The basic environmental problem is to prevent the overuse and abuse of “environmental goods,” including clean air, water, and wildlife, by controlling access and use. As control implies the assignment of private (individual or common) or public rights and duties with respect to otherwise open-access resources, this book posits that all approaches to environmental protection ultimately are property-based. On this view, even government regulation constitutes a property-based approach to environmental protection. Regulations impose private duties with respect to the use of environmental goods, and in doing so necessarily create concomitant public rights of enforcement. Consequently, the choice in environmental protection is not whether to take a property-based approach but which property-based approaches to use under various circumstances.

As to the latter question, there is no universal, first-best property-based solution to all environmental problems in all circumstances. This book assesses the utility of public, common, and private property-based approaches to environmental protection, and finds them all useful but within limits. Each has advantages and disadvantages, which may be maximized or minimized, respectively, depending on the ecological, institutional, technological, and cultural circumstances. One property system may work better than another in one set of circumstances, but compare very poorly under different conditions. No single property regime is demonstrably superior to all others, in all circumstances, across all dimensions of policy concern.

That conclusion should not surprise anyone.