is added to the property, who has the ability to cancel the easement? Or is an easement non-removable forever?

I don't work on the legal side, but easements are generally designed to be permanent forever, with some caveats.

For example, I believe most conservation easements have some language that allows them to be essentially "moved" in certain circumstances. Say the city needed to build a road through an easement - than that easement could be exchanged for a similar parcel that was conserved in a similar manner nearby or similar.

But outside of that and similar narrow exceptions, conservation easements are generally designed to be forever.

I understand all that perfectly fine.

I didn't say that I would decrease public land, simply that these organizations should focus on making the conserved land public. Often times land is willed to the trust and then the trust sells it. This keeps it in private circulation when it could be made public access.

Why would a private individual go through the legal risks of opening their land to the public? I highly doubt these lands will become public access in the future as there's zero incentive for it, despite the joke you stated.

Land is finite. By placing the restriction on some parcels, that makes it much less likely to find unrestricted parcels due to the demand. Also, people don't live forever. Putting a restriction on future generations is not something of their choosing.

My experience with these land trusts has been negative. A friend bought one that permits agricultural use. They wanted to put down gravel in an area for that purpose. The trust said that couldn't do that because it's impermeable... perhaps we can go to the desert and leave you there for a few days with 5 gallons of water poured on a gravel pile. If it's really impermeable, then you'll be fine. The point is, you have to deal with idiots like this and risk getting into legal battle that will exhaust your resources to enforce your (limited) rights on the land.

If effect you end up with extremely powerful organizations that have rights over an increasing amount of land, while the "owners" have to bear all the costs and comply. Sounds a lot like being a serf or tenant farmer to me. Is there some choice in there? Not much if you want land. The vast majority of people can't afford real land in the areas where these trusts (and billionaires) are operating, pricing them out due to the constrained supply.

> "Why would a private individual go through the legal risks of opening their land to the public? I highly doubt these lands will become public access in the future as there's zero incentive for it, despite the joke you stated."

Because they're community-minded, and doing that aligns with their values?

Our small local land trust is currently in the final stages of two easements brought to us by private landowners who wanted to open their land to the public. One of them was I would say "community" oriented, in that their land had been informally open to the public, and they wanted to formalize that access, and use it to educate the public on the value of the ecosystems in place there.

The other is I would say is also community minded, but coming more from a place of principle in that they believe more people opening their land to public use is the right thing to do, and what we should be doing as a society.

It also helps that in our state, liability for public access is essentially zero, and we have very strong legal protections for landowners who open their land.

> Is there some choice in there? Not much if you want land.

Don't buy land that's encumbered by an easement? But it's gonna cost you more.

IDK about your friend's specific situation, but one of the big benefits of agricultural easements is that they significantly reduce the value of the land, allowing (perhaps) people like your friend to afford to buy farm land who wouldn't otherwise be able to.

In the area we operate, agricultural land has shot up from about $5K/acre, to $20K+/acre in less than a decade. At those prices, no family farmers can afford to buy farm land, and the only people who can farm are multi-generational farming families who bought land decades ago and haven't sold out yet, or large corporate farms.

But that price increase is being driven by developers who want to build houses. Take away that ability, and suddenly new farmers just starting out can afford to buy some land to farm on.

True, they don't have the freedom to turn around and sell that land to housing developers, but I think that hardly turns them into serfs.

> in perpetuity

Or until the current owners convince a court of law to extinguish the conservation easement.

You should research what’s required to do so and the odds of it occurring. Only in rare/limited circumstances can the easement be terminated, and the IRS has some oversight into this because of the tax consequences of these easements (as you can claim a charitable tax deduction for donating and extinguishing the development capability of the parcel).

I've done the first part [0]. But I don't know an easy way to assess the second part. Clearly congress intended for it to be difficult, but the idea that a conservation easement is in fact permanent should always have an asterisk next to it.

[0]: https://www.landcan.org/article/extinguishing-transferring-a...

Several years ago there was a kerfuffle in Texas: The Nature Conservancy had traded a piece of land, that had been donated to it, to the state parks and wildlife department with the understanding that the land was going to be under their conservation regime. Several years later, TPWD was reportedly considering selling the land to a group to form a hunting reserve. I don't recall how it ended (but I suspect the sale did not go through), but there were threats floating around that the Nature Conservancy would no longer make those kinds of trades with Texas.

Interesting, because a hunting reserve is probably one of the easiest ways to actually monetize conservation and allow it to pay for itself.

> I would think giving it to some federal parks/wildlife agency would come with stronger protections than an NGO could provide.

This largely depends on whether an NGO is more trustworthy than the party in control of the federal government when it comes to conservation. Half the time, the answer seems to be "yes".

To be clear, my intended implication wasn't "NGOs are untrustworthy", but rather that "the federal government is a lot more likely to be around in 50 years than an NGO". I was also assuming that donating the lands to a federal program implied that the federal government couldn't just turn around and sell the land a few years later, although that might be naive on my part.

> I would think giving it to some federal parks/wildlife agency would come with stronger protections than an NGO could provide.

There is supposedly an island on the Maine coast that was given to the federal government for conservation purposes (probably for migratory birds). The feds later sold it off. Last I heard of it, people were raising money to buy it back and protect it again. Federal protection really only works in the long term if the land becomes part of a national park or other protected reserve.

