Writing on Water

Abstract

An environmentally, democratically just society accommodates claims to resources that compete, that overlap—a diversity of claims to a biologically diverse world. An ancient solution to this need to accommodate has been to organize societies into some form of common property system. In a common property system, a community has the power to regulate land not only because of its general sovereign power to govern but also because the community possesses a common property right in land that overlaps individual rights to land. Members of a common property community have a limited right to access and to use of land even if they do not, in some sense, “own” individual title to the land. As a consequence, the property claims of the individual must accommodate the property claims of the community and vice versa. Individuals cannot prevent the community from managing its property interests through appropriate regulation. If individuals could do so, they would “take” from the community without compensating it. They would also undermine community democracy that arises to govern community property rights.