The law of property provides the building blocks for our market economy and is a manifestation of
our post French and American Revolution thinking on how we want to organise ourselves. That
organisational structure has not always been fair or equal around the world. European property
law systems have been exported around the globe, yet outside of Europe things have been possible,
such as owning another person (slavery) or extracting wealth from land at all costs. This was
unthinkable on the European continent. These differences have led to an increasingly unequal
division of property between people, countries and even continents. Some can extract a lot of
wealth and pollute the planet from their property, whilst others have nothing. An unsustainable
use of the planet's resources where we live outside of our planetary boundaries is the result.
This short book argues thatthis is notthe way forward. Ourlaw must be resilientin a transformative
manner and European systems need to accept their role in how this has come to be. Based on that,
we need to rethink how we can reform our law of property so that it allows us to live within our
planetary boundaries.
About the Author:
Bram Akkermans is Professor of Property Law at Maastricht University. He specialises in
sustainability and property law and combines property theory with property doctrine to explore
how property law can accommodate sustainability. He is also Director of Studies of Dutch-language
undergraduate programmes at the Maastricht Law Faculty.
About the Maastricht Law Series:
Created in 2018 by Boom juridisch and Eleven International
Publishing in association with the Maastricht University Faculty of Law, the Maastricht Law Series
publishes books on comparative, European and International law. The series builds upon the
tradition of excellence in research at the Maastricht Faculty of Law, its research centers and the
Ius Commune Research School. The Maastricht Law Series is a peer reviewed book series that
allows researchers an excellent opportunity to showcase their work.
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