Abstract
Where conservationists are dissatisfied with public measures of soil protection, property law may provide a vehicle for private action to meet soil protection goals. Specifically, this chapter explores how property law concepts could be used to conserve soil. One can always decide as a landowner to engage in soil protection measures, but landownership is a limited soil conservation strategy. Instead, this chapter explores how NGOs or interested parties could use future interests or partial property rights to constrain land use in a way that will be most protective of soils. Using the United States as an example (but detailing a worldwide pattern of developing partial property rights), this chapter shows how traditional servitude law may be able to protect some soils, but its reach is limited. Instead, jurisdictions are building on previous property law concepts to create new structures. The most popular of which is the conservation easement, a nonpossessory right in land with a conservation goal that can be enforced in perpetuity. This chapter explains the strengths and weaknesses of various property rights approaches and ends with a caution to tread carefully when using perpetual tools in a changing world.