and islands that line thousands of miles of shores.

For centuries, entitlement and privilege have underpinned the country's rural landscape.

And now, some claim the way Scotland's land is distributed has become the most unequal

in the developed world.

Amidst this, a new group of owners have emerged, along with attempts by the Scottish government

to modernise the rules and in turn, encourage a more diverse ownership pattern.

So how does land ownership impact Scotland's economy, environment and its people, and does

it actually matter who the land belongs to?

My name is Malcolm Combe and I'm a senior

lecturer at the University of Aberdeen School of Law. There has been some literature to

the effect that Scotland does have the most concentrated pattern of land ownership in

Europe, possibly even the developed world. This is best reflected in the 432:50 figure

that's most associated with Andy Wightman, the Green Party MSP. He did some research

which suggests that 432 people or entities own 50% of Scotland's privately-owned rural

land. So that's excluding, for example, publicly-owned land, say Ministry of Defence

properties and also excluding land in urban areas.

Traditional aristocratic landowners like the Duke of Buccleuch, still own large swathes

of the country. But in recent decades, prospective owners from abroad have been purchasing slices

of land across Scotland. Take the Danish billionaire Anders Povlsen

for example. In 2018, the ASOS majority shareholder became Scotland's largest private land owner,

after snapping up a whopping 220,000 acres -that's roughly twice the size of Barbados.

His wealth has allowed him to purchase 12 Highland estates as part of his conservation

project called Wildland.

And he's not the only Scandinavian keen

on Scotland either. The former CEO of the LEGO group, Kjeld Kirk Kristiansen, owns several

estates, including Ledgowan in Wester Ross.

Foreign royalty has been quick to join in

on the action also. The billionaire ruler of Dubai, Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid al-Maktoum

owns the 63,000-acre Inverinate estate, which includes three helipads and a 14-bedroom holiday home.

But despite the publicity given to the likes

of Sheikh Mohammed and Povlsen, the number of overseas Scottish landowners is not as

big as you might think. Registers of Scotland figures show that 6%

of the titles belong to owners outside Scotland. The majority of these belong to people living

in England, Wales and Northern Ireland, while just over 1%, or roughly 24,000 titles, are

registered to addresses out with the UK.

So overseas ownership is not illegal, provided

the entity that owns the land is able to trade, that's absolutely fine. Is it a problem?

A lot of people would say no. Inward investment is a good thing. But in terms of local accountability,

in terms of owners perhaps having a different set of interests and perceptions to the local

community, then perhaps it is seen as a problem in that regard.

With the release of the Panama Papers in 2016, it has been suggested that 750,000 acres of

Scotland is owned in tax havens, potentially causing challenges for tax authorities and

law enforcement. The actual four recurring derestriction that

Registers of Scotland have identified in terms of offshore ownership are the British Virgin

Islands, the Isle of Man, Guernsey and Jersey. Perhaps that's tax treatment, perhaps that

transparency related, perhaps that's entirely arbitrary, but that's just the way it is.

So who takes the crown as the biggest owner in Scotland? The land is split mainly between

public bodies, individuals, communities and other owners like the Royal Family.

But the largest single owner is Forestry and Land Scotland. They hold 640,000 hectares,

the equivalent of thirty-five-times the area of Glasgow. This land helps boost the economy

through logging and tourism. The Ministry of Defence owns swathes of land

across Scotland, some of which is used for military training exercises.

Scotland's 32 councils own a sizable chunk too, as do the RSPB and the National Trust.

Perhaps more surprising is that the Church of England makes the list of biggest landowners

after buying thousands of hectares of forestry as part of its investment portfolio.

But the overwhelming majority of rural land is in the hands of private owners - around

57% according to the Scottish government.

Land ownership is a hot potato. Like many other legal systems, Scotland says the right

of ownership is the apex right, it is the right that gives you a really important agenda

setting role. The risk would be that you get a land owner who essentially throws their

weight around a little bit. Land can have such a big impact on other people. If you

have a land owner who is particularly thrawn and stubborn and doesn't want to do something,

then that can have a big impact.

This was the case on the Isle of Eigg in the

90s. Islanders previously faced years of issues with absentee landlords, including the removal

of waste from the island. So, they decided to purchase the land for themselves. £1.5

million pounds was raised and over 20 years since the buyout, the island's population

has almost doubled.

Several pieces of land reform legislation

have been passed by the Scottish government. In 2013, the then-first minister Alex Salmond

also set a target of one million acres of Scotland being owned by local communities

by the end of the decade.

There was a law passed called the Land Reform

Act 2003 which gave communities in rural Scotland the right to have first dibs on an asset when

the land was put up for sale. Then the second wave of land reform legislation came with

the Community Empowerment (Scotland) Act 2015 and that brought in a way for communities

to take on a land asset that had been neglected, abandoned or environmentally mismanaged. The

third wave is the most recent Land Reform (Scotland) Act 2016, which has a right for

communities to acquire land when the land owner has somehow been blocking sustainable

development locally.

Although the one million acres target is unlikely

to be achieved by 2020, the Scottish government continues to stress that land reform is on

a "radical journey". What is certain is that the debate over who should own Scotland won't

disappear anytime soon.

So land reform is a bit of a recurring issue

and this is probably because it's a bit of a goldilocks issue. To some, what's happening

at the moment is too hot, to others it's too cold, to others it's just right. So

we could imagine returning to these issues again in the future.