Property Rights in the Defence of Nature (Routledge Library Editions: Environmental Policy)

Business & Money

Brubaker, Elizabeth

Economics

Routledge

First published in 1995. In this study, the author provides a lively and accessible account of the failure of the legal regime to protect the environment. Elizabeth Brubaker explores how legal reliance on property rights has been useful in opposing pollution of land and water. This title will be of interest to students of Environmental Studies, as well as to all those interest in a more secure future for the environment.

As farms increase in size and become increasingly industrialized, the problem of agricultural pollution is gaining urgency across Canada. The response from most environmentalists and provincial governments is to push for more centralized regulation. In Greener Pastures, Elizabeth Brubaker exposes the detrimental effects of such regulatory changes, which tend to exacerbate, rather than curb, pollution.
For centuries, Brubaker explains, conflicts about farming were resolved by the parties directly involved, aided by common-law courts. The rule, 'use your own property so as not to harm another's,' fairly and effectively resolved disputes between farmers and their neighbours and curbed environmental damage. Beginning in the 1970s, however, concerns about restraints on agriculture's growth prompted governments to replace the common law with more permissive provincial statutes.
Greener Pastures chronicles the centralization of agricultural regulation and the resulting environmental harm. Brubaker focuses, specifically, on the right-to-farm laws (passed by every province in recent decades) that have freed farmers from common-law liability for the nuisances they create. She shows how these laws have made possible an unsustainable intensification of agriculture, and argues for a decentralized, rights-based decision-making regime. This thoroughly researched and impressively thought-out study challenges many common assumptions about environmental regulation, and proposes fresh answers to grave environmental and political questions.

Greener Pastures (U of T Centre for Public Management Series)

Environmental & Natural Resources Law

University of Toronto Press

Property Rights in the Defence of Nature

Earthscan Canada

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Books by Brubaker, Elizabeth