Sustainability and Enclosure: Land, Intellectual Property Rights an Biotechnology

This essay explores a key foundation of enterprise – the property rights which confer entitlements to individuals and firms to exclude others from a stream of benefits or rents. These entitlements take various forms in economics and law: title to land and property, patents and copyrights. It also explores an alternative, sometimes neglected but equally important set of rights to be included in such benefits streams. These rights to be included can be membership in a common group or club, shareholder status in a firm or corporation, and even citizenship. At first, it might seem that these rights are just two sides of a coin – those who are not included are excluded. But careful analysis suggest that they are different types of entitlements, both of which are vital not only to private enterprise, but to many issues of environmental sustainability.