Privatization movements (environmental)
Privatization movements in the environmental context focus on reshaping the relationship between individual property rights and government regulations aimed at environmental protection. Advocates argue that privatizing natural resources can lead to better environmental stewardship, positing that property owners have a vested interest in maintaining their resources. This perspective is rooted in the Lockean tradition, which emphasizes individual rights and views governmental regulations as impediments to these rights. Two primary factions exist within this movement: one believes privatization can effectively safeguard the environment, while the other prioritizes personal property rights often with little regard for ecological implications.
Historically, such movements have faced criticism for their potentially negative impact on the environment, as evidenced by the backlash against established regulations like the Clean Air Act. Notably, the Sagebrush Rebellion in the 1970s and 1980s sought to challenge these environmental laws in favor of individual property rights, sometimes resorting to litigation and conflict. However, some privatization efforts have introduced innovative market-based solutions, such as emissions trading, aimed at environmental improvement. Overall, these movements reflect a broader skepticism of government authority and a belief in the market's ability to address environmental issues, often at odds with progressive notions of collective responsibility for ecological conservation.
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Privatization movements (environmental)
DEFINITION: Efforts to protect individual property by weakening governmental policies and programs intended to protect the environment
Privatization movements, which have both intellectual and advocacy components, are concerned with changing the relationship between government and society. They have had some successes and have raised some important questions. In spite of the efforts of some privatization advocates, these movements have not always exerted positive influences on the environment.
Proponents of environmental privatization emphasize the primacy of individual property rights in the American political tradition. Privatization movements generally take one of two related approaches. One group argues that privatization can provide better protections for the than can existing governmental regulatory programs. The second group simply contends that Americans have the right to do what they want with their own property; those in this latter group often display scant concern for the environment.
All efforts to privatize the environment are infused with the views of the seventeenth century English philosopher John Locke concerning the primacy of individual property rights. One group, however, maintains that protecting the environment is also an important goal. Proponents of this view argue that common-pool resources such as water or wilderness are subject to the “tragedy of the commons” because individuals have no incentive not to exhaust (or pollute) resources that belong to everyone. One response to the tragedy of the commons is extensive governmental regulation.
Advocates of privatization decry this approach on two grounds. First, they argue that it flies in the face of American political traditions regarding the importance of private property that go back to the founding of the nation. Second, they contend that governmental regulation will only exacerbate tendencies to use up or pollute a resource because if a resource belongs to everyone, it belongs to no one, and no one will take responsibility for protection. Privatizing a resource will guarantee protection by the property owner. For example, an owner of a forest will be disinclined to see it harmed by and will take appropriate action to protect it. Such privatization advocates often consider themselves ardent environmentalists and contend that privatization can protect the environment more efficiently than can governmental regulation. Although they contend that humans have primacy over nature, they maintain that protecting the environment is good for humankind and should be done.
A second group of advocates of privatizing the environment also starts from the Lockean perspective of the primacy of individual property rights. More so than those in the first group, they are often suspicious of government, especially the national government. This group, however, views the environment as something to be exploited for the benefit of individual property owners. They do note that a wise owner might wish to leave something for future generations, but this is an individual decision. Some advocates of this form of privatization regard natural resources as inexhaustible or easily substitutable through the operation of market forces. In their view, governmental regulation of the environment is wrong because it interferes with individual property rights, not because it may be an ineffective means of protecting the environment.
Both groups of advocates of privatization are opposed to the command-and-control policies of environmental protection used in the United States since the 1970s. They argue that governmental regulations such as the Clean Air Act and efforts at preserving species interfere with Americans’ rights to do whatever they wish with their property. During the late 1970s and early 1980s, a movement in the western United States known as the Sagebrush Rebellion often resorted to court actions (and sometimes violence) to try to weaken various environmental laws and regulations, such as the Endangered Species Act, that limited the exercise of property rights. Others described a philosophy known as “wise use,” the view that natural resources should be used wisely, which usually means providing a profit for their owners. This movement achieved some success during the presidency of Ronald Reagan as agencies such as the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) scaled back enforcement of environmental regulations. Some advocates of privatization called for massive sales of federal lands in the western states, saying that the national government should not own natural resources.
These efforts at privatization generally had negative impacts on the environment. What land sales occurred benefited large businesses, not small property owners. Meanwhile, the attack on environmental regulation slowed efforts to achieve a cleaner environment. One aspect of the privatization efforts of the 1980s that has had a more positive impact has been the attempt to improve environmental quality through market-based solutions that take property rights into account. These programs are based on the concept that individual property owners will be more effective and efficient in protecting the environment, as they enhance their own property, than a program based on governmental regulation of industry. While programs such as emissions trading have not always been completely successful, they represent an innovative means of dealing with environmental issues such as air pollution.
Movements to privatize the environment have often been part of larger movements characterized by suspicion of government and the desire to decrease its impact. These movements thus are directly opposed to the philosophy of the early twentieth century Progressives, such as Theodore Roosevelt, who maintained that the protection of the environment is the responsibility of everyone, including the government. Advocates of privatization rely on the workings of the market to protect the environment but do not readily accept that the market does not always work in favor of the environment. Their narrow interpretation of the views of America’s Founding Fathers on property rights sometimes verges on distortion. The Founders were concerned with protecting individual property, but they were also concerned with achieving the common good, even if this required governmental action.
Bibliography
Anderson, Terry L., and Donald R. Leal. Free Market Environmentalism. Rev. ed. New York: Palgrave, 2001.
Cawley, R. McGreggor. Federal Land, Western Anger: The Sagebrush Rebellion and Environmental Politics. Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 1993.
Davis, Charles, ed. Western Public Lands and Environmental Politics. 2d ed. Boulder, Colo.: Westview Press, 2001.
Echeverria, John D., and Raymond Booth Eby, eds. Let the People Judge: Wise Use and the Private Property Rights Movement. Washington, D.C.: Island Press, 1995.
Herlin-Karnell Ester. "Privatisation and Climate Change: A Question of Duties." Jus Cogens, vol. 6, Apr. 2024, pp. 89-108, doi.org/10.1007/s42439-023-00087-8. Accessed 22 July 2024.
Ostrom, Elinor, ed. The Drama of the Commons. Washington, D.C.: National Academy Press, 2002.
Vig, Norman J., and Michael E. Kraft, eds. Environmental Policy: New Directions for the Twenty-first Century. 7th ed. Washington, D.C.: CQ Press, 2010.