As explained, the conservation right can be established to conserve the natural environment or the man-made artificial environment.
Its broad scope of application can be better grasped if we understand that ´conservation´ always involves ´management´. In this sense, the conservation right is also a legal mechanism for the management of environmental resources and intangibles.
This new right, for instance, can be established with respect to specific environmental components such as air, water, soil, noise, fragrance and others, and also over environmental “intangibles” such as eco-systemic services -like the generation and treatment of water, landscape value, pollination, biogenetic information, recreation, maintenance of traditional practices or uses, mitigation of impacts and climate change, mitigation of the effects of catastrophes, as well as socio-cultural practices or values associated with the natural environment or the artificial medium created by man-.
Consequently, this right can also be established over components that are relevant to forestry, agriculture and aquaculture activities. This can be done, for instance, through the conservation of certain parameters of soil or water, among others.
Additionally, the conservation right could also be applied to urban spaces for the conservation and development of green areas, recreational areas, urban gardens or other spaces. The use of the conservation right for these purposes would significantly reduce the transaction costs for those projects by preventing the costly purchase -or the regulatory taking- of the corresponding properties.
Also, at the urban -and neighborhood- level the conservation right can be applied with respect to environmental components such as landscape, silence, noise, smells, luminosity, etc.
Moreover, this new property right can also facilitate the arising of secondary markets of compensation and mitigation measures, both for the environmental impact assessment system and for the urban real estate project development system –i.e. compensation of road traffic impact-.
It is noteworthy that it is possible to establish different –several- conservation rights on the same property, with respect to different attributes, eco-systemic services, ecological processes or natural components. This is not only important in order to provide diversified sources of financing to a given project, but also in order to facilitate the inclusion or involvement of diverse social interests in the development and management of the corresponding project.
This new right can empower communities, neighborhoods’ associations or any kind of associations to participate in the development of sustainable projects and practices at different levels, including the community level.
This new right may be held by private or public legal entities and, therefore, it may also be used for the implementation of public policy agendas -within the scope of the functions of the corresponding agencies-.
Therefore, the conservation right appears as a very flexible mechanism that can be used in the most diverse projects, from those related to the conservation of rural or urban lands to those related to the development of plans for the management and activation of environmental intangibles, or to those related to the development of markets for the compensation or mitigation of environmental impacts, among many others.
Please see the section on Cases, where we describe both the first private conservation right as well as the first State owned conservation right, established in Chile. It should be noticed that these two first cases were developed through a pro-bono effort and by a joint team of the Conservation Law Center and Ubilla & Co, and the purpose was to clearly implement the new paradigm behind the conservation right (Law 20.930) in the sense of creating legal structures that would facilitate the inclusive and reflexive interaction between and among different stakeholders –as opposed to simply creating a static restriction over the land –as normally easements do-.