欧美高清

Publications

Edinburgh Law Review (2026)

Fremantle Chris, Vergunst Jo, Barwell Louise J, Bevan Anne, Cavers Stephen, Clarke Jennifer, Collins Timothy M, Goto Collins Reiko, , Cottrell Joan, Douglas Anne, Edwards David, Ellison Aaron M, Heddon Deirdre, Heim Wallace, Kalshoven Petra Tjitske, Marion Glenn, Oliver Seth, Saraev Vadim, Veenman Sietske

Landscape Research, pp. 1-19 (2025)

European Review of Private Law Vol 33, pp. 903-928 (2025)

Heritage in War and Peace IV (2025)

, Robbie Jill

Edinburgh Law Review Vol 29, pp. 323-330 (2025)

Edinburgh Law Review Vol 29, pp. 131-137 (2025)

Teaching

Property law, land law (including land reform), commercial law, legal and professional skills, clinicial legal education, and access to justice.

Professional Activities

Interviewee

1/2/2026

Peer reviewer

2026

Speaker

10/12/2025

Interviewee

3/12/2025

Speaker

13/11/2025

Interviewee

6/10/2025

Projects

Combe, Malcolm (Principal Investigator) Halliday, Simon (Co-investigator)

01-Jan-2025 - 30-Jan-2028

Combe, Malcolm (Principal Investigator)

30-Jan-2024 - 31-Jan-2025

Garvey, Brian (Principal Investigator) Combe, Malcolm (Co-investigator) Vecchione, Marcela (Co-investigator)

This project explores social tensions and ecological implications of both incumbent agricultural monocultures and of the transition of land use towards large scale 鈥榞reen鈥� projects. By considering the inequitable access to land, political power, finance and technology that are often masked by 鈥榞reening鈥� projects, the project brings creative and transformative methods derived from traditional communities of Brazil into dialogue with community and academic practitioners in Scotland and the Amazon region of Brazil. It does so to creatively investigate disruption to unjust but apparently 鈥榣ocked-in鈥� land use practices towards diversified land and agrifood systems that promise improved human and environmental health outcomes.

01-Jan-2023 - 29-Jan-2024

Hannon, Matthew (Principal Investigator) Combe, Malcolm (Co-investigator) Roberts, Jen (Co-investigator) Davidson, Magnus (Co-investigator) Anderson, Roxanne (Co-investigator) Haggett, Claire (Co-investigator)

Voluntary carbon markets (VCMs) offer a means of offsetting carbon emissions, by funding projects that deliver equivalent carbon emissions reductions elsewhere. These are commonly natural capital 鈥渞emoval鈥� offsets that sequester carbon, such as afforestation or peatland restoration project.

The sector is growing very quickly and the recent adoption of Article 6 at COP26 delivered a rulebook for carbon offsetting, which is likely to further accelerate this marketplace. Scotland has already seen major natural capital investments led by institutional investors, corporations and charitable trust, who are often referred to 鈥� albeit controversially - as 鈥淕reen Lairds鈥�. High profile examples include investments from BrewDog, Shell and Aviva. Despite its growing popularity, it is unclear whether VCM projects have provided Scottish communities with much direct benefit or control.

To address this, this Scottish Universities Insight Institute funded project will deliver a series of events between researchers and practitioners that explore how VCMs are impacting Scottish communities and how they could be re-designed to maximize place-based, community benefits. The project will improve our understanding of the:

1. Distribution, scale and nature of current natural capital VCMs in Scotland;
2. Impact natural capital VCMs are having on communities;
3. Alternative VCM designs to deliver place-based community benefit and social justice;
4. Routes to co-develop and implement new VCMs in partnership with communities; and
5. Policy, legal and market conditions necessary for their adoption.

The project aims to initiate an informed, evidence-based national discussion about how best to design and implement carbon offsets, in a way that supports a net-zero, Just Transition.

01-Jan-2022 - 01-Jan-2023

Combe, Malcolm (Researcher)

The project 鈥楽cotland鈥檚 Land Reform Futures鈥� will support Scottish Government policy development regarding land reform, community land ownership and engagement in land use decision-making, as well as increase understanding of the role of land ownership and land reform in achieving net zero emissions and reversing biodiversity decline in Scotland. The project will build knowledge of Scottish land reform processes and outcomes that can contribute to wider global land issues requiring urgent attention. It will seek to advance social theory on community empowerment, social justice, and the potential for progressive property rights in Scotland. The research team comprises researchers from the James Hutton Institute and Scotland鈥檚 Rural College. It is part of the Scottish Government鈥檚 Strategic Research Programme 2022-2027.

29-Jan-2022

Garvey, Brian (Principal Investigator) Combe, Malcolm (Co-investigator) Shapovalova, Daria (Co-investigator)

The programme brings together a multidisciplinary team of researchers from Law, Geography, Sociology of Work and Political Economy with leading figures from crofting, smallholding and indigenous communities in Scotland, the Amazon and Arctic.

This project aims to collectively produce and share both ancestral and new academic knowledge across a nexus that is critical to a just transition: the globalised financialisation of land for both the carbon and green economy, smallholder and community access to land, and sustainable production of food. These dimensions come to ground, literally, in arable land that has been an increasingly prized destination for corporate finance, with subsequent rising land prices and a deepening of contestation between commodity and food production. The programme is attentive to new policy instruments in Scotland including land reform, transparency and local empowerment and the plural ways in which other communities negotiate tensions between land asset capture for speculation, monocultures and energy forms on one hand; and rural or forest based livelihoods on the other.

The programme hinges on a hopeful dialogue across these frontiers in order to i) unearth commonality in values, experiences and aspirations for socially and ecologically committed cultivation of land; ii) investigate legal instruments within and across borders for their realisation; iii) make recommendations for effective policy implementation in Scotland.

01-Jan-2022 - 03-Jan-2022