A think piece from the Caledonia Centre for Social Development based on:

Owen J. Lynch (1999) Promoting Legal Recognition of Community-Based Property Rights, Including the Commons: Some Theoretical Considerations ; Paper presented at a Symposium of the International Association for the Study of Common Property and the Workshop in Political Theory and Policy Analysis, Indiana University, Bloomington, Indiana, June 7, 1999. (for original click here)

Most property rights theorists and students rely on a four-part typology: private (which is a misnomer because it really means individual), commons ,state , and open access (which refers to a situation where no defined property rights exist).
This typology is hampering the development of effective legal and policy tools for helping local people gain recognition of their community-based property rights, including their common property. The typology overlooks the spatially and temporally dynamic nature of community-based property rights systems.

The World Bank and most other financial lending institutions, as well as most nation states, promote individuation and disaggregation in the belief that individual property rights are superior to group-based rights as they can be bought and sold, i.e. marketed, much more easily.

An alternative four part typology is offered here:

 
Public
 
Individual
Public
Individual
Public
Group
Group
Private
Individual
Private
Group
 
Private
 

 

Public-individual

This type of property typically refers to a lease to an individual (or a corporation which in some nations is deemed to be the legal equivalent of an individual) of legal rights over land that is ostensibly government owned. Timber concessions are a classic example.

Public-group

This category refers to legal arrangements where a government conditionally leases or otherwise delegates property rights, usually for a specific period of time, to a local community or user group.

Private-individual

A private, individual property right is the lodestone of capitalist (Western) property rights and concepts. A private, individual property right is widely believed to be the best possible type of property right. One reason is that individual private owners tend to have the greatest freedom to use resources as they see fit.

Private-group

The best (although the most rare and difficult to acquire) option for protecting community-based property rights, including the commons, especially for original long-term occupants of a specific area, would be to acquire legal recognition of private-group rights, a concept that should encompass individual and common property rights within the perimeter of a community-based property regime.

 

Community based property rights already exist among indigenous peoples, and something is seriously wrong when they are obliged to request their respective national governments to grant them property rights.

Indigenous peoples, and many other rural resource users, already have property rights and are seeking state recognition of their rights, not state grants of new rights.