The Privatisation of Biodiversity?: New approaches to nature conservation law

本世纪初，各国政府在联合国、欧盟和国家层面作出承诺，到2010年制止生物多样性的丧失。人们普遍认为，这些目标没有实现。我们的自然环境持续退化背后有许多因素，但很明显，目前旨在保护生物多样性的法律机制并不有效。英国的自然保护法在过去三十年中发展迅速，但仍然使用相当有限的法律机制来实现其目标。这个项目的目的是审查是否有可能利用其他机制使法律更加有效和有效率。这些具体措施只能是解决威胁生物多样性的根深蒂固的经济、社会和其他驱动因素的一部分，但通过利用更广泛的法律手段，有可能取得更大的成就。该项目旨在建立在首席研究员对当前英国法律的深刻理解之上，以确定其他可用于进一步实现保护目标的监管机制，并详细检查在这里采用这些机制的潜力和障碍。这种审查涉及挑战一些对自然环境普遍持有的态度，涉及可被视为保护的“私有化”或将自然转化为类似于现有法律框架内认可的其他商品的经济商品。从历史上看，野生动物根本没有法律上的承认（无论是它们自己的权利还是作为任何人的财产），没有人有任何资格保护它们。现行法律主要依靠指定有价值的特定地点或物种，然后通过使用刑事禁令和公共机构与受影响土地的占领者之间达成的协议，在现有许可证或核可制度的支持下，控制对这些地点或物种造成直接损害的活动。在其他国家使用不同的设备。其中包括保护地役权（保护栖息地的私人协议具有持久的法律效力）、保护银行（在一个地方的开发被开发商在其他地方提供保护所抵消）、可交易的发展权（允许对栖息地进行一定程度的开发，并在占用者之间分配进行开发的权利，然后占用者可以相互交易以改变其开发或保护的份额）以及允许土地所有者从未开发土地提供的生态系统服务（包括储水和净化，防洪，休闲机会和舒适设施）的价值中获益的各种方法。在实践层面上，评估这些设备在英国环境中的潜力需要检查它们如何适应适用于这里的法律框架，不仅仅是保护规则，还有财产法的基本结构等，以及它们是否适合英国的条件，英国的目标不是保护大面积的原始草原或森林，而是支持丰富多样的生物多样性，许多世纪以来，人类的干预造成了人口密集和管理严格的环境。从概念上讲，接受其中一些机制需要对生物多样性保护事业进行重大反思，从主要由国家指导的任务转变为共同承担的任务。更根本的是，当生物多样性不再被视为商业领域之外的东西，而是通过承认价值、可交易权利和抵消安排而被纳入商业领域时，就会涉及一套不同的价值观。这种自然“商品化”的含义将与自然作为“共同遗产”的观点以及Berry和Cullinan等“地球法理学”支持者的激进论点进行对比。

Early this decade, governments made commitments at UN, EU and national levels to halt biodiversity loss by 2010. It is universally accepted that these targets are not being met. There are many factors behind the continuing degradation of our natural environment, but it is clear that the present legal mechanisms designed to protect biodiversity are not being effective. Nature conservation law in the UK has developed dramatically in the past thirty years, yet continues to use a fairly limited range of legal mechanisms to achieve its objectives. The aim of this project is to examine the potential for using other mechanisms to make the law more effective and efficient. Such specific measures can only ever be part of the story in tackling the deep-rooted economic, social and other drivers that threaten biodiversity, but there is scope to achieve more through utilising a wider range of legal devices. This project aims to build on the Principal Investigator's deep understanding of the current British law to identify other regulatory mechanisms that could be employed to further the aims of conservation and to examine in detail the potential for and obstacles to their adoption here. Such examination involves challenging some commonly held attitudes towards the natural environment, involving what can be seen as a 'privatisation' of conservation or the conversion of nature into an economic good akin to other goods given recognition within existing legal frameworks. Historically, wild creatures had no legal recognition at all (either in their own right or as anyone's property) and no-one had any standing to protect them. The present law rests largely on designating particular sites or species of value and then controlling activities that cause direct harm to them, through the use of criminal prohibitions and of agreements reached between public bodies and the occupiers of the land affected, supported by the operation of existing permit or approval systems. In other countries different devices are used. These include conservation easements (where private agreements to conserve habitat are given enduring legal effect), conservation banking (where development in one place is off-set by the developer providing for conservation elsewhere), tradable development rights (where a certain amount of development of a habitat is permitted and the right to undertake this allocated among occupiers who can then trade amongst themselves to alter their share of development or conservation) and various means of allowing the landowner to recover from those benefitting the value of the ecosystem services provided by undeveloped land (including water storage and purification, flood protection, leisure opportunities and amenity).At the practical level, assessing the potential of such devices in the British context requires an examination of how they might be fitted into the legal frameworks that apply here, not just in terms of conservation rules but also the fundamental structures of property law etc., and whether they are suitable for British conditions, where the goal is not protecting large areas of pristine prairies or forests but supporting biodiversity in a richly varied, densely packed and heavily managed environment created by human intervention over many centuries. Conceptually, accepting some of these mechanisms requires a major rethinking of the enterprise of biodiversity conservation, from a task that is primarily to be directed by the state to one that is a shared undertaking. More fundamentally, a different set of values is engaged when biodiversity is viewed not as something outside the commercial arena but brought within it through the recognition of valuations, tradable rights and offsetting arrangements. The implications of this 'commoditisation' of nature will be explored in contrast to views of nature as a 'common heritage'and the radical arguments of "Earth Jurisprudence" proponents such as Berry and Cullinan.