Book Title: Research Handbook on Property, Law and Theory

Publisher: Edward Elgar Publishing

Abstract: This chapter pursues one strand in the environmental ethics literature which, flowing from an examination of the work of Peter Hacker and Baird Callicott is dubbed the ‘ecological’ ethic, to determine whether there is a tension between the liberal property rights instituted in most developed societies and environmental ethics. To help fix upon the relevant issues, a regime of rights to resources which can be called ‘usufructory right’, is explored, taking John Locke’s work as an example of these rights. In conclusion, it is argued that liberal property rights are essentially neutral with respect to environmental values, and that there is nothing about property rights per se that should inhibit their pursuit.