Literature Review

The proposed EU Nature Restoration Law is an ambitious attempt to resolve the gaps in the existing EU Biodiversity Law. It introduces targets to restore 20% of Member States´ land and sea territory, with upscaling deadlines, whilst prescribing a more holistic perspective on biodiversity recovery, as targets affect, e.g. agricultural and urban ecosystems. However, the broad scope of these targets has raised concerns among some Member States regarding potential conflicts with private property rights, including land ownership, established hunting rights, and fishing permits. Nevertheless, it is essential to ensure that the complexity of property rights does not hinder nature restoration efforts within the EU. Consequently, the debate surrounding property rights and environmental protection has gained increased relevance. This chapter examines the tensions and synergies between the proposed restoration targets outlined in the Commission Proposal and the protection of private property. In summary, it concludes that while tensions may exist, they are often overstated, while there is a significant (though less-discussed) potential for synergies.

Knowledge capital is an intangible asset, is saved and preserved under the Intellectual property rights acts. Intellectual properties include trademark, designs, copy rights, geographical indicators and patent. Corporate social responsibility (CSR) is the idea that businesses should take into account the interests of society by being accountable for how their operations affect customers, employees, shareholders, communities, and the environment. The goal of every organization is to maximise shareholder dividends, for that the organisation can use the company's rights and power through intellectual property rights. The IPR acts helps the individual to file and register their assets legally. Through this study, it was found that during the years of 2015-20, the trend of increase in number applications filed and registered for the intellectual property. Also studied various companies CSR activities in connection with the Intellectual property rights.

Water scarcity is a perennial problem with dire consequences for the United States and governments around the world. A lack of adequate water resources is a systematic cause of environmental harm, economic damage, and societal division. Climate change has exacerbated these problems making water even more essential and more attractive for large investors.

There is demand to protect at-risk fish species and ecosystems. Property rights regimes can be superior to spatial controls via Marine Protected Areas (MPAs) for doing so. Empirical cases from Australia and the US indicate that MPAs are inequitable, too large and restrictive, and controversial. These conditions lead to resistance and political pushback, threatening long-term budgets and conservation goals. A critique of MPAs is presented along with a range of property rights arrangements–common, community, private—and Coasean bargaining as alternatives. Outlined benefits are a.) Rights holders have a stake in conservation and are central in its design. They are more than respondents. b). Costs/benefits can be more equally distributed, including direct payments that include both costs of transition and contribution to public goods provision. c.) Spatial set-asides confront tradeoffs and hence, are more apt to be economically sited and designed. d.) Modifications can occur more smoothly through market exchange than through the political process. Durable global conservation efforts can be enhanced.

The development of digital technology in the 4.0 Industrial Revolution has a substantial influence on the legal protection of intellectual property rights (IPR). Technologies such as the internet, big data, and artificial intelligence allow the use and utilization of intellectual work by other parties without permission or without paying royalties. In this context, the theoretical study of the legal protection of IPR during the Industrial Revolution 4.0 involves various disciplines, including law, information technology, business, and economics. This study discusses the importance of legal protection of IPR in the framework of the Industrial Revolution 4.0 era. Some of the relevant theories and concepts in this study are intellectual property rights (HKI), Industrial Revolution 4.0, blockchain technology, digital business models, knowledge-based economy, and commercial law. This study concludes that the legal protection of IPR during the Industrial Revolution 4.0 needs to be faced with innovative and integrated solutions. Governments, international institutions, industry players, and society as a whole must work together to develop rules and practices that are more effective in protecting intellectual property rights in the digital world. The study also discusses some of the challenges in the legal protection of IPR in the era of the Industrial Revolution 4.0, such as the issue of unauthorized use of data, copyright abuse, and challenges in developing sustainable business models. Blockchain technology and the concept of a knowledge-based economy can be an effective solution in overcoming these challenges. In this research, a qualitative approach is used by analyzing theories and concepts related to legal protection of IPR during the Industrial Revolution 4.0. The data used in this study are literature from various sources such as scientific journals, books, and official documents from related institutions. This study is expected to contribute and provide input for policy makers, researchers, practitioners, and the general public address the issues of IPR kegal protection in the Industrial Revolution 4.0. Through integrated and collaborative efforts, it is hoped that a more conducive environment for innovation and sustainable technological development can be created.

