Environmental protection via land administration

Protection of the environment on private lands, and lands where people hold private interests, embodies both a challenge and an opportunity for any government (Shogren et al. 2003). The challenge is the complex task of understanding and integrating the arrangement of diverse rights including “property rights, access rights, harvesting rights, management rights, exclusion rights and alienation rights” (Sandberg 2007), among others. The opportunity is the improved level of care afforded to the environment that private rights to land and resources can provide (United Republic of Tanzania 1997).