In the US, conservation is often handled by "land trusts," private non-profits that protect land, and make it available for public uses. One common strategy is for two land trusts to work together: One will own the land, and the second will own a "conservation easement" that prevents the land from being developed. This reassures land donors that their wishes will be protected.

Local land trusts are often very popular. Almost everybody likes to have some scenic walking paths. Local businesses also like being able to hand out trail maps to their customers. But some land trusts also protect working land: I know of a protected fishing warf that is used by many small commercial fisherman. In other towns, land trusts may protect a certain amount of farmland.

The most entertaining case I know of is a land trust that maintains a trail system for ATV vehicles. They acquired the land to protect some key bird habitat. But the parcel also included a separate wooded area that was popular with ATV users. So they said, "Hey, ATVs are a public recreational use, and we have plenty of other land that doesn't allow them. So why not let people keep doing that here?"

I think that's one important trick to running a successful land trust: Make sure that you serve a wide variety of community needs. Set aside land for conservation, for walking, and to preserve traditional working land. And try to support a wide variety of recreational uses.

"So why not let people keep doing that here?"

Because loud ATV engines are opposite to the goal of protecting bird habitats?

In general I agree for multi recreational use, but maybe with something less disturbing?

(like using electric engines only for example)

Happily, they actually closed all the existing ATV trails that went anywhere near the bird habitat. And the ATV woodlot itself was not a significant conservation target. (And the ATV use was long-standing.)

A successful local land trust relies on both small donations and a certain measure of political support. Many towns exempt them (partially or fully) from property taxes, so I feel it's admirable for them to look for ways to serve the entire community. Probably very few land trusts will ever find themselves owning ATV trails. But it's good for them to think about what public needs they can serve, even if the answers are sometimes surprising.

"But it's good for them to think about what public needs they can serve, even if the answers are sometimes surprising."

Oh, to this I can very much agree, also that compromises are important. There would be no use of closing everything down officially, to only then have people do it illegal with a worse impact. (but I am still dreaming of the day, when all the noisy engines are gone in nature..)

> I would think giving it to some federal parks/wildlife agency would come with stronger protections than an NGO could provide.

The Federal government is not a reliable steward of public wilderness lands. Their incentives and motivations are quite different from a purpose-built NGO. In practice an NGO can offer a much more consistent and aligned implementation of objectives.

Example: Bears Ears National Monument

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bears_Ears_National_Monument?w...

It's just as hard to undo something as it is to do something. A proclamation by a president is a very low bar.

A better method would be by law. That would require a future president, house, and Senate to agree.

>TIL the Missouri river flows through Montana

Not only flows through it, but originates it! That's where rocky mountain snow turns into the mighty Missouri river.

Another interesting fact is that the world's shortest river also dumps into the missouri close to it's headwaters in central Montana. The river flows from Giant Springs in great falls, Montana for a little over 200 feet and then dumps a substantial flow of crystal clear, clean water into the sometimes muddy Missouri. The mixing is sometimes a striking thing to watch and there is a neat little park there that also has a trout hatchery and you can feed the enormous number of ducks and canada goose that spend large portions of the year in Great Falls. Underrated town with some neat stuff :)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roe_River

Similar initiative for preserving ancient forests in Finland, originally founded by legendary Finnish environmental activist Pentti Linkola:

https://luonnonperintosaatio.fi/en/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Finnish_Natural_Heritage_Found...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pentti_Linkola

Also the Helsinki Foundation buys land and then distributes veto rights to ensure it is never re-sold.

It would be tricky in more densely populated areas, thanks to the ruling in Kelo vs. City of New London. "The local government thinks they'll get more economic activity from someone else" is a valid reason to exercise eminent domain powers for some reason. It works in more rural places because, frankly, it's generally not worth the trouble of litigation there.

> valid reason to exercise eminent domain powers for some reason

The reason is:

(1) eminent domain isn't Constitutionally limited in purpose beyond that it must be a public purpose.

(2) State governments under the US Constitution have general police powers, so any purpose they aren't expressly Constitutionally forbidden to pursue is a valid public purpose, as distinct from the federal government being one of granted powers where there must be a specific Constitutional basis for it pursuing a purpose for it to be valid.

(3) Seeking revenue is not a thing prohibited to the states by the Federal Constitution.

(4) Under the federal Constitution, subordinate entities within states don't have distinct powers from states; if they are limited, that is a matter of state law, not the federal Constitution.

EDIT: Also, note also that some states do Constitutionally restrict the purposes of eminent domain, or have state laws limiting local use of it, some, IIRC, in Constitutional provisions that were proposed and passed directly in response to Kelo, so that what happened there would not be allowed.

How is using property to profit private business "for public use"?

> "[the decision eliminates] any distinction between private and public use of property—and thereby effectively delete[s] the words 'for public use' from the Takings Clause of the Fifth Amendment."

> "This deferential shift in phraseology enables the Court to hold, against all common sense, that a costly urban-renewal project whose stated purpose is a vague promise of new jobs and increased tax revenue, but which is also suspiciously agreeable to the Pfizer Corporation, is for a 'public use.'"

> How is using property to profit private business “for public use”?

Because, as the Supreme Court has consistently held since interpreting the 14th Amendment’s Due Process Clause to apply the 5th Amendment’s protections against the states in the first place (without which, the issue would be moot since absent such application there would be no federal constraint at all) use in which the state action is pursuing a legitimate public purpose has been held to be a “public use”.

