100 Iowa L. Rev. 2507 (2015)

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Abstract

Environmental governance increasingly focuses on public– private partnerships. We focus on contracting as a subset of the role of private actors governing landscape-level resources—such as wildlife habitats, scenic vistas, and firescapes—that exceed individual parcel sizes and are thus difficult for individual landowners to control unilaterally. Numerous contractual arrangements have emerged to exert coordinated control over landscape-level resources. We hypothesize that variations in laws and transaction costs, which are controlled largely by the homogeneity of landowner preferences across fragmented parcels, drive private control of landscape-level resources. In the absence of effective private control, government agencies may assume control of the landscape-level resources. A series of case studies discusses how law shapes the conditions that favor private contracting regimes of landscape-level resources, which highlight broader themes of law as a catalyst for new governance.