Abstract
Payments for environmental services, which stem from an economic logic of appropriation, are linked to the concept of property rights. The basis of ownership is not the same throughout the world. The control of natural resources and land is governed by a legal regime that is not always that of property law. In other words, land ownership is neither universal nor unique in its definition.Initially, we will see that the birth of property is part of the history of the Western paradigm, up to the completion of a single property right through the development of market society.Where property is not born, it will result from an invention that does not always become widespread. The absence of a private property regime (i.e., a land market) is not indicative of an absence of civilization (sic), but of a patrimonial rather than venal relationship with the world. Our empirical work on endogenous legal systems at five different sites (in the Sahel, the Maghreb and the Guiana Amazon) has led us to define the contours of a system of rights to environmental utilities, outside the realm of property rights.