Restoring landscapes to build common futures: Land redistribution and environmental action in rural Scotland

Ecosystem restoration is crucial for reversing environmental degradation, yet contemporary approaches often frame restoration as a technical, science-driven endeavour, neglecting the social and political processes through which communities mobilise for landscape revitalisation. This paper develops the concept of restorative commoning, which we define as a bottom-up creative process in which communities envision and enact new futures for their landscapes in pursuit of collective thriving. We ground this concept in an ethnographic study of Langholm in Scotland, where local residents organised a landmark community buyout of private land, establishing the Tarras Valley Nature Reserve. Through interviews, participant observations, and transect walks, we analyse how residents engaged with restoration not just as an ecological project but as a social, political, and affective act, redefining relationships with place, community, and ecosystems. Our findings reveal how restorative commoning emerges from grassroots mobilisation, historical solidarity, and supportive policy frameworks, particularly land tenure reforms that enable collective ownership. The Langholm case demonstrates that such ownership acts as a catalyst, transforming reactive resistance into proactive reimagination of landscapes. Beyond ecological outcomes, the process nurtures civic revitalisation, challenging dominant paradigms of privatisation and expert-led restoration. We argue that restorative commoning shifts restoration from a return to past conditions to a forward-looking, collective process of socio-ecological change. The study highlights the need for policies that create enabling conditions for community-led restoration, emphasising the interdependence of ecosystem health and social well-being. By centering local agency, affective ties to place, and democratic governance, restorative commoning offers a pathway for more inclusive and sustainable approaches to landscape revitalisation. • We examine how community-led ecological restoration can support the common good. • Building on a study case in south Scotland, we theorise this as restorative commoning. • This is radically different restoration to that of contemporary policy debates. • Creative societal processes are important to enact landscape revitalisation. • Collective ownership of assets can galvanise restorative commoning in practice.