Jonathan H. Adler, Profesor de Deerecho de la Case Western Reserve University, anuncia en The Commons Blog la publicación de un artículo académico sobre el futuro de la conservación ambiental y el papel creciente de los derechos de propiedad y la iniciativa privada. Adler es un conocido liberal, en el sentido clásico, y un defensor apasionado (en particular desde The Commons Blog) de la iniciativa privada en la gestión ambiental. El artículo está disponible en SSRN y se titula Back to the Future of Conservation: Changing Perceptions of Property Rights & Environmental Protection (NYU Journal of Law & Liberty, Forthcoming).
Como este es uno de los temas "favoritos" de mi blog, aunque el artículo es largo y "muy académico" creo que merece una lectura detenida. Por ahora nos quedamos aquí con el Abstract:
Property rights hold a central place in our Constitutional design and provide the foundation for America's market economy. Admiration of private property has not been universal, however. Some environmental scholars and policymakers have been particularly critical of classical liberal conceptions of private property on both theoretical and practical grounds, suggesting that traditional, classical liberal notions of property rights are incompatible with the demands of environmental protection. These perspectives influenced the development of command-and-control environmental regulation in the 1960s and 1970s. In recent years, however, the perception of private property's role in environmental conservation has begun to change. Disregard for the rights and interests of property owners spurred a "backlash" of opposition to environmental regulation. Environmental policymakers also came to recognize that the incentives created by land-use may compromise some conservation strategies. These developments spurred a reconsideration of the role of property rights in environmental policy, encouraging the development of more property-friendly regulatory strategies as well as the use of property rights themselves as a tool for environmental protection.