Property Rights, Governance and the Environment

Abstract

Governance and property rights are closely linked and sustainable (natural) resource use and management is critically influenced by both. International agencies emphasise this close interrelationship. In fact in the 1990s the World Bank and other UN agencies, as well as individual country aid agencies, have been directing their programmes in the developing world toward improvement in governance — the process of sharing and exercising authority in the management of a country’s economic, social and natural resources (Hasan 1996, p.227). In exploring the interrelationship one needs to take explicit account of the legal position (de jure) and the actual position (de facto). In many instances, especially in LDCs, there is a significant divergence between the legal and the actual positions because of costs and problems associated with the enforcement of property rights.