Course description
‘European legal theory understood the right of property as the control over things. Since at least Montesquieu, this private right (dominium in Roman law) was contrasted with sovereignty (imperium), or the rule over people. Property belonged to individuals, while sovereignty was the power of the state. But in practice, in both Europe and Egypt, property was a power relation among people as well as things’ (Mitchell, T. Rule of Experts, 2002).
This course – Land, trees and tenure –draws together and systematises the forces that gave rise to the global variety of systems of tenure to trees and to forestlands, and the evolution in the governance of tenure. Tenure refers to the possession or holding of the many rights associated with a parcel of land. These rights are frequently described as a bundle that may be broken up, re-divided, passed on to others, etc., depending on the system of tenure.
This course provides the future forester, land manager or graduate working in any aspect of environmental governance with a background in tenure systems and processes necessary to navigate the complex world of overlapping rights of access to forestlands.
This course provides a historical treatment of the wide variety of legal rules, and regulations that govern access to trees and/or forestlands. We will review the evolution of State and customary rights to land, starting in Europe, and following European expansion to the neo-Europes and the tropics. We will start with a thorough grounding in the legal concepts of property and tenure as they evolved and differentiated with respect to imperium and dominium. Through a variety of readings, lectures and discussions, students will consider the forces that favoured or constrained State or customary rights to forests in different historical and geographical contexts. We will analyze the evolution in law and custom that shifted the balance of power and the implications of such shifts for forests and society. Students will gain a strategic understanding of the de-concentration of State control over forests in the 20th century, and the forces that favour State re-centralization in the 21st century. Through case studies, students will examine contemporary tenure issues relating to resource management, overlapping tenures, etc. We will review the safeguards for customary rights to forestlands in a growing body of national legal decisions, and a range of international conventions and declarations and the application of those protections.
Readings will be drawn from law, forestry, history, global environmental politics, political economy and anthropology.
Feb 25, 12pm lecture by Tania Li “Land’s End: Capitalist Relations on an Indigenous Frontier” GRSJ, Room 028 Jack Bell, 2080 West Mall. RSVP to get a free lunch. There will also be another meeting planned with Dr. Li, likely for Thursday. Please attend if possible- details to follow.
