Property Rights In Natural Resources Research Articles

Property Rights in Water and Social Conflict: An Example from Iceland

Social conflict in Iceland over property rights in natural resources has prompted a call for the introduction of a provision into the Constitution of Iceland declaring natural resources ‘the property of the nation’. The paper explores the social conflict concerning property rights in water and, based on recent proposals and recommendations for Constitutional amendments, the possible implications of such a Constitutional provision in light of existing water rights and how it accommodates the considerations raised.

The Variety of Property Systems and Rights in Natural Resources

Property theory has not kept pace with the growth of empirical and historical information on property systems. This paper, prepared for a Lincoln Institute conference on The Evolution of Property Systems and Rights Related to Land and Natural Resources: (a) introduces conventional theories of property rights in natural resources (based largely on Hardin 1968 and Demsetz 1967); (b) addresses issues in the construction and meaning of property rights and systems; (c) describes the findings of social scientists from decades of field and experimental research about the structure and performance of existing property systems; and (d) calls on property scholars to move beyond naive and simplistic theories of property rights in light of the wealth of empirical evidence demonstrating the variety of successful property regimes in use.

POLITICS AND PROPERTY IN NATURAL RESOURCES

Modern discussions of natural resources focus on increasing public control over extractive industries proposing measures that range from increasing the public's share of the gain via royalties and taxes to regulating extractive activities to prevent environmental problems to outright expropriation of private investments. This article argues that such efforts are counterproductive because the fundamental economic problem of natural resources is producing the knowledge necessary to locate and extract resource deposits. The public benefit comes from enabling the use of the resources and the increased economic activity their discovery produces rather than from royalties or expropriation. The key question in designing natural resource laws is thus their effects on the incentive to discover and manage resources. Private property rights in natural resources are the best way to provide such incentives. Fortunately, the combination of property rights and tort law principles (trespass and nuisance) enables property rights to solve environmental problems related to natural resource extraction as well.

Politics & Property in Natural Resources

Modern discussions of natural resources focus on increasing public control over extractive industries proposing measures that range from increasing the public's share of the gain via royalties and taxes to regulating extractive activities to prevent environmental problems to outright expropriation of private investments. This Article argues that such efforts are counterproductive because the fundamental economic problem of natural resources is producing the knowledge necessary to locate and extract resource deposits. The public benefit comes from enabling the use of the resources and the increased economic activity their discovery produces rather than from royalties or expropriation. The key question in designing natural resource laws is thus their effects on the incentive to discover and manage resources. Private property rights in natural resources are the best way to provide such incentives. Fortunately, the combination of property rights and tort law principles (trespass and nuisance) enables property rights to solve environmental problems related to natural resource extraction as well.

Nonhuman Animal Property: Reconciling Environmentalism and Animal Rights

The concept of property has been the focus of recent debate in environmental ethics. Proponents of private property rights argue that private owners are likely to preserve natural areas and endangered species because they alone have to bear the costs associated with environmental degradation and biodiversity loss. Others argue that property rights in natural resources are limited by obligations to do justice to the interests nonowners have in “common goods.” In what follows I will broaden the debate about property in environmental ethics by suggesting a very different way that private ownership could help protect natural areas and the nonhuman animals that inhabit them. As a check on human intervention in natural areas that is destructive of habitat, a nonhuman animal property rights regime (structured along the lines I suggest) can secure the maintenance of ecosystem stability and ensure the vital interests of nonhuman animals are respected. The key moral demands of environmentalism and animal rights can be met by extending the scope of property ownership beyond the human species to other sentient animals that have a vital interest in using natural goods.

Locke and Limits on Land Ownership

Revisionist history often upsets our ordinary ideas of right and wrong. We once believed, for example, that the Europeans who discovered and settled the new world were courageous in bringing civilization and its benefits to a new continent. It is now more common to recognize that some, perhaps many, of these explorers and settlers were tyrants who stole land from native Americans and often violently destroyed indigenous cultures. Just as scholars have provided a revisionist account ofthe history of settling America, in this essay I provide a revisionist analysis of Locke's theory of property rights. After providing a brief overview of his theory, I explain that Locke has traditionally been hailed as the defender of unlimited capitalistic appropriation of property, including land. Arguing that both the traditional capitalist-bourgeois and the Marxist-socialist interpretations of Locke have serious shortcomings,1 I opt for a middle ground between these two extremes and suggest that, although Locke ought not be interpreted in any doctrinaire, ideological way, his account may be ambiguous enough to support restriction of certain property rights in natural resources like land. If so, then Locke's writings may provide a philosophical basis in traditional political theory for a welfare-state capitalism that includes land-use planning. My arguments for the plausibility of this revisionist account of Locke attempt to avoid (what Quine called) nothing but explanations. Such simplistic explanations focus only on one aspect of complex views, and they may be responsible for whatever bias is exhibited in both the capitalist and the socialist views of Locke. Appropriating neither of these interpretations, I believe that Locke's own words provide a basis for limiting or denying property rights in land and other natural resources. My beliefrests on at least fourtheses,

Agriculture, ethics, and restrictions on property rights

The argument in this essay is twofold. (1) Procedural justice requires,in particular cases, that we restrict property rights in natural resources, e.g., California agricultural land or Appalachian coal land. (2) Conditions imposed by Locke's political theory and by dense population require,in general, that we restrict property rights in finite or non-renewable natural resources such as land. If these arguments are correct, then we have a moral imperative to use land-use controls (such as taxation, planning, zoning, and acreage limitations) to restructure land ownership and land use in a far more radical way than has ever been accomplished in the past.

Protection from Government Action Affecting Private Property Rights in Natural Resources in the United States

Protection from Government Action Affecting Private Property Rights in Natural Resources in the United States

An Illustration of Legal Development—The Passing of the Doctrine of Riparian Rights

Contemporary with the recent and very rapid industrial development of the United States has been observed an unexampled liberality of juristic thought. Especially has the process of settlement and industrialization of the West been pervaded by certain unusual social and economic influences, and likewise has been comparatively free from that judicial conservatism prevalent during the periods of colonization and settlement of the eastern and central portions of the country. Extremely dynamic forces, finding their origin in the manner of settlement, the physical characteristics of the country, and the personal attributes of the population, readily developed what may be termed specialized forms of social and legal institutions. As economic and political factors have become adjusted and a stable social poise has been approached, some of the diverging branches of the new sociopolitical life of the West have been pruned back to antecedent form, but others have become component parts of a permanent organization. Incident to the perpetuation of an unusual industrial structure, there have come about the development of new legal concepts which have assumed special relation to property rights in natural resources. This was possible only upon the abrogation of common law precedents and the renunciation of doctrines formerly conceded to be fundamental in American practice.