In this paper, panel data from Chinese cities from 2000 to 2020 were used, and the intellectual property pilot was used as a quasi-natural experiment. The double difference model mainly tests the underlying mechanism of the impact of intellectual property rights pilots on urban carbon emissions. This study revealed that IPR pilots play an important role in reducing urban carbon emissions. Heterogeneity experiments reveal that IPR pilots are conducive to reducing carbon emissions in coastal as well as high greening cities and that the underlying mechanism through which IPR pilots affect urban carbon emissions mainly occurs at the level of innovation and the optimization of the industrial structure. In addition, this paper also validates the smoothness of the model by replacing the explanatory variables and performing a placebo test, which further strengthens the reliability of the paper’s conclusions.

The G20 comprises rich, industrialized, and powerful nations that advance the world economy through foreign direct investment (FDI). Nevertheless, these countries account for the largest share of global carbon dioxide emissions (CO2). Enforcing intellectual property rights (IPRs) has become a useful tool for stimulating clean technologies to mitigate climate change. This study examines how IPR enforcement moderated the inflow of FDI and carbon emissions in the G20 from 2001 to 2017. We applied the Driscoll-Kraay robust standard error technique, Fully Modified Ordinary Least Squares (FMOLS), Dynamic Ordinary Least Squares (DOLS), and Dumitrescu-Hurlin causality tests. The results show that FDI increases emissions, thus confirming the pollution haven effect. Long-term estimates suggest that the moderating role of IPRs in FDI significantly reduces environmental degradation. Causality analysis shows that FDI causes CO2emissions in the long run, and carbon emissions enforce IPR regulations. Furthermore, we observed bidirectional causality between IPRs, FDI relationships, and carbon emissions. Based on these results, policymakers should enhance IPR policies and encourage clean technology through FDI among G20 members. In addition, governments should promote the clean-up of industrial processes, green finance, and the consumption of eco-friendly technologies, such as renewable energy, to achieve carbon neutrality.

This piece addresses the political dimension of sustainability in the agricultural bioeconomy by focusing on power, participation, and property rights around key technologies. Bioeconomy policies aim to establish economic systems based on renewable resources such as plants and microorganisms to reduce dependence on fossil resources. To achieve this, they rely on economic growth and increased biomass production through high-tech innovations. This direction has sparked important critique of the environmental and social sustainability of such projects. However, little attention has been paid in the bioeconomy literature to the political dimension surrounding key precision technologies such as data-driven precision agriculture (PA) or precision breeding technologies using new genomic techniques (NGT). The political dimension includes questions of power, participation, and property rights regarding these technologies and the distribution of the benefits and burdens they generate. This lack of attention is particularly pertinent given the recurring and promising claims that precision technologies not only enhance environmental sustainability, but also contribute to the democratization of food and biomass production. This contribution addresses this claim in asking whether we can really speak of a democratization of the agricultural bioeconomy through these precision technologies. Drawing on (own) empirical research and historical evidence, it concludes that current patterns are neither driving nor indicative of a democratization. On the contrary, corporate control, unequal access, distribution, and property rights over data and patents point to few gains for small firms and breeders, but to a reproduction of farmers' dependencies, and less transparency for consumers.

