Patrimoniul de mediu - semnificaţii juridice
ENVIRONMENTAL ASSETS - LEGAL MEANINGS

Summary/Abstract: This article analyses the evolution of the traditional civil law concepts of „ownership”, „patrimony” and „heritage”, from their ancient Roman law roots, to new and possible future orientation, as influenced by the contemporary ecological issues. The main issue concerns the relationship between a person, as subject of law, and the goods they can or cannot own, the latter having a rather special situation, given the environmental law’s greater influence upon private regulations. Thus, goods that have been traditionally considered as impossible to appropriate have gained a special regime and have become part of a common environmental patrimony of the planetary human community. As difficult as it is to accept such a legal structure, its traits are easily recognizable within existing environmental national and international regulations; moreover, given the high number of common features, the environmental patrimony (or heritage) gains more and more resemblance to the civil law concept of the same name, bearing assets, liabilities and an identifiable owner, the entire human race. Even if the philosophy of law has issued similar theories, regarding man’s ownership of nature and its elements, the actual environmental conditions, the diminishing amount of natural resources and the limited ability of our planet to sustain a higher population demand for immediate rethinking of the relationship between man and the environment, process in which law plays a very important role. By reviewing its traditional institutions and adapting them to the needs of the present, law will become a central instrument on the process of sustainable development.

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