Which presumably you already know, because surely you read the majority opinion in Kelo in the course of locating and quoting (without attribution) O’Connor’s dissent.

they don't have to use eminent domain, adding/increasing property tax is enough.

I can't imagine that would actually work if the political system isn't completely corrupt.

Some states have set up more restrictive eminent domain laws since that ruling.

As someone who lives in a county with National Forests, this is a huge issue. Originally the deal was the Feds could have national forests, but make up for missing property tax/economic activity with logging grants, mineral right grants, and paying a portion of the money the feds made from that to the local community. Then for environmental reasons the feds just stopped allowing anything on the land and paying what they promised AND killed all those local community jobs. Double whammy. Personally I think the Feds should have to sell all the national forests now since they did not keep to the promises they made, or at least renegotiate with the local community. But unlike when these deals were made, the USA is now a Federal system without any state rights power, so we just try to keep the roof from leaking on our school and vote to increase our own taxes to educate kids. Meanwhile people talk trash about rundown rural communities and all the unemployed millworkers/miners that turned to drugs when they lost their job opportunities and ignore that the entire country broke it's promise to those people. Imagine the weight of the country choosing to break a promise and ruin you while making fun of your rundown ignorant small town po-dunk life, an ant crushed with no-power to do a thing about it. Lumber is through the roof, yet the mills are all closing. Because the country hates you, your way of life, and TOOK all of the land and locked it up even though it promised not to do that when it took the land.

I've spent the majority of my life living in rural areas. I've also spent a ton of time on public land in just about every state west of the Mississippi. The lack of historical context and understanding of the economics of resource extraction here is staggering.

1 - Guess who the land belonged to before the federal government? It wasn't the states. I reject your assertion that localities are even entitled to a say here beyond the federal democratic process. Almost all of the land in question was open to claim at one point - nobody did so and ownership was retained by the government.

2 - It's absolutely laughable to say that they "just stopped allowing anything on the land". In certain areas maybe but as a blanket statement that's absolutely incorrect. As a personal anecdote, one of my favorite spots to pick berries in western WA was clear cut just this past summer. I'll never visit that spot again in this lifetime. But hey, someone got paid a couple of bucks so I guess that's a net positive for the country. Don't even get me started about cattle ranchers and the damage they've done.

3 - Those jobs were based on extracting a resource that didn't belong to them and that takes decades to recover, if ever. Why should the rest of us let (in your words) some po-dunk town clear cut everything in sight when the rest of us can make our living without destroying everything from sea to shining sea?

4 - Should we help them out now that the economics have changed? Sure, absolutely, totally support that. However economies built on resource extraction have never been sustainable long-term, what's the point in doubling down on what already failed? I also disagree with your supposition that federal restrictions is what hollowed out these towns, the fundamental economics of resource extraction is why they've failed to be sustainable over the long term.

5 - I actually agree with you on one thing at least: put all it up for sale at a fair price. All national forests, all BLM land - everything that isn't wilderness or a national park. While the cattle ranchers, miners, and loggers will get a bit I can guarantee that conservationists will buy more. Leases are a sweetheart deal to extractors and always have been. Why should they buy what they can lease for basically nothing? The extractors would fight your proposal harder than anyone else.

1. And? The Feds made a promise when they created the Federal Forests. Are you saying they should not be required to follow to agreements set when they created the national forests?

2. Yes, they have completely stopped taking bids for timber harvest in my area. My country is screwed financially by this. Cattle ranchers existed as part of your arguement 1, so either you support argument one and are OK with cattle ranchers, or your argument in 1 is invalidated by your position on cattle ranchers.

3. Because the Federal government made this promise as the foundation of establishing these lands.

4. This is a lie. We have had no issues in my county with sustainable, you just made that up. The loggers definitely REQUIRE is be sustainable at this point to ensure employement, it's not 1800s wild west.

5. God I only say that being reactionary. I'm a hippie (even if my post doesn't show it), I love the national forests.

I am sorry this has happened to you.

I must point out that a lot of your post feels written by a Native American. Their story is also about broken promises and land (and other deplorable things)

There are actually quite a few community land trusts [1,2] out there. They can be conversation focused, housing focused, or focused on other priorities. But they all have similar structures - non-profits that are focused on acquiring some level of ownership over large tracts of land so that they can manage that land to achieve a goal (conservation, keeping housing affordable, etc).

My local conservation focused [3] one has been very successful and is the source of many of the best hikes in my area as well!

If you want to find similar projects, search for "conservation community land trust" and you'll find them! Alternately, here's a handy tool provided by the Land Trust Alliance a quick search turned up: https://www.landtrustalliance.org/find-land-trust

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Community_land_trust

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Land_trust

[3] https://sycamorelandtrust.org/

Here in the Bay Area in Marin County, we have the Marin Agricultural Land Trust [1].

[1] https://malt.org/

> where public water resources are being abused to farm a desert

You are incredibly short-sighted and your implied policy direction seems to favor human extinction.

"Over a third of the country's vegetables and two-thirds of the country's fruits and nuts are grown in California."

https://www.cdfa.ca.gov/Statistics/

A cautionary tale from personal experience: My parents retired to a rural area and wanted to ensure that their area would remain a healthy old growth forest. They have been actively involved in a land trust that has successfully created large, continuous corridors throughout the area. One of their contributions was a continuous strip of about 20 acres. Their community has stitched these together to create wonderful cycling/walking paths through the woods, linking up different areas.

