Property rights and climate change : land use under changing environmental conditions / edited by Fennie van Straalen, Thomas Hartmann, and John Sheehan.

PART I Impacts in changing contexts 1 Climate change-induced property re-evaluation in agrarian contexts
2 The challenges of voluntary resettlement processes as a need under changing climate conditions

PART II Theoretical notions 3 Eighteenth-century property rights for twenty-first-century environmental conditions?
4 Climate change and property rights changes

PART III Information and land values 5 To reveal or not to reveal? The impact of mapping environmental conditions on property rights in Taiwan
6 Costs and benefits: why economic quantification in hazard mitigation policy threatens culture in coastal Louisiana
7 Redistribution of property rights in response to climate change in Ghana, West Africa

PART IV Formal rules 8 Formal instruments to address environmental changes and property rights
9 The role of judges in using the common law to address climate change

PART V Financial responsibility 10 Climate change, coastal erosion and local government in New South Wales, Australia: old and new law and Old Bar
11 Property rights and insurance markets to enable adaptation to natural disaster risks
Conclusion: the social construction of changing environmental conditions

Property Rights and Climate Change explores the multifarious relationships between different types of climate-driven environmental changes and property rights. This original contribution to the literature examines such climate changes through the lens of property rights, rather than through the lens of land use planning. The inherent assumption pursued is that the different types of environmental changes, with their particular effects and impact on land use, share common issues regarding the relation between the social construction of land via property rights and the dynamics of a changing environment.

Making these common issues explicit and discussing the different approaches to them is the central objective of this book. Through examining a variety of cases from the Arctic to the Australian coast, the contributors take a transdisciplinary look at the winners and losers of climate change, discuss approaches to dealing with changing environmental conditions, and stimulate pathways for further research. This book is essential reading for lawyers, planners, property rights experts and environmentalists.