Listen to part of a lecture in an environmental science class.

Listen to part of a lecture in an environmental science class.

P: Today we'll start focusing on environmental policies related to land use. For instance, if you're a farmer and you own your own land, can you do anything you please with it? Or can someone come and say, well, you can't use this pesticide because it harms the environment? Who has the rights to decide how land is used?Well, to lay some groundwork, let's look at the history of land use in Europe. We'll need to go back to the 6th century. So about 1500 years ago, much of Europe was occupied by people who held their land freely. So they're referred to as landholders. They had no obligation to anybody. They focused on simply using a piece of land by clearing it, building a house and barns on it, and dividing it into fields for their animals to graze on and for the crops they wanted to grow. They might move several times to new landholdings and abandon the old.S: But why would they leave their land like that?P: Well, sometimes they allowed the land to get overgrazed, or their harvests would start to decline because the land got worn out. Many reasons.S: So they could basically destroy the land they used?P: Yep, that's what landholding meant. It simply meant that while an individual was using the land, they could do whatever they wanted with it. And that sometimes resulted in careless management of the land. But of course, the basic reason that all of this was possible was that there was plenty of unoccupied land. So when a landholder was done with one plot of land, it was easy to just move to another plot and start all over again. And as long as there was plenty of land for everyone, people didn't concern themselves with exact boundaries either.However, this changed with time. The population increased, and unoccupied land started to become scarce. And in a very natural response to this lack of occupiable land, landholders began enclosing their land, like with fences, to be sure they had exclusive use of it. The fences kept other people's animals out and provided a sign of the landholder's presence and authority. This fencing in, or enclosure, as it was called, was a step from landholding to landowning.S: It'd be interesting to find out how landholders handled it when two people wanted to hold the same land at the same time. I mean, what if they both wanted to fence in the same space?P: Well, I'd guess they had some way of resolving the problem. I'm certain though, that when it comes to some pieces of land, it can be quite tricky determining ownership. And that's exactly why the concept of landowning in the legal sense was so important when it came along.What better way to resolve issues of who owns what than to create laws about it? This concept of land ownership became an official legal distinction in England after about 1660. Basically, the concept followed the old custom. If you use the land, then it was yours. But it was also based on a philosophical argument formulated by the philosopher John Locke. Locke's argument carries a lot of weight, even today.So let's take a look at it. It had basically two premises. The first was the same as the old custom: the land should be considered as belonging to the person that farms it, but the second premise was different. It was a justification of the very concept of land ownership. It said that the right to own land was a kind of reward for improving it.How so? See, Locke believed that land as such has basically no value without human labor applied to it. And that meant farming. He believed that whoever makes farm products is creating something of superior value. So ownership derives from creating value, from putting the land to good uses, so to speak. And because by Locke's definition, farmers are doing just that simply by farming, then they deserve to be the owners and do as they please.P: OK, this second premise is controversial. Can you imagine why? S: Well, what if the farmer destroys the land by overusing it, like we said before? How does that create value? P: Exactly. So this is an issue we need to explore.