At the start of the pandemic, a developer bought up a large (~200 acre) tract neighboring them and the corridor. They immediately clearcut the whole thing, and are building hundreds of tract houses, cheek by jowl, and have consequently forced the local government to build additional roads. Guess the big selling point they use in their website and listings? 'Neighbors a wilderness trust with extensive woodland paths.'

Knowing all of this, I'm not sure whether I'd still go through with the land trust purchases or not. They couldn't have afforded the 200 acre parcel, and who knows if the developer would have bought the other 50 acres. All I can say is that it is dispiriting to see people doing the right thing and having a net increase in clearcutting at their doorstep.

Well rural living and by extension preservation has to be joined with land ownership maps. First thing to check with a rural purchase must be what it borders. The more BLM/federal/state/county land, the more likely stuff like the above doesn’t happen. Same issue for building trusts.

> a developer bought up a large (~200 acre) tract neighboring them and the corridor. They immediately clearcut the whole thing

Make the land private and only allow access to conservation workers, volunteers and financially contributing members. The less joggers disrupting the ecosystem the better, and it's a way to fund more purchases of land, and encourage people to volunteer.

I know this may not help now, but to approve such a development, many counties would require that it is not down range from a historical or even prospective shooting range. You might offer every new resident subsidized membership because they live downrange.

You do know that this is essentially what Henry Geroge was warning about? People invest in their community and then some private land owners capture all those public benefits and turn them into cold, hard, emotionless cash.

You can protect land for habitat, and you can preserve existing stores of carbon, but any notions about nature being a carbon sink capable of offsetting fossil fuel use are best discarded. Take a look at UK energy consumption (it's mainly gas and oil these days, with most coal phased out):

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_in_the_United_Kingdom#/...

The only carbon solution is figuring out how to not need fossil fuels for energy, because there's absolutely no way biological photosynthesis can make more than a tiny dent in that figure.

I'd also look at Canada's abject failure on the 'natural carbon sink' front. Their idea was that Canada's pine forests would somehow serve as an offset for Alberta tar sands fossil carbon emissions (among the highest in the world, as they use gas to melt the tar to process it into syncrude for refineries). Climate change however increased temperatures, leading to pine beetle outbreaks and fires, and those forests became net atmospheric carbon sources, not sinks:

https://www.nationalgeographic.com/science/article/beetles-t...

It's true that not burning fossil fuels is the simplest and best place to start, but land use changes can add up, so shouldn't be totally neglected.

https://www.wri.org/insights/7-things-know-about-ipccs-speci...

Methane released from destroying Peatland for example.

> Take a look at UK energy consumption

I think you are missing the big picture.

Look at all of the oil/gas pumped out of the Earth by the UK (North Sea). Guess what, most of it gets burned.

Measured this way, UK contribution to carbon is even larger than the very nice source you provide.

While I agree that natural forests are unlikely to make a significant dent in CO2 through biological photosynthesis, that is not necessarily true for all plants. Kelp and Bamboo farming can do quite a lot more than the average tree with their extremely high growth rates. Just need to figure out what to do with the resulting product. Source: I'm in a working group looking at circular economies with net CO2 loss per cycle, using kelp for fuel and plastic production, scalable to Gigatonne levels.

This is one issue like others where we have gone wrong a long time ago and don't have an easy way back. I think Scotland got it right when they passed a law that required a landowner to sell to a not-for-profit at the market rate if they were selling and they couldn't be outbid by a private buyer.

I would be interested to know the proportion of non-wilded land and how much is private farming land, national parks, private estates etc. and realistically how much of each would need turning back to nature to make it worthwhile. I don't think that buying from farmers is impossible, there must be plenty who would happily sell for market rate + 25% or something, something that could easily be done by a combination of crowd-funding and government grants.

"...a law that required a landowner to sell to a not-for-profit at the market rate if they were selling and they couldn't be outbid by a private buyer"

Why would a law be required for this? Wouldn't the landowner just naturally be willing to sell to the not-for-profit entity if they were willing to pay as much or more than someone else?

I have to suspect that this is really about forcing the landowner to sell at less than market rate, with some sort of camouflage to conceal that that's what's happening.

TL;DR: Sometimes!

So its a little more complex and a little bit more nuanced.

The mechanism is part of the land reform policy and called the ‘Community Right To Buy’.

Ahead of time, a community body (which has a legal definition) can register an interest in buying qualifying land. All of these notes of interest are available from the registers of scotland and has to be renewed regularly/etc.

At the point that a landowner indicates to the land register that a piece of land is to be transferred (which could be due to public sale, or a private sale or direct transfer), the bodies with notes of interest are notified.

This then kicks off a whole process, including an independent market price evaluation, reviewing of land development/business plans and if that all goes through, final ministerial approval.

It can lead to land being sold at less than the offers over price (scotland has a weird way of doing land/property sales), or for more, depending on if the land transfer was a public sale or a private shift around.

Its not a perfect system and has a lot of flaws, but its worth being aware of the implementation.

So if I want to give land to a friend, I can be forced to sell it if one of these groups have shown interest? That sounds very strange

At a high level, yes.

However there are a lot of checks and balances to it. Not all land falls under the criteria and there's a lot of requirements around forming a group and the proposed use of the land ( such as being geographically local /etc ).

When I last looked into it, I think there'd only been 2 occurrences of the right to buy happening over a 4 year period.

