Learning from remote, sustainable communities

It’s Britain’s remotest mainland point, and Scotland’s last great wilderness. Accessible only by a 20-mile cliff-top hike or a chugging boat-ride from the faded ferry port of Mallaig, the Knoydart Peninsula is a place of wheeling golden eagles, free-roaming red deer, dense woodland, and brooding munros.

But for its inhabitants, who number barely 100, it is also the location of a slowly unfolding experiment in sustainable living.

A decade ago, Knoydart (from the Norse 'Knut's Fjord') became the subject of a celebrated community buy-out when its 17,200-acre central estate was sold for £750,000 to a charity set up by residents determined to end 900 years of near-feudal ownership. Since then, the Knoydart Foundation has transformed the area into a model of responsible land management, animal husbandry, and ethical tourism.

Independence

Over the past eight years, every property in Inverie – the dispersed settlement, snaking around a bay, which passes for the peninsula’s capital – has been linked to a hydroelectric system fed by Loch Bhraomisaig on the slopes of Beinn Buidhe. The community has also been exporting its most...

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