ABSTRACT
Are trees and rivers only resources for humans to exploit and consume? Do they have rights on their own, and how can we better protect them within the property law sphere? Through the theoretical lens of rights of nature (‘RoN’) and liberal property, together with a comparative examination of legal practices in three different jurisdictions, this research finds that an absolute eco-centric approach for protecting nature, which prefers recognizing natural objects as new legal subjects, has encountered both conceptual obstacles and practical hurdles. On that basis, it proposes re-perceiving the traditional strict dichotomy regarding human-nature relation in environmental ethics – namely anthropocentrism and eco-centrism – as a spectrum and adopting a mitigated approach to internally reform the current private law (exemplified by property law) for the requirements of sustainability. Alongside this general proposal, it goes deeper to give some preliminary thoughts on why and to what extent the interests of humans should make certain compromise for the interests of nature in terms of human legal designs, and what are the potential pathways forward to do so.
Tian, Shulun and Du, Hai, Towards A Sustainable Property Law: Bridging the Anthropocentric and Eco-Centric Paradigms (December 31, 2025).
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