Credible Commitments, Adaptability, and Conservation Easements

Authors

Andrew P. Morriss, Bush School of Government & Public Service and School of Law, Texas A&M University (Professor) Property & Environment Research Center (Senior Fellow)

Abstract

Conservation easements, a widely used tool to preserve land for conservation purposes, suffer from a fundamental flaw in lacking a means of adapting the permanent interests they create to changed conditions. This flaw is becoming more apparent as the early generation of these interests age and climate change threatens to bring more rapid demands for adaptation of existing conservation goals in light of changed conditions. Drawing on lessons from successes in international financial centers and U.S. states that are successful in jurisdictional competition, this article argues that the law should embrace measures that enable such competition in providing for shared governance of land between conservation interests and private landowners.

Creative Commons License

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-No Derivative Works 4.0 International License.

Recommended Citation

Andrew P. Morriss, Credible Commitments, Adaptability, and Conservation Easements, 64 Nat. Res. J. 1 (2024).
Available at: https://digitalrepository.unm.edu/nrj/vol64/iss1/2