These four definitions of property are repeated throughout much of the literature on property. They are not legal categories, but universal definitions of the types of property ownership prevalent around the world. The authors acknowledge that many property regimes mix and blur these categories.

This guide is useful, I think, in representing dominant understandings of property use in the West. Especially in that private property is seen as having the unique potential "to transfer or alienate a share of resources," which, according to the theory (that dates back to the 17th century) underpins and enables labour productivity.

Open Access: “Everybody’s access is nobody’s property” (Bromley 1989).

Limited-User Open Access: Regulated open access – state restrictions limiting users and total yield

State Rights: “It appears that state rights work best when non-market benefits predominate and are dispersed across a population, mechanisms exist for people to express their preferences to the state, no prior claims by individuals or communities exist over the resources, and when the state has the means to enforce rights and the costs of exclusion are high” (81).

e.g. the felling of Alberta’s boreal forest – cost the gov’t a fortune in subsidies

Community rights: “These rights often prohibit persons outside the community from using the resources, and set rules for how the resources should be exploited by members of the community” (82). A multiplicity of forms of community rights are sited, including Sabel grazing, alpine areas of Switzerland, Peru, Ecuador, Bolivia; fisheries; irrigation projects in Asia, Middle East, Africa; forests and woodlands of Japan. Community rights can work well when introduced to manage resources, but where they may be inadequate is when environmental problems are too large and communities too disparate to manage externalities, such as in urban populations.

Private property: “The overriding advantage of private rights is the potential to transfer or alienate a share of resources. This allows resource users, who can generate a higher return from the resource, to acquire a greater share of its yield and thus increase aggregate benefits. The appropriateness of the ‘private property rights solution’, however, depends on the cost of exclusion relative to the benefits of private rights, the institutional setting and equity considerations” (86).

(Source: Devlin, Rose Ann and R. Quentin Grafton. Environmental Rights and Environmental Wrongs: Property Rights for the Common Good. Cheltenham, UK; Northampton, MA, USA: Edward Elgar, 1998).