Collaborative Action, Policy Support and Rural Sustainability Transitions in Advanced Western Economies: The Case of Scotland

Abstract

Rural areas face profound challenges in transitioning towards sustainability. Intensive agriculture is deeply implicated in high greenhouse gas emissions, biodiversity decline and water pollution. As a more socio-economically heterogenous rural Europe emerges with a greater non-farming component, changes such as in-migration and tourism in some areas can also be seen to compromise sustainability, as can an ageing and declining population in others. The dominant means of European rural policy support has been direct income payments to farmers, with modest but increasing expectations of environmental cross-compliance over time. Since the early 1990s, new policy means have been introduced, many based around collaborative actions to enhance sustainability. These include the European Union (EU) Leader scheme, environmental cooperatives, catchment management projects and support for community renewable energy. These changes mark a shift from sectoral support to a more territorial and place-based policy, often built around collaborative partnership models. Scotland has developed a wide and distinctive range of communitarian policies to support sustainable rural development which connect to this territorial approach. This paper reviews the contribution of communitarian and collaborative policies to sustainability transitions, drawing primarily on Scottish policy but referencing these policies against policies in other developed economies.