RESTRICTIVE PROPERTY LAWS WORSENING POVERTY

SOLUTIONS TO GLOBAL WARMING, DISEASE, HOMELESSNESS AND HUNGER BLOCKED BY NARROW OR ABSENT PROPERTY REGIMES

Western style property rights are worsening prospects for the millions of poor in the world and defeating development spending, says nef's latest report, Limits to Property.

The report, published on the eve the World Trade Organisation's ministerial meeting, argues that there has been a damaging erosion of communal and indigenous types of property rights that will directly harm the prospects of the world's poorest people. The loss of diverse and flexible types of property rights mirrors the growing global gap between rich and poor.  As a result the economic livelihoods of millions of people in poverty are threatened and progress toward solving major environmental crises like climate change are blocked.

Far from being an incentive to innovative solutions, the global triumph in law of private property above all other forms of ownership has produced counterproductive and bizarre outcomes. They range from the simply eccentric - a single individual who has claimed ownership of the entire solar system (except Earth) and sells plots of land to willing consumers; to giant pharmaceutical companies that restrict access to life-saving treatments in the name of profit.

The  'one size fits all' approach, pushed through international economic and financial institutions like the World Trade Organisation and World Bank, and linked to aid programmes, is increasing the economic vulnerability of the word's poorest people.

 "Using US-style property laws one man can own the solar system at the same time that millions cannot own the right to produce their own basic, life saving drugs," said Andrew Simms, co-author of the report and Director of Policy at nef.

 "We are so blinded by economic ideology that simple solutions to big problems are being missed. There are limits to how far private property can be respected, and we meet them in the treatment of major diseases, landlessness and homelessness, and in the abuse of the global commons of the atmosphere in problems like climate change. It is time to drop the dogma and embrace a new openness. Property rights need to be tailored to help solve the economic, social and environmental crises we face."

Historically, economies have been managed through a combination of individual, common, traditional and dynamic property rights. Different approaches to owning the stuff of economic life ranging from seeds, to land and water have been tailored to match particular circumstances. Today private property laws increasingly protect the resources and knowledge of wealthy countries and their corporations, but developing nations have never been compensated under similar rules for the ideas and natural resources taken from them by the West.

Restrictive and faulty property regimes are holding back solutions to the world's most pressing problems, such as:

•  Landlessness - in the concentration of ownership globally and the lack of land law reform
  
• Disease epidemics - in how restrictive intellectual property laws hold back essential medicines from poor people
  
• Climate change - how the absence of a system of global management, basic on equal rights, for the warming atmosphere prevents a solution
  
• Homelessness - in the lack of affordable housing driven by high cost, private ownership of land and market based transactions

The report calls for a return to diverse approaches to ownership tailored to solve specific problems including, for example:

• Community Land Trusts
  
•  Equal entitlements to the global commons of the atmosphere
  
• Ownership transfer and time limited corporations
  
• Mutual public services
  
• Intellectual Property Free Zones
  

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	related
	at nef Read Andrew Simms on the front cover of New Statesman: Who Owns the World?
	Publications Limits to Property: The failure of restrictive property regimes in the modern world