Ownership Regime and Environmental Conservation as Depicted in Cultural Types

Possibility of Indigenous Process of Ownership of Nature for the Construction of Legal Order

Abstract

Since 1970s, study of ownership regime in relation to the environmental conservation has been one of the major topics for the field of environment and society. This study tries to seek the possibility of indigenous process of ownership of nature in order to construct the legal order for environmental conservation. For this purpose we introduce the idea of "life-environmentalism" where indigenous people's sense and experience in everyday life with relation to the behavior for environmental conservation issues are thought to be the major analytical frame. We have made cross-cultural study of ownership regime of land and water space in Japan, USA and Africa, particularly Malawi. What we have found out is that the sense of ownership of nature is strongly related to the indigenous family structure and inheritance system; nuclear family in the USA, stem family in Japan and extended family in Malawi. In the nuclear family system, the ownership regime is based on the individual private ownership in tandem with the modern legal system. Stem family system, especially in Japan emphasizes the communal ownership called "souyuu" where actual needs of resource utilization and resource management participation are emphasized. Extended family system in Malawi does not have strong sense of ownership per se and space boundary has not been clearly defined. Rather the land and water space is thought to belong to the God world. Although the modernization process has strengthen the idea of private and public ownership of natural resources originated from Western nuclear family, we need to consider the meanings of indigenous ownership regime for the resource utilization and conservation in each cultural settings.