This paper illustrates the clash between interests and ideas concerning property rights and regulation by analyzing the ongoing debate on the right of public access in Sweden, which has recently intensified due to an influx of foreign professional berry harvesters. The conflicts in Sweden are found to stem from contradictory concepts concerning property (notably, ownership and the right of public access) and ideological differences in terms of whether forest resources should be regulated by government or governance.

This study examines the relationship between property rights, defined by land tenure security and the strength of local-level institutions, and household's preferences for fuelwood source. A multinomial regression model applied to survey data collected in rural Ethiopia underpins the analysis. Results from the discrete choice model indicate that active local-level institutions increase household dependency on open access forests, while land security reduces open access forest dependence.

Previous studies have shown that collective property rights offer higher flexibility than individual property and improve sustainable community-based forest management. Our case study, carried out in the Beni department of Bolivia, does not contradict this assertion, but shows that collective rights have been granted in areas where ecological contexts and market facilities were less favourable to intensive land use. Previous experiences suggest investigating political processes in order to understand the criteria according to which access rights were distributed.

We examine the efficiency, distributional, and environmental consequences of assigning spatial property rights to part of a spatially-connected natural resource, a situation which we refer to as partial enclosure of the commons. The model reflects on a large class of institutions and natural resources for which complete enclosure by a sole owner may be desirable, but is often institutionally impractical.

A good deal of research has highlighted the surge and development of rural land sales and tenancy contracts in West Africa. However, the commoditization of land, especially through sales, does not appear to be obvious, as land transactions appear to be a major source of tenure insecurity and land conflicts. This issue is linked with the broader issue of identification and recognition of both the land rights that are being transferred and people holding them.

We examine the efficiency, distributional, and environmental consequences of assigning spatial property rights to part of a spatially-connected natural resource, a situation which we refer to as partial enclosure of the commons. The model reflects on a large class of institutions and natural resources for which complete enclosure by a sole owner may be desirable, but is often institutionally impractical.

This themed issue of Land Use Policy builds on the papers presented at an international symposium entitled Social Dimensions of Market-based Instruments, convened by the Charles Darwin University in Darwin, Australia, in November 2010. The symposium set out to review the extent to which market-based instruments were being employed as social policy tools in various contexts, what challenges achieving relevant social policy objectives posed, what trade-offs arose between environmental, social and economic objectives, and whether and how tensions could be resolved.

The Sundarbans Mangrove Forest (SMF) is the world's largest mangrove forest and it provides livelihoods to 3.5 million forest-dependent people in coastal Bangladesh. The first study aim was to analyse the efficacy of the state property regime in managing the forest through a close examination of the relationship between property rights and mangrove conservation practices. The second study aim was to explore forest-dependent communities' (FDCs) perceptions about their participation in management and conservation practices.

Decentralizing property rights from state control to user communities has encouraged people’s participation in forest management. Relatively few studies, however, examine the forest regulations required for exercising such property rights. To address this issue, Schlager and Ostrom’s ‘bundle of rights’ framework was used to examine various forms of property rights and regulations in three systems of community-based forest management.

We argue that public service economics provides a new perspective on landscape stewardship by explaining it as human‐to‐human transfer of partial property rights. These mutually linked exchanges involve rights to use, to access, or to control and allocate land, labour, skills or information. From the perspective of public service economics, we identify the actors involved in landscape stewardship and distinguish entrepreneurial strategies for service provision based on resource orientation, user orientation or competiveness orientation.

Scholars have often puzzled over why ancient socio-ecological systems (SES) have collapsed or survived overtime. This paper examines the case of the 2,000-year old Ifugao SES in the northern Philippines and the contemporary challenges they now face. Five observations can be drawn. First, the Ifugao case does not fit some of the conventional theoretical explanations for the collapse or survival of SES.

We examine the efficiency, distributional, and environmental consequences of assigning spatial property rights to part of a spatially-connected natural resource, a situation which we refer to as partial enclosure of the commons. The model reflects on a large class of institutions and natural resources for which complete enclosure by a sole owner may be desirable, but is often institutionally impractical.