Which does raise the question on 'Does the act achieve the goals it was setout to achieve' or is it mainly political posturing.

That's not something I can really comment on (nor would I want to).

> That sounds wonderful

There should always be an opportunity for land to return to the commons.

If it's not possible to sell to a private buyer, how is it possible to determine a "market rate"? There would be no market.

Yes, but it’s a bad approach.

Source: I have worked in environmental policy. See The Nature Conservancy, a large nonprofit that does this.

But it is an inefficient use of funds. The US government has massive land holdings and the biggest budgets in the world. For a paltry amount, you can lobby them and convince them to use their resources for environmental protection, not yours. Basically the entire US environmental protection community takes this approach with just a few outliers like TNC.

I've often wondered if it is possible for environmental groups to buy oil drilling rights at auction (to prevent oil companies from buying the wells).

At the very least, it would run up the cost of the mineral rights, making the resulting oil/coal more expensive. In the best case, it would prevent drilling/mining.

I am pretty sure that’s not possible, as the government won’t sell the rights to just anyone, you need to qualify to participate. Making the government look foolish is not appreciated and the goal is to incentivize energy production, not enable trolls and political opponents. Besides, the rights are expensive and it is comparatively cheap to find some endangered corals or tie the whole thing up in court. The extractive industries have way more money than the greens, so best to skip the bidding war.

In Colorado, those rights are detached from land ownership. A state commission chooses lease parameters and, with some local consequence, those leases fund rural schools. A better system might:

- Fund schools in a different way - Permit mineral rights to be owned just like private land - Require an insurance policy for exploration in the event it destroys a well or other water source

Money is fungible. The schools aren't funded that way, it is just how it was sold to the public. Every dollar that goes into schools will be reduced by the same amount in the general budget. The same happened in my state with the Lotto.

No. Most places have 'immanent domain' type laws were the gov can essentially seize your property (forcing a sale) to give to someone else. A rich developer could see all that sweet sweet natural land and make a strong case (with lobbying, backroom deals, the usual) that it would be better used with a new condo or factory or strip mine and get it anyway.

The reverse also works.

People see a block of land that's "unused" so they simply move there and start "developing" it. Sometimes they'll legally own the land ("adverse possession") but usually it doesn't matter. It's theirs because they're there and they're willing to defend themselves and "their" land even if they don't have a deed.

So sure, go ahead and buy a bunch of land, in the USA or elsewhere; you'll need to be prepared to enforce your ownership stake or lose it.

Which is why it is important for the states to pass laws forbidding this activity after the Supreme Court deemed it legal (or not prohibited by the constitution) a few years ago.

And there’s a bunch of land for sale outside of the UK which can be bought and let to go back to prairie or whatever. You can get 10,000+ acre ranches for a few million in places like Nebraska and just let some buffalo lounge around.

That is a problem of immanent domain and lobby. Remove that and private reserves work perfectly fine.

Note that this article is about the UK. It discusses your point in part 3 and goes on to discuss an alternative solution at the end. There are complex laws as almost all of the land is privately owned by either private citizens or the crown.

Eminent domain is close to dead in the US. We nearly always lack sufficient political consensus to use it. It is partly why new infrastructure projects are increasingly rare and significantly more expensive.

It's probably for the better. It generally just gets used on people who lack the resources to fight back. It just doesn't sit well with me that a government can force you to sell your land at a price they determine.

Exactly. The more justified infrastructure use cases of the 20th century gave way to "economic development" crap where the city takes land it thinks the current owner isn't using effectively enough and then sells it to their cronies who promise to build a strip mall or a mixed use development or whatever (and some number of useful idiots support it because they like the idea of more taxable commerce). The government has zero business stomping on people to do the latter. Just buy the F-ing land outright the normal way if that's what you want to do.

> It's probably for the better.

Until you want to build a train line (or some other form of public transportation).

I don't disagree, but there are ramifications. A big one being sprawl. If existing urban/suburban areas are to remain stagnant, then development will just push outward into areas where land is cheap and landowners more than happy to pocket a nice chunk for their former farmland. Wrap an urban growth boundary around the city, and then you can stop some of that and instead watch your housing prices skyrocket.

Wait a second, I think I just described Portland.

So you get your money back, and then you use it to buy other land. Same same?

Land is not fungible.

I have also read about cases where foreign owners just have their land straight up taken.

Locals just assume the property while the owners are away and force them into a court unfriendly to foreigners.

Devil's advocate - if you don't even live in the country should you have the right to own property there?

If you don't live on the property should you have the right to own it?

It happens to people who live on the property too, and have to leave for a while.

I read about a person who had to go to the US for cancer treatment and in the interim his otherwise full-time primary residence was stolen.

Sure, why not? But you should be paying an appropriate tax for that privilege to make owner occupied housing and land more affordable than rentals.

Scotland has what is pretty much the opposite - communities can register interest in land and get a "right to buy" if the land is ever going to be transferred:

https://www.gov.scot/policies/land-reform/community-right-to...

Eminent Domain is nearly never used in the USA for private development, since Kelo v. City of New London. The City won in court, but lost massively in the court of public opinion. Many states passed laws restricting or prohibiting that type of eminent domain use following that case.

And even in that case, Kelo's land ended up not being used after all.

But Kelo didn't get it back.

Short answer: yes.

Long answer: you need to put in a bit more work than "just" buying it up.

