Back to the Basics: Improved Property Rights can Help Save Ecuador's Rainforests

Georgetown International Environmental Law Review, Summer 2004 by Hite, Kristen

If property rights can be sufficiently strengthened to facilitate long-term investment, a number of market-based provisions exist to transform conservation efforts into a powerful economic force for a sustainable economy. Increasingly, conservation efforts and financial markets are merging for effective market-based environmental protection.12 In 1997, one famous study by Costanza calculated the value of the world's ecosystem services at U.S. $16-$54 trillion per year.13 If agroforestry systems can be managed more sustainably, additional market mechanisms can increase personal income in a manner that makes conservation economically more valuable than unsustainable changes in land use. Conservation easements can be secured through the legal mechanism of the basque protector, or protected forest. Additionally, future carbon markets may increase conservation funds. Combined, these mechanisms can effectively buy conservation while at the same time providing a sustainable livelihood for local communities residing within forested areas. Part Four examines these market-based conservation tools.

Without sufficiently strong property rights, conservation investments in these market-based mechanisms will not prove sustainable. Current insecure property rights yield market failures too great to sufficiently capture the benefits of sustainable forest management. If Ecuador strengthens its national property rights system in a manner that is exclusive, equitable, and enforceable, then long-term investments in conservation can secure a market supporting sustainable forest use. This paper aims to illustrate how strengthening property rights to allow for more sustainable land management helps to both secure international investments in conservation and reduce poverty rates. It is my sincere hope that the public and private sector will consider these recommendations as a potentially powerful tool by which to protect both the peoples of the Amazon and the natural resources they depend upon.

II. THE NEED FOR SUSTAINABLE LAND MANAGEMENT IN ECUADOR'S TROPICAL FORESTS

A. DEFINING SUSTAINABLE LAND USE

In order to halt deforestation, sustainable land management must be supported and unsustainable land management must be discouraged. Accordingly, it is important to understand the differences between sustainable and unsustainable uses. Sustainable development entails non-degrading land use enabling future generations to have the same or greater resources available as current generations enjoy. Economics, environment, and social equity are all critical considerations in determining resource use. This means that sustainable use must be currently economically productive, yet still allow continued future use in the same productive manner. Sustainable forest-based land uses generally include agroforestry, selective logging, ecotourism, and environmental services (such as conservation easements). These uses are presumed to be both economically productive and also non-degrading to resources when properly managed. Unsustainable forest uses include those activities that cannot be replicated indefinitely. Examples of unsustainable uses are forest clearcutting and pollution of nondegradable toxins. Clearcutting in tropical forests is especially problematic because soil nutrients become exhausted in a few short years while forest regeneration takes decades, if not centuries. Clearcutting includes traditional logging, conversion to pastureland, and agricultural practices like monocropping.