This dissertation is about security governance and land governance particularly land guards, landguardism and associated security in Ghana. Its central argument is that land guards and landguardism threaten Ghana’s stability, peace, security and development. It challenges the ‘Ghana is stable’ thesis which has been dominant in the academic and policy literatures in the last three decades which portray Ghana as a ‘small heaven’, ‘an island of peace’ and ‘an oasis of peace’ in a region associated with instability. It agrees that while Ghana has been stable relative to her neighbours, the Ghanaian state also faces several non-military threats and challenges one of which is landguardism which involves the use of violence or the threat of violence by some actors to protect or guard land or housing property belonging to those actors or other actors. The dissertation traces the genesis of landguardism to the decision in 1877 by the British colonial government to move the capital from Cape Coast to Accra, a decision which dramatically changed the value of land in the town and set in motion a litany of problems including disputes, litigation, conflict and violence. The emergence of landguardism is also strongly linked to Ghana’s land tenure system which is largely insecure and does not protect both communal and private property rights. It is also observed that the Ghanaian state’s lack of political will, its institutional incapacity to democratically resolve social conflicts such as land conflicts and land disputes and to end the ubiquity of landguardism in the cityscape has contributed to the evolution and transformation of landguardism into extremely violent activity in which land guards routinely employ violence, harassment, intimidation and murder to enforce their will. Consequently, landguardism has grown to become a leading security and development problem in southern Ghana particularly in the transition peri-urban zones. Landguardism particularly threatens governability of the entire Greater Accra Region (GAR) as well as the regions bordering GAR. Particularly, the murders, assaults and violence iv destabilise communities, and threaten human security including personal security, food security and livelihoods of peri-urban farmers. It threatens Ghana’s economic security dealing heavy blow to confidence of investors, real estate developers, as well as small businesses such as salt producers, and tourism providers. Besides, landguardism erodes the capacity of the police to provide security as vital police resources are devoted to fighting the menace. Metropolitan, district and municipal authorities facing myriads of economic, security, social and environmental problems are forced to divert their limited resources to ameliorate landguardism. Landguardism also worsens land and chieftaincy disputes. The dissertation explores the state’s relationship with land guards as well as its response to the landguardism threat particularly the state’s decision to criminalise landguardism through Acts 999 and 1036 and the public’s perception of that response. There is a mixed public opinion regarding whether Acts 999 and 1036 are needed in the first place. There is however, public consensus that the lack of enforcement of existing rules and laws governing land management, land acquisition, use of proceeds by chiefs as well as urbanisation, fragile economy, youth unemployment among others have acted as the fuel to fan the flame of landguardism. There is also consensus that criminalising and outlawing landguardism by the state is a right decision. This is shown by the outright opposition to the idea of legalising and regulating landguardism. The thesis identifies landguardism as a network and because it is a network the state by disproportionately focusing on the land guards and ignoring the role of other institutions and actors, has made its policies ineffective. As such more attention should be paid to other actors in the network whose actions and inactions allow landguardism to thrive. The thesis identifies the decline of Asafo Companies that formerly acted as a countervailing force against the chiefly and landowning class as well the fragile economy as playing a major role in the proliferation of landguardism in southern Ghana and recommends that the revival of the Asafo institution and building a robust economy could go a long way to bring sanity to the land sector.

This chapter analyses the leeway for the operationalisation of animal property rights within the European Union. After having outlined the theoretical underpinnings of the concept of human property, this chapter assesses the possible interplay between the concept of animal property rights and recent manifestations of rights of nature. Through a detailed analysis of the case law of the Court of Justice of the EU, this chapter claims that a recalibration of the existing human duties towards strictly protected species, such as grey wolves, provides a more promising new pathway for the recognition of property rights of wild animals in the EU. In fact, it is established that new litigation strategies might focus on pushing courts to acknowledge the property rights of strictly protected species that lie dormant in the existing legislation, which would have a significant normative value for the further development of EU environmental law and governance.

The “private” dimension of social life is problematic, posing conceptual, political, and ecological challenges. Some of these problems arise from the very nature of private property as it is enshrined in social life, which demands special privileges be granted to “private” matters on the grounds that these are private, because the predominant representation of the involved rights is that they reflect claims of the holders, rather than legitimate claims of society as a whole in allocating responsibilities, benefits, and duties. The claim to the rationality of allocations of property rights, this article argues, must be questioned in light of the kind of commonality that is revealed in a striking manner by environmental issues (although it is not restricted to environmental matters). This questioning makes sense in relation to an analysis of social interactions, beyond the problematic opposition between the private sphere and public life.

PES schemes have entertained much interest as a potentially effective market-based instrument for the provision of ecosystem services. After swift adoption, many have started to question the promises of PES and PES-like schemes in ecosystem service provision. Hence, there has been growing attention to evaluating the impact of PES schemes. This paper attempts to review the practice of PES scheme evaluation with particular emphasis on forest conservation in Ethiopia. To this end, I have reviewed articles assessing the potential impacts of coffee certification and participatory forest management (PFM). The review shows that despite the rush to implement PES programs in Ethiopia, specific PES regulations and vibrant property rights prerequisites are missing. While I admit the perverse implications of uncritical adoption of PES, it could be a potentially vital tool for forest conservation in Ethiopia, especially when integrated with other environmental governance instruments.