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Owing to its constitutional culture, French law has developed a set of mechanisms that purport to help reach the carbon neutrality objective by 2050 without openly infringing on the right of property. Chiefly, there are energy-compliance rules ap- plicable to new and renovated buildings, which are controlled after issuing building permits. Recently, buildings from specific economic sectors have been affected by obligations to renovate or to build in a certain manner within a short period of time, and landlords have been invited to renovate residential buildings that do not meet the energy consumption objectives if they want to let them on the rental market. There are also positive and negative financial incentives for owners to renovate buildings. These mechanisms seem to be the only ones that fall within the con- straints of French constitutional law. It is therefore doubtful, given the current state of constitutional law, whether there is enough legal room for satisfactory mitigation of greenhouse gas emissions.

When incentives fail to encourage enough owners to make their buildings climate-proof, the State has to impose obligations to retrofit buildings if climate targets are to be reached. This contribution examines whether the State can employ obligations based upon agreement with third-party effect, to enforce higher energy-efficiency standards for buildings and an improved energy mix. It presents and compares the responses to two cases from eleven European jurisdictions. It shows that the majority of examined jurisdictions will allow for the State to impose positive obligations with third-party effect through a burden registered in favour of the State or a property right for the buyer. Only Dutch law would be likely to invalidate the obligation because the obligation circumvents public-law safeguards. A minority of the examined jurisdictions would not allow for a burden with positive obligations as its main content.

This paper describes the results of fieldwork regarding environmentally friendly land-based commons that are legally classified as unbounded lands. In Orcines, over 800 hectares of land situated within the Auvergne Volcanoes Natural Park are subject to this legal regime, which concerns plots of land that have never been delineated on the cadastral map even though the owners have exclusive and unburdened property titles. Essentially, owners do not know where their land is located within a larger cadastral parcel of land, yet they are not legally considered to be joint owners or tenants in common. As a result of their improbable situation, however, the only way in which owners can use their elusive property is by implementing a form of collective governance of their lands. When this happens, private property becomes the nucleus of a land-based commons.

This article discusses the relations between land registration systems and underlying discourses of property from a comparative perspective. It is based on the example of French law which, characteristically, uses a declaratory land recordation system, i.e., registration is informative in nature, it affects the rules of evidence but it does not convey property nor does it affect complete strangers in any way. It is found that such a system implies that people will need to prove their ownership of land, and therefore presupposes rules of evidence which are based on possession or title to possess, since land registration is not used for that purpose. The historical reason for this choice was inherited from the French Revolution. It rests on the idea that property is held from no one, least of all from the State. Most countries in the world have opted for a land registration system which is constitutive of title, meaning that the State guarantees the registered owner’s title to land. This system was originally inherited from the remnants of the feudal system in which land was held through a tenure, i.e., from someone else. This conception of ownership also traditionally implies a greater tolerance – in legal discourse – for legislative or State interference in the ownership of land which is merely granted by public authority. It may therefore be said that the more efficient the title, the less absolute ownership seems to be, at least in the collective imagination of lawyers as to what property entails.

This paper describes the results of fieldwork conducted about environmentally friendly land-based commons that are legally classified as unbounded lands. In Orcines, over 800 hectares of land situated within the Auvergne Volcanoes Park are subject to this legal regime, which occurs when plots of land have never been delineated on the cadastral map even though the owners have exclusive and unburdened property titles. Essentially, owners do not know where their land is located within a larger cadastral parcel of land—yet, they are not legally considered as being in any form of joint-ownership or tenancy-in-common. As a result of their improbable situation, however, the only way in which owners can use their elusive property is by implementing a form of collective governance on their lands. When this happens, private property becomes the nucleus of a land-based common. Cette contribution est le fruit d'une étude de terrain menée au sujet d'un commun foncier respectueux de l'environnement construit autour de biens non-délimités. Sur la commune d'Orcines, plus de 800 hectares du parc des Volcans d'Auvergnes sont soumis à ce régime méconnu qui résulte de l'absence de délimitation cadastrale de parcelles dont les titres de propriété sont pourtant privatifs. Ne sachant pas où se trouve leur terrain dans une parcelle plus grande, les propriétaires – qui ne se trouvent pas en indivision – doivent imaginer des modes de gestion collective de leurs biens. Lorsque de tels modes de gouvernance sont effectivement mis en place, la propriété privée est le siège d'un véritable commun foncier.

Cette contribution est le fruit d’une étude de terrain menée au sujet d’un commun foncier respectueux de l’environnement construit autour de biens non délimités. Sur la commune d’Orcines, plus de 800 hectares du parc des Volcans d’Auvergne sont soumis à ce régime méconnu qui résulte de l’absence de délimitation cadastrale de parcelles dont les titres de propriété sont pourtant privatifs. Ne sachant pas où se trouve leur terrain dans une parcelle plus grande, les propriétaires – qui ne se trouvent pas en indivision – doivent imaginer des modes de gestion collective de leurs biens. Lorsque de tels modes de gouvernance sont effectivement mis en place, la propriété privée est le siège d’un véritable commun foncier. This paper describes the results of fieldwork conducted about environmentally friendly land-based commons that are legally classified as unbounded lands. In Orcines, over 800 hectares of land situated within the Auvergne Volcanoes Park are subject to this legal regime, which occurs when plots of land have never been delineated on the cadastral map even though the owners have exclusive and unburdened property titles. Essentially, owners do not know where their land is located within a larger cadastral parcel of land – yet, they are not legally considered as being in any form of joint-ownership or tenancy-in-common. As a result of their improbable situation, however, the only way in which owners can use their elusive property is by implementing a form of collective governance on their lands. When this happens, private property becomes the nucleus of a land-based common.

With the continued devolution of power and resources from state- and federal-centered to locality-centered institutions, rural places are increasingly left to depend on their own resources to survive. One of those resources is found in the structure of local social relationships-that is, the community's stock of social capital. The purpose of this research is to examine the individual and combined effects of two forms of social capital, bonding and bridging, on community action in rural towns. Findings indicate that both bridging and bonding social capital significantly predict community action. In addition, an interaction is found that suggests that one form can make up for weaknesses in the other in communities in which both are not strong.