Entrenchment of State Property Rights to Northern Forests, Berries and Pastures

Abstract

"This paper is part of a larger project of comparing resource governing institutions for different northern resources. The larger project mainly uses case material from six types of resource regimes in Northern Norway, but does to some extent draw comparisons with corresponding regimes in different circumpolar jurisdictions. The main objective of this is to demonstrate how most of the current resource governing institutions are neither the outcome of a careful design aimed at sustainable resource management nor an outcome of natural evolvment through a local trial and error process. More often than not, resource governing institutions of the North are the outcome of state intervention and entrenchment of state ownership rights. Through careful analysis of property rights connected to various resource regimes, it can be shown that these often have incentive structures that are incompatible with the aim of sustainable resource use. Another objective of the larger project is therefore also to address the question of institutional changes necessary to achieve compatibility between the incentives built into the structure of rights and duties - and the overall aim of a particular regime."