This article reviews intellectual property rights (IPRs), with some emphasis on the protection of agricultural and life sciences innovations. The main institutional features of IPRs are first discussed, along with a brief historical background and an articulation of the main rationale for the existence of such rights. This is followed by an overview of the principal economic issues related to IPRs.

The use of three-dimensional (3D) property rights has for many years been a tool for providing secure and lasting rights for the use of land and its volume of space in complex situations involving land use in the urban society. The aim of this article is to investigate the reasons for introducing 3D property in a legal system. This is illustrated by using the Swedish system as an example. In general, without the possibility of forming 3D property units with direct ownership, other forms have to be used, such as indirect ownership or granted user rights.

Trophy hunting can provide economic incentives to conserve wild species, but it can also involve risk when rare species are hunted. The anthropogenic Allee effect (AAE) is a conceptual model that seeks to explain how rarity may spread the seeds of further endangerment. The AAE model has increasingly been invoked in the context of trophy hunting, increasing concerns that such hunting may undermine rather than enhance conservation efforts. We question the appropriateness of uncritically applying the AAE model to trophy hunting for 4 reasons.

This paper explores the puzzle of why the pastoral Maasai of Kajiado, Kenya, supported theindividualization of their collectively held group ranches, an outcome that is inconsistent withtheoretical expectation. Findings suggest that individuals and groups will seek to alter propertyrights in their anticipation of net gains from a new assignment, even as they seek to eliminatedisadvantages that were present in the status quo property rights structure.

This study presents an approach to analyzing decentralized forestry and naturalresource management and land property rights issues, and catalyzing collectiveaction among villages and district governments. It focuses on understanding thecurrent policies governing local people’s access to property rights and decisionmaking processes, and learning how collective action among community groups andinteraction among stakeholders can enhance local people’s rights over lands,resources, and policy processes for development.

Swat is part of the high mountain Hindu-Kush Himalayan region of Pakistan, with diverse biophysical and socio-economic characteristics. The region is endowed with many fragile and fragmented ecosystems, and land use and land cover changes have accelerated destructive processes with irreversible effects on ecosystems. The paper aims to (1) find proximate and underlying causes of land use and land cover changes; (2) analyse the drivers of change; and (3) reflect on the role of governance and policy.

European inland commercial fisheries exhibit a wide spectrum of fishing modes, and have experienced major changes over recent decades. A peculiar feature of inland fisheries is the deep dependence on resources usually owned by someone else than a fisher. Therefore institutions such as property rights regimes, have a profound influence on the prerequisites to carry out commercial inland fisheries.

As the pressure on the water resources mounts within a river basin, institutional innovation may occur not as a result of a planned sequence of adjustments, but arising out of the interplay of several factors. By focusing on the basin trajectory this paper illustrates the importance of understanding how local-level institutional arrangements interface with national-level policies and basin-wide institutions.

When communicating with farmers and ranchers, land conservation professionals would be better equipped if they understood key influences on their target audience's decisions to permanently preserve their land from development. This study predicted key factors influencing rancher engagement in a conservation easement (CE) agreement. Specifically, theory of planned behavior, trust, environmental identity, past behavior, perceptions of specific CE characteristics and selected participant demographics were used as predictors.

This paper provides arguments for discussions of the role of property rights for food security and child nutrition in rural Africa. The results are drawn from a case study in the Kafue Flats of Zambia. They show that unclear jurisdictional boundaries and weak authorities facilitated re-negotiations of property rights related to natural resources in the context of the Southern African food crisis 2002-2003. Access to natural resources was skewed towards the more powerful.