Property rights have led to short-sighted approach to land use, where these crucial ecosystems are altered or exploited for immediate economic benefits, disregarding their long-term ecological value. This approach favors quick financial returns over the essential roles these areas serve in supporting biodiversity, carbon sequestration, and water regulation, resulting in profound environmental and climatic repercussions.

Wetlands and peatlands are treated as commodities or barriers to development, rather than integral components of the Earth's climate system and biodiversity network. This paradigm underpinning property rights neglects their ecological importance, driving policies and practices that lead to their systematic destruction.

Property rights fails to acknowledge the dynamic nature of wetlands and peatlands. Despite their critical functions in carbon storage and water management, these ecosystems are often overlooked in land-use planning and property governance, culminating in their gradual degradation.

Control over ecosystems is often framed within property rights, viewed as entitlements that protect landowners from government interference. While the government can convert private property for public use, it is obligated to compensate the owner if it restricts the owner from making economically viable use of their land.

Property rights grant landowners the authority to exercise dominion over their land, with their obligations largely insulated from a duty of care towards the ecosystem. These rights are predominantly unchecked except by external restrictions imposed through environmental legislation. This asymmetry highlights a system where the rights to use land are protected more than the responsibilities to preserve its ecological integrity, complicating the efforts to safeguard wetlands and peatlands from degradation.