In the UK, Ireland, and other countries with out of control deer/grazer populations and no large natural predators, this means enclosing the land with deer fencing (allows smaller animals to pass, but not large grazers) and probably doing some initial remedial work (scattering seeds of native species, planting a few native trees, etc) to kind of "get things going".

Usually after 5-6 years you can just let nature take over and go with traditional "ignore it" rewilding, once some kind of life is established. After maybe 10 years you can consider removing the fence.

The super wealthy in the US sometimes pull off major conservation easements.

Roxanne Quimby, of Burt's Bees fame, slowly purchased land in Maine over many years then donated an entire National Monument.[0] She wasn't the first to do this, though. JD Rockefeller pulled the same trick almost a century prior by donating a National Park in Wyoming.[1]

[0]https://www.nationalparks.org/connect/blog/transforming-kata... [1]https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/retropolis/wp/2017/12/04...

In the US we struggle to protect the land that is already owned by state and federal agencies.

For example, each year we spend billions on fire suppression on public land. And most year more acres burn and the cost increases.

https://www.nifc.gov/fire-information/statistics

5,510,675 Acres Year-to-date Acres Burned

FY 2021 suppression cost $4,389,000,000

Conservation his hard especially in a landscape where we fail to manage fire effectively.

This presupposes that fire suppression is an important goal. Obviously carbon storage is only possible if it isn’t all routinely released as smoke, but it’s not obvious to me that fire reduces carbon capture so much that other alternatives are better—and preservation may be a net good if other conservation/recreation/quality-of-life goals are accomplished alongside carbon capture.

Carbon capture is a good point for carbon storage part of the environmental movement.

And total Acreage burned per year continues to increase. Year - million acres burned 2015 - 10.13 2020 - 10.12 (over 1 million on the dixie fire in CA alone) 2017 - 10.03

https://sgp.fas.org/crs/misc/IF10244.pdf

Thats 21% of all federal land in 3 years! * total federal land in USA = 640 million acres.

For contrast in a good year YNSP might controlled burn 1,000 Acres.

It is all going to burn.

We need to find a better way to capture carbon.

What percentage of captured carbon does burning release? (And on what time frame? Fire is an important part of some ecosystems in the long run, even if not the short.)

While I agree with your assessment given the available data you shared, I have to wonder if we really have to spend that much?

From what I understand it's hard to separate how much of that spend is effective vs. how much of it is "bad money" tied up in modern forestry cargo cult practices carried over from the last 100 year.

With the increasing frequency of megafires in the Western United States (and other locations around the world) the discussion has shifted to reconsidering if the existing paradigm of prioritizing fire prevention over active fire management (planned burns, building code improvements, etc.) is in our best interests.

For example:

https://www.ctif.org/news/modern-forestry-practices-may-be-p...

http://www.roosevelthouse.hunter.cuny.edu/?forum-post=preven...

Land ownership as a concept sits uneasily with me. Much of the land is owned by people who are descendents of Henry VIII's cronies after it was taken from the monasteries. More is owned by descendents of those that got wealthy through the slave trade.

Given that land is essentially finite, my view is that the closest thing to ownership should be a form of stewardship with certain rights.

Been a long time since ya'll had a populist revolution.

There's one aspect of this that the article doesn't note, which is enforcement.

On a small scale, this sort of thing can work (modulo the criticisms the post highlights). On massive scales... It's not just the cost of land, it's the cost of paying people to patrol that land to prevent poaching.

Exactly, I was going to mention this. Sometimes in large areas, like the Amazon, it is extremely difficult to monitor and secure these lands. Regardless if you have satellites and everything watching it. It is even more complex to safely reach the areas to stop someone from doing unlawful things.

It should be pointed out that conservation and reserves are not enough. We have got to be restoring land with native plants, in particular land in urban environments.

https://homegrownnationalpark.org/

Some colleagues published a paper on the general order of actions to apply in the mitigation hierarchy, and found that the preference typically should be protection > improved land management > restoration. This is based on a combination of factors, including magnitude and immediacy of benefits, cost, and cobenefits these actions confer.

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41558-021-01198-0

Sounds well-intended, but I oppose the idea of 1% of people owning 99% of the land ...

And what do we say if Nestle buys all natural water sources to "protect" them?

Land would be sold much more frequently if inheritance tax weren't so easy to dodge.

If you had to give up 40% of your land every generation, big estates would quickly shrink and be sold on the open market.

So the solution is for the government to tighten up inheritance tax law. Specifically, I would make a new law that if any asset hasn't been part of an inheritance (and had tax paid) for 100 years, then 40% tax becomes immediately payable.

The tax is 40% of the monetary value of the land, but can also be 40% of the land area given to the government. If the government disagrees with your valuation, then the government has the option to buy the whole estate from the owner for the declared value.

I have always wondered why inheritance taxes require liquidation of assets, that is unnecessary pain. Just grant the government an ownership stake to land, assets and businesses which the inheritor can buy back over time.

Because the government doesn't want one third of a solid silver cutlery set handed down your family for generations... But they do want it's cash value.

Another option for the UK would be to abolish or substantially reduce the monarchy, and include a one-off wealth tax on the aristocracy.

A huge swathe of the land in the UK is owned by the crown and individual royals, with ownership lineage being extremely dubious if you don’t accept the concept that the monarchy has a God-granted right to dominion over the people.

