Property rights and contractual approach to sustainable development

Sustainable development is argued to exist in weak and strong versions. Although the use of a property rights and contractual approach has been well understood in the case of weak sustainable development, the approach has been virtually ignored in the strong version. This paper formulates a property rights and contractual approach for the strong version of sustainable development. By reference to an analytical model and examples from Hong Kong and Taiwan, a Schumpeterian process and the institution of resource entitlements are shown to be the necessary ingredients to promote the strong version of sustainable development. Copyright Springer Japan 2000