ABSTRACT
This chapter considers what the development of markets in environmental goods and services means for both the substance of property law rules and the way that we think about property. It looks at environmental ‘assets’ or ‘entitlements’, including tradable permissions or quotas (for example, fishing permits), pollution authorisations (e.g. emissions trading allowances), and ecological benefits, which may be measured and traded in the context of ecological compensation or ‘offsetting’ schemes (e.g. biodiversity or carbon credits). The chapter covers three key challenges for property law relating to the scope and content of property regimes, and deeper anxieties around their ethical foundations. The first section argues that despite their statutory origin and incorporeal character, environmental entitlements can meaningfully fall within the scope of property and locates property practices in environmental markets within a broader technological and political context. The second section grapples with the content of environmental entitlements, suggesting that new approaches are needed for decision-making, publicity, transferability and modification and termination of rights. This chapter concludes that the effectiveness of environmental markets depends on the development of ecologically just property foundations. Current crises demand new paradigms of allocation and use that better reflect our fragility and interconnectedness.