Taking the crown estate back into the trust of the people would be a good start.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Finances_of_the_British_royal_...

If they want to buy land for carbon capture, why restrict themselves to the UK?

There are many countries with plenty of land for sale that will not require eminent domain laws to buy land.

And of course, carbon is a global concern. Capturing carbon in specifically the UK is no better than capturing it elsewhere, from a climate change perspective.

James Hetfield of Metallica was doing something like this in Marin:

https://www.cbsnews.com/sanfrancisco/news/metallica-james-he...

According to the article, he gave the land to preserve it for agricultural use after failing to build houses on it.

I guess it's better than nothing but I dont think we should label this as "Preserved Land".

In the US, almost certainly, you would probably get a few bad actors though coming in and using the land thinking it was a free for all.

Can't see it happening in places like Holland or Japan where every inch of land is worked relentlessly. In fact in Holland someone would probably complain.

Eh, densely populated countries have some of the most enthusiastic protection of public parks, woodlands, and so on.

For example, when a disused airport in Berlin was converted into a public park then there was a plan to build apartments on parts of it, Berlin's voters passed a referendum blocking development of any kind. [1]

The major downside to buying up land in countries like Britain and Germany is you can get much more land for the same money in less developed countries (although of course there have been 'buy an acre of rainforest' companies in the past that have just pocketed the money, so buying land in distant countries isn't an ideal solution).

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Berlin_Tempelhof_Airport#Publi...

Yeah, I was there in Berlin when all that ruckus started, and had kept bubbling up again and again every few years. Templehof is held in too much regard by Berliners to be auctioned off by lot, but that doesn't stop real estate developers from trying. I hope they never succeed.

But it's not a wild area, and it's probably as well looked after as most folks front lawns. What I can't see is places like Templehof being just closed off from any kind of access to allow re-wilding. Sort of like Pripyat after Chernobyl blew. It'd be cool, but I just can't see people keeping out and letting nature take over.

Depends a lot on what government you're dealing with. A few years ago some conservationists bid on and won some mineral rights but the government invalidated their bid when they realized they weren't going to be extracting it.

In most places, including the UK, there's a legal principle called adverse possession (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adverse_possession), where anyone can take possession of a property for free, if it's unoccupied/unmaintained by the owner, and the possession is not challenge for certain a period of time, i.e. actual owner doesn't evict the prospective occupier (12 years in the case of the UK).

So people or the government don't really need to actually buy much of the land.

That link actually only talks about England and Wales. Scotland has positive prescription:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prescription_(Scots_law)#Posit...

Mind you the end result is similar - different legal systems though!

Absolutely!

https://www.landtrustalliance.org/what-you-can-do/conserve-y...

Can we create a nonprofit to do this for the Amazon rainforest?

I remember a documentary about a guy who did this, but came back next year to find they'd logged it anyway. Turns out you have to actualy enforce the law or it'll get broken! In the end he paid the guy who was logging his land to guard it anyway, the guy was dirt poor and just looking out for his family.

The current leader of Brazil is known as the Trump of South America. He's actively encouraging illegal logging in the rainforest, and the rate at which the Amazon is being clear cut is accelerating rapidly.

If ever there was a good case for the use of pre-emptive military force, it's this clown; his actions are directly destabilizing the world economy and will lead to trillions of dollars of damage / countless lives lost.

In England, some kind of long term lease might work.

Conservationists lease land for say 200 years and allow it to go wild.

Many big landowners don't actually earn much revenue from the land, so they would be happy to lease it for quite a low cost.

But the land forms part of a family estate that the family has owned for hundreds of years, so they don't want to give it up.

The big problem, at least in the US, is that we don't build things anymore. The homeless camp 2 blocks from me is one glaring proof.

The lack of power generation, power transmission, and pretty much any infrastructure you can think of is another.

I agree that there is some conflict of interest between humans and untouched nature, and I am firmly on the side of us, humanity!

What side are you on?

We do build things. I'm in SF where we have recently replaced the Bay Bridge, dug a big ol' tunnel, put up skyscrapers and luxury condos, etc.

What we don't do is build housing. (A lot of people blame NIMBYism for that but the situation is complex.)

> The lack of power generation, power transmission, and pretty much any infrastructure you can think of is another.

A friend of mine drives a Tesla, he says charging stations are cropping up all over. 5G is rolling out. There is a lot of aging infrastructure that needs to be repaired, rebuilt, or retired, but we're not quite Mad Max yet.

> I agree that there is some conflict of interest between humans and untouched nature, and I am firmly on the side of us, humanity!

I don't agree with that framing.

First of all, tactically, you're siding with the underdog! :)

Nature could literally wipe us out in the blink of an eye. A single hurricane can devastate a whole city in a few hours, Godzilla-style.

However, that's not the real reason why I don't think there's a real conflict of interest.

The reason is that untouched nature is the only baseline (in the entire known universe) for sanity. We need nature.

As we enter a computer-mediated "metaverse" or cyberspace, and especially as we allow our infants and children to grow up in it, untouched nature will become exponentially more important as (literal!) grounding for humanity.

That's why something like E. O. Wilson's Half Earth proposal is so important ( https://www.half-earthproject.org/ )

We only have one biosphere in the entire universe, of course we should try to preserve it intact and in working order! After all we have the rest of the solar system to do human stuff, eh?

