Common Property Rights

The Concept

Common Property Rights (CPR) is a new form of property rights. It allows common property to be managed as efficiently as private property has been for a long time. Common property is property held in common for which it's hard to exclude users. Examples are the air we breath, the water we drink, and the many renewable resources such as forests, fish, and freshwater sources. Once common property is well managed the environmental sustainability is solved. The advantage of CPR is it can do this as transparently and as efficiently as private property rights.

CPR is a solution element for the economic improper coupling subproblem of the System Improvement Process. In that problem the economic system is improperly coupled to the greater system it lies within, the environment. The world's economic system does a fine job of managing the productivity of private property, especially since the Industrial Revolution. But it does a poor job of managing the productivity of common property, such as the air we breath and the water we drink. Why is this? Because there is no equivalent of private property rights for common property.

Common Property Rights corrects this imbalance. It does it with a property management system that mirrors what private property rights have done so well for so long.

Common Property Rights is such a new paradigm it takes quite a bit of material to explain it. Thwink.org offers these materials:

1. Introduction - Here's a two page introduction PDF to the concept.

2. Videos - Two videos are offered here.

3. The Book - After ten months of work the first edition is available here.

4. Papers - A series of papers are underway here.

The Project

Working with Philip Bangerter of Hatch and John Hale, Director of the Australian Centre for Sustainable Business and Development, a Common Property Rights research project is just getting underway in Australia. Virtual team meetings occur every several weeks. The team is producing the papers for the purpose of tightening the concept and to procure initial funding.