Suchergebnisse

Property rights are a widely advocated policy tool to encourage stewardship over a range of environmental goods. Despite the extent to which property rights are dependent upon law to work, economists rarely consider that property rights are enmeshed within a complex web of pre-existing national and international legal frameworks—such as human rights law—that put strict limitations on the way they operate. This important issue is illustrated here with reference to the legal struggles in the UK around the "ownership" of fishing rights. The social and economic changes under market-based management in the UK made the fisheries regulatory regime unpopular, and undoubtedly contributed to the overwhelming vote within the catch sector to leave the European Union, even though the responsibility to allocate fishing opportunities to the British fishing industry lay with the UK authorities. The lesson from the UK experience is that despite the legal-blindness of much resource economics, the application of economic theory should not outrun its legal foundations. We conclude that promoting the allocation of public fishing rights to the private sector without adequate safeguards—such as a valuation of the rights in question and carefully considered written terms and conditions—could be considered negligent

As there is no general right to be defended from flooding, any measures taken to protect communities from flooding would appear to be motivated by political considerations. This article explores the possibilities open to a party seeking to benefit from flood defences on another person's land. The possibilities include an action in nuisance (which is the most promising area, but is still beset by issues of causation and the possibility that the extent of the duty imposed on a defendant landowner is not by any means certain to extend to the actual repair of existing flood defences) and an attempt to establish prescriptive liability. Other avenues of legal recourse are more fraught and therefore less likely to prove useful here. The article concludes that the possibilities covered are of limited value in most cases and suggests that an alternative approach to flood defences might be used to achieve wider acceptance of the need for more sustainable flood planning in the future.

Ten European fish stocks recognised by the European Union as "outside safe biological limits" are considered in light of widespread reforms to fisheries legislation in 2013, particularly the legal responsibility to exploit these resources sustainably. Given that some of these stocks are – as of 2013 – fished at over 150% the recommended intensity and many have been outside of these limits for the entirety of their assessment history, the utilisation of traditional fisheries management measures of sustainability are questioned and tougher approaches such as "zero-catch" and long-term, expansive spatial closure scenarios are considered. Finally, the pervasive issue of data-deficiency (the status of 54% of European stocks) is briefly considered, with specific reference to the understudied West of Scotland and North Sea stock of European seabass (Dicentrarchus labrax)

The Scottish Government has pledged to reform inshore fisheries by 2020, while the UK Government is in the process of reforming fisheries legislation with the Fisheries Bill, brought forward in anticipation of the departure of the UK from the EU. . As the necessary starting point for any regulatory reform is an understanding of the existing rights subject to regulation, this article investigates the nature of the existing rights to fish in inshore Scottish waters and assesses whether reform of the ownership of Scotland's fishery needs to be assessed at the same time as its regulation. The article considers the theory behind Scotland's fishing rights, the extent of the right to fish, the Crown's right to alienation and the statutory impacts on the right to fish, before finally placing these findings in the context of contemporary developments of Scottish property and land reform law