You're probably giving a more thoughtful answer than my rant deserved :)

What I was trying to express was said better by Marc Andreessen "It’s Time to Build" manifesto. Read that instead: https://a16z.com/2020/04/18/its-time-to-build/

The Bay Bridge only got built because the old one proved seismically unsafe, and that took 24 years, with a 2500% cost overrun, according to Wikipedia. No other bridges will be build in the SF bay, despite huge needs.

I always appreciate a good opportunity to stand on the the soapbox. :)

I read Andreessen's piece (and caught the reference) I just think he's wrong.

When it comes to exercising control over society through ownership, and eventually butting heads with those societal values, it will become clear who truly owns the land.

Similarly try not paying land taxes. You'll find out that land deeds are actually their asset and your liability.

The Peconic Land Trust is one of the biggest conservation land trusts in the US, they're doing something similar.

https://peconiclandtrust.org/about-us

> "just 1% of the population own half the land in England"

This is idea in same level as quantitative easing, (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantitative_easing) "Lets give rich people money so they recover economy" what happens "Rich people use that money £895 billion buy stocks, so they inflate market even more and not even penny trickles down to ordinary people, so they become even poorer.

Paying rich people that own land to sequester carbon is equally, (not sure which word to use) ... evil, diabolic as QE scam for the rich. Probability is high that they will use that money not to plant trees but to buy more land, even more increasing gap between wealthy and poor.

So, my question is when does wealthy people greed and naivety of poor ends?

Imagine if you could print new land certificates for untouched land. Oh right we do that all the time and this leads to urban sprawl because we can't seem to get the existing land owners to cooperate.

Strangely enough the situation is the same with money.

Land Conservation Easements May Prove Misguided

https://www.law.virginia.edu/news/2001_02/easements.htm

We can also look into reducing the amount of monocropping we do. If the grain isn’t profitable, the land it’s grown on will drop in value, making it easier to purchase and use for re-wilding efforts.

Correct, problem is the most productive land isn't always the most profitable. That's how you end up with Maize grown in Western Kansas under dryland conditions.

> a million acres of peat is owned by just 124 individuals and organisations

Probably even more concentrated, since multiple organizations are likely to be controlled by the same individual(s).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pumal%C3%ADn_Park

sometimes!

Are you going to put out the fires that appear on it from time to time and police it against illegal invaders?

That is roughly what happened with Doug Tompkins.

Its an unpopular opinion but no. Much as we cannot stop drowning in water with more water, we cannot extinguish climate change caused by technocratic neoliberal consumer capitalism with more of the same. The effort must exist outside a market. it cannot be commercialized, it exists as an inefficiency, and it remains a corrective action to right some of the most egregious hubris of mankinds existence on this planet. ideally it should be done in silence without marketing, discipline without aggrandizement, and with remorse.

You say that as though no one outside of a market economy every burned coal or clear cut a forrest.

Technocratic neoliberal consumer capitalism isn't the only form of market economy, it's just the form that uses up the most land without regard to social and environmental impact because it is inherently focused on capital gains.

> uses up the most land

How are you quantifying that?

It's self evident, endless and unchecked profit motives (neoliberalism) are divorced from considerations of resource sustainability or genuine social need, it will always use up more land than market economies with a more social minded approach.

If that isn't enough, loss of tree cover since 2001:

Neoliberal capitalist USA: 16% [1]

[1] https://www.globalforestwatch.org/dashboards/country/BRA

Socialism with Chinese Characteristics China: 6.7% [2]

[2] https://www.globalforestwatch.org/dashboards/country/CHN/

That’s a non sequitur. So what if bad things have happened outside of a market? The question is whether a solution can be found outside one.

It's not a non sequitur at all. The original claim was that contemporary market economies caused the problem so markets can't be part of the solution. I think this is first and foremost a logical fallacy. I'm also pointing out that the need for energy and resources created the problem, which is orthogonal to markets.

Markets are great for optimizing things that can be priced. Pricing carbon, and wild spaces can be really powerful levers for fixing some of these problems.

It didn’t say it was caused by. It said it couldn’t be solved within.

It's easily solved with markets: Charge a carbon recapture tax equivalent to direct air capture of 150% of the product's greenhouse emissions. (This is affordable; it'd end up being about $1/gallon of gas tax.)

Getting our corrupt government to actually do that is another story, even with > 60% of the population calling for drastic, urgent action.

If France is anything to go buy the population only call for drastic action when they don’t have to pay for it themselves. Start putting up gas prices and see what happens.

Pay a co2 dividend, market it as taking away free co2 pollution rights from the rich and corporations and giving them back to the people.

Well, gas just jumped $2 for no good reason. Leaders could take half to avoid the literal collapse of civilization, then blame Putin for the price hike.

Alternatively, they could end all fossil fuel subsidies, and use that money instead.

The problem isn't markets. The problem is growth dependence.

for nature? sure. for CO2? No, it's basically pissing in a river hoping to reverse its direction.

I’m sorry, but this seems like a very libertarian view of conservatism. Like how they tried to solve these problems with the idea of personal action. We simply don’t have the capital to combat the groups that really couldn’t give a fuck

This is a great scheme to make sure we drive the peasant class into their pods in their walkable cities. The only thing that remains is to buy up and destroy all ranch lands and meat production infrastructure, so these pathetic, scum sucking peasants are forced to eat the bugs. Until they commit suicide, assisted or no.

this is wrong

What are you going to do? Abolish structural privileges we granted to land owners?

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