Sustainable Property Law

Sustainable development, meeting our own needs without compromising the ability for future generations to meet their own needs, is one of the most important challenges of the 21st century. The UN Global Goals, formally known as the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), operationalise the general idea of sustainable development over a number of areas. The underlying ideas and assumptions are that everybody is not only able but should contribute to achieving these goals.

Sustainable development raises serious challenges to legal systems. These systems can be reevaluated to investigate to what extent they facilitate parties, both private parties and governments, to work towards a more sustainable society. Often the framework of planetary boundaries is used to measure and illustrate how excess use of resources leads to overshooting sustainable use of our planet.

Approximately 24% of the earth’s surface is land and it is estimated that a vast amount of that land is held in private ownership. Land use is therefore an important contributor to climate change, to equality and other aspects of sustainable development. There is much to be said about land use, but the law of property is generally under explored in this area. This chapter will focus on ecological sustainability and therefore on the negative effect of land use on climate change, but there are also various other sustainable aspects to land use such as the role of property and race, use and access to water and power relations.

After an overview of the current state of property law and sustainability, this chapter will deal with some fundamental challenges that need to be addressed in the coming decade(s) in order to create a sustainable property law.