Literature Review

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.

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Intellectual property rights (IPR) protection is an important incentive for green innovation and carbon reduction. A better understanding of the effect of IPR protection on carbon emissions (CEs) remains vital to carbon neutrality in China. An evolutionary game model was constructed to depict the multidimensional theoretical channels from IPR protection to CEs. Drawing from 284 Chinese cities’ data (2003–2019), this paper empirically identified the reduction effect of intellectual property city (IPC) construction on CEs with difference-in-differences (DID) method. IPC construction reduced the cities’ CEs by 10.34%. It curbed CEs by promoting green technology and reducing energy consumption but failed to optimize industrial structures. The instrumental variable (IV) constructed by the number of Confucius temples also reveals that the construction of IPC can significantly curb CEs. This effect shows an increasing trend over time. However, it also carries heterogeneity, presenting significantly negative coefficients in eastern (−0.0976) and western (−0.2554), resource-poor (−0.1303), highly marketable (−0.943), and environmentally friendly cities (−0.0786), but insignificant effects in other cities. For enabling China to meet its carbon-neutrality target, several improvements are needed. These include the implementation of differentiated IPR protection, strengthened supervision, and enhanced optimization of the basic green environment.

One of the most pressing issues of present times is climate change. With over 55% of the world population living in cities, the question is particularly relevant for urban settlements, and how to consolidate environmental justice in such scenarios. How shall the rule of law approach the matter? It will depend on each place's specific environmental, social and cultural elements, keeping in mind the most needed safeguard of fundamental rights. One of those is property. How does property, underpinning land use and urban planning law, relate to such challenges? This chapter aims to provide an introductory theoretical overview of real (land-related) property and climate change. (Henceforth, by “property” we will be referring to real property). We argue that the impact of property rights on mitigation and adaptation to climate change can be both positive and negative. These will differ across different property rights and planning law regimes in contending with the challenges of climate change.

In the face of climate crisis, rising inequity, and the ever- expanding commodification of urban space, the urban design discipline is confronted with challenges that often exceed its traditional design methods. State and market action shaped by capitalism continues to produce rising inequity, ecological destruction and imbalances of power in communities around the world.1 Normative urban design methods have focused on shaping urban form through scripting and projecting typo-morphological patterns of built form, choreographing experiences of the public realm, organizing systems of mobility, infrastructure and ecosystems, and regulating the city through policy regimes.2 However, the emergence and maturation of the discipline as response to the expansion and fragmentation of urban form during the late twen- tieth century has operated in parallel to ever intensified commodification of the city. While recent work has brought a renewed focus on ecosystems and sustainability oriented regimes of regulation, the challenges of access, equity and ecological crisis persist. An emergent discourse around urban commoning has identified the capacity of citizen-led resource sharing practices to respond to these challenges in ways that neither the state nor the market alone is able to.3 Processes of commoning create bottom-up transformations of political discourse, patterns of spatial use, management of resources, structures of ownership and value-capture, and the repositioning of productive and reproductive labor.4 This paper explores how normative urban design methods might be reoriented to advance urban commoning projects, learning from goals, practices and patterns of real-world case-studies of urban commoning. It builds on recent literature on urban commoning, and summarizes a range of commoning oriented design approaches selected from five years of student thesis projects.

In the view of most commentators, academic and otherwise, “free market environmentalism” is a veritable contradiction in terms. It is widely thought that to the extent that one favors protecting the environment, or, even, studying it, to that extent one must reject free enterprise and private property rights. The only scholars who wish to save the fauna and flora, ensure that we do not trash the planet, must eschew such right-wing considerations and pretty much embrace the polar opposite viewpoint. In the extreme, free market environmentalism is not only a logical contradiction, it reeks of fascism, profiteering, and destruction of this our third rock from the sun. Shahar does not at all fit this bill. Although a critic of free enterprise environmentalism, he treats this viewpoint sympathetically. He does not give it the back of his hand in derision. You will look in vain for contempt in his rejection of this philosophy. Rather, his critique is a careful, cautious, knowledgeable treatment of this perspective. All the more reason that his criticisms be examined critically, since in my view, the best last chance of saving the environment lies in exactly the direction opposite to the one he avers.

Applying the classical theory of ‘Doctrine of Public Trust’ – that is natural resources either owned by no one (res mullions) or by everyone in common (res communions) is to understand the sovereignty of resources. The nature of ‘the State or the central government or the Federal state property’ concerning the ownership, extension or to occupy natural resources as a frontier is vested in the capital interest as per the authority or investors’ high-ticket value or an asset; Natural Resources recognition and stakeholders’ possession over these, while availing the right to property is mostly controversial in the periphery of national jurisdiction. Category of citizens decide the value and price of the property rights of the environmental resources. Supporting the recognition of some forms of community property rights depends upon the charges of value and profits over natural resources. The invested price is bargained to extract, explore, and exploit the sources of nature that are available as organic and inorganic, as renewable, and non- renewable, as bio-gradable and bio-degradable. The investment in harnessing all sorts of energies that are strategically a value ladder of advancement of human existence and civilization based on the natural elements of stratosphere and atmosphere. The connection between property rights and natural resources is not just coercion of the maximum by way of investment, but it is also a matter of law and rights as the most common of the commonest depends upon the charged position of high tickets that make money from natural resources as investors by way of return stocks. In the pretext of investment law, most of the low-ticket entities such as commoners’ privacy and dependency both get at stake, because natural resources as value ladders are treated as private property by private entities. In view of this present scenario of the environmental aspirations and mismanagement, the accountability and liability are at risk to pay back security, safety, and protection not only to the local, indigenous, landless, rural and the most affected ones, but also to maintain the habitat of natural experience with environmental justice and protection.

In contemporary parlance, the environment and its preservation have emerged as a principal focus and concern for the global populace. This phenomenon is known to escalate during times of armed conflict. Armed conflicts directly impact the environment (such as destroying natural resources or pollution resulting from military operations). The investigation into the ecological destruction inflicted upon the natural world during the two world wars demonstrates that the emphasis on safeguarding the environment is no longer a theoretical notion but a concrete actuality encapsulated within the framework of legal doctrines. The protection of the environment encompasses a diverse array of International Humanitarian Law (IHL) and International Criminal Law (ICL). This study scrutinized the safeguards and preservation of environmental rights in times of armed conflicts, whether domestic or international, through the lenses of ICL and IHL.