The back has been broken on legal denial of community property. This is the conclusion of a study of land laws in 100 countries.

Most administrations now acknowledge community lands as a viable unit of property and provide mechanisms through which this essentially social form may be formally mapped and registered. And I mean community property, with comparable legal protections as private and corporate property. The trend is global, including in Europe. While enactment is taking longer to achieve than was the case in the 1980s and 1990s, there are a sufficient number of new draft laws each year to conclude the trend will continue into the future.

I see no way back from this. A tipping point has been reached. Procedures to map and register these properties are, in the main, becoming simpler and cheaper. Legal treatment of communities as natural persons for purposes of land ownership is easing the way in a growing number of states. Most laws also now accept that unfarmed communal resources are integral to community property and cannot be fairly excluded. Nor need community lands be sellable to qualify as protected properties. Areas over which family or other exclusive rights prevail are being more satisfactorily nested within the community domain as transferable usufructs. Statutes are also remedying common weaknesses in community-based land governance by making inclusive decision-making obligatory.

In short, it now seems possible that by century-end the largest sector of acknowledged property worldwide will be community-owned and governed. Expansion in its adoption can be predicted, including as a practical tool to regularize soaring urban slum occupation over the coming decades. This will inject new vigor into this essentially social version of corporate property. The community, long presumed to be a disappearing social form, will itself be revitalized as a rational framework for modern purposes. Devolutionary land governance should consolidate, as governments cede landlord powers over millions of hectares traditionally deemed un-owned. We should expect the regulatory and oversight functions of governments to be refined and more impartial. None of this can be bad for society—or governance.