An Institutional Basis for Environmental Stewardship: The Structure and Quality of Property Rights

182 Pages·2003·3.107 MB·English

by  Doris A. Fuchs (auth.)

AN INSTITUTIONAL BASIS FOR ENVIRONMENTAL STEWARDSHIP
The Structure and Quality of Property Rights
ENVIRONMENT & POLICY
VOLUME 35
The titles published in this series are listed at the end of this volume.
An Institutional Basis for
Environmental Stewardship
The Structure and Quality of Property Rights
by
Doris A. Fuchs
Ludwig-Maximilians-University,
Munich, Germany
SPRINGER-SCIENCE+BUSINESS MEDIA, B.V.
A C.I.P. Catalogue record for this book is available from the Library of Congress.
ISBN 978-90-481-6166-9 ISBN 978-94-017-0709-1 (eBook)
DOI 10.1007/978-94-017-0709-1
Printed on acid-free paper
All Rights Reserved
© 2003 Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht
Originally published by Kluwer Academic Publishers in 2003
Softcover reprint of the hardcover 1st edition 2003
No part of this work may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted
in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, microfilming, recording
or otherwise, without written permission from the Publisher, with the exception
of any material supplied specifically for the purpose of being entered
and executed on a computer system, for exclusive use by the purchaser of the work.
Table of Contents
Acknowledgements vii
1 Introduction 1
1.1 Determinants of environmental quality 2
1.2 Property rights and environmental stewardship 5
1.3 The assurance of property rights 7
1.4 The environmental desirability of government intervention 10
1.5 Where do we go from here? 12
2 Determinants of environmental quality 15
2.1 The Environmental Kuznets Curve 15
2.2 Institutions, social and cognitive factors 31
2.3 Conclusion 42
3 Property rights and environmental stewardship 43
3.1 Property rights: The fundamentals 44
3.2 Property regimes 49
3.3 The Tragedy of the Commons 51
3.4 Differentiating types of property rights 62
3.5 So what? 64
4 Assurance of property rights and environmental stewardship 67
4.1 The effect of the assurance of property rights 69
4.2 Determinants of assurance 75
4.3 Assurance of property rights - a Panacea? 79
4.4 Limits to the positive environmental effects of assurance 81
4.5 Conclusion 86
5 The environmental desirability of government intervention 89
5.1 Policy as a change in property rights 90
5.2 The environmental desirability of intervention 92
5.3 Implications 105
5.4 Conclusion 108
v
VI
6 Conclusions 111
6.1 The current stage: What did we learn? 111
6.2 The next stage: Where do we go from here? 114
6.3 The ideal stage: What really needs to be done 116
Bibliography 121
Appendix A 133
Al The dependent variable: Environmental quality 133
A2 The independent variables 140
A3 The econometric technique 148
A4 The evidence 150
A5 Discussion 168
Appendix B 173
Bl Culture 173
B2 Income distribution 175
B3 Implications 177
Acknowledgements
A book is rarely the result of efforts by an individual, all by herself,
removed from the world (preferably on a mountain top), with her thoughts,
her pen and paper - or rather her laptop. It was not the case with respect to
this book either. Numerous people have in one way or another influenced its
creation. First and foremost, I need to thank my teachers and mentors, Daniel
Mazmanian, Jacek Kugler, and Monty Hempel, who with their diversity of
scholarly interests and approaches allowed me to develop a crucial breadth
in training and ideas, and whose challenges and support provided both
inspiration and encouragement. Moreover, I am grateful to the various
colleagues who at one stage or another have heard or read parts of the
argument presented in this book and provided valuable comments and
criticism, especially Ronald Mitchell, Thomas Princen, Elinor Ostrom, Hans
Bressers, Michael Kraft, Sheldon Kamieniecki, Pam Zeiser, and Cecil
Eubanks, Mark Gasiorowski, and Eugene Wittkopf. Along the way, I have
benefited from the support of great colleagues and friends at the Center for
Clean Technology and Environmental Policy at the University of Twente,
the Geschwister Scholl Institute at the University of Munich, and the
Political Science Department at Louisiana State University. Ada Krooshoop
did a superb job in putting together the final manuscript and deserves big
thanks for that. Most importantly, of course, I would not be where I am now
without the support of my friends and family, who have always been there
through my good and my bitchy :-) times. Thank you.
vii
Chapter 1
Introduction
What is the role of government in environmental politics and policy? The
answer to this question used to be relatively clear. Government was to
regulate the environmental performance of state and non-state actors, to set
standards, impose charges, and establish more or less stringent criteria of
acceptable behavior. With the increasing appearance of the issues of
globalization and global governance in the political science literature,
however, the focus has turned to the role of non-state actors. Academic
research and the popular debate have identified business, non-governmental
organizations (NGOs), and civil society as such as increasingly important
and potentially powerful actors in the political arena. At the same time, some
observers have proclaimed the influence of government to be declining.
Others have argued that the role of government primarily is changing rather
than declining. Those who adopt the latter perspective postulate that the new
role for government in this changing political and socio-economic context is
to set the framework for action. In this perspective, government is still of
fundamental importance for the functioning of the society, the economy, and
political decision-making, but its role is different in that government
'merely' provides the institutional framework facilitating desired outcomes.
This book explores what the governmental provision of an institutional
framework could look like in the context of environmental governance. It
assumes that government can facilitate the sustainability of resource
management by state and non-state actors through the structuring of
incentives and constraints. Specifically, the analyses combined in the book
inquire into the influence of government on actors' environmental
performance through modifications in the structure and quality of property
rights. In pursuit of their objectives, the analyses establish links between
1
2 Chapter 1
previously unconnected research areas in environmental politics and
resource management and integrate disparate debates on environmental
governance and quality. The analyses build on previous research on
determinants of environmental quality in general, and the environmental
implications of property rights in particular. Furthermore, they draw linkages
to the literatures on government capacity and collective action. While
speaking to all of the various research areas and debates to some extent, the
book, at its core, always pursues the question how government can improve
environmental stewardship through modifications in the quality and structure
of property rights independent of the level of economic development.
Previous research has demonstrated that the answer to this question is not
straight forward. While the tragedy of the commons, for instance, frequently
does occur, it is by no means a necessary outcome of joint use and
management of natural resources. Neither private property rights nor state
ownership promise general solutions to the overexploitation and degradation
of environmental resources. Research on the environmental implications of
property rights, thus, has to pursue more sophisticated analyses and ask more
differentiated questions than the original academic debates (and to some
extent still the present popular debates) suggest.
The analyses in this book pursue such questions at two levels. On the one
side, the analyses ask how government can improve environmental
stewardship through modifications in the institution of property rights at the
macro-level. On the other side, the analyses explore how government can
influence environmental stewardship through intervention in the structure of
property rights at the micro-level. In both cases, the objective is to identify
how governments can structure the socio-economic setting of
environmentally relevant decision-making so that the potential for the
sustainable management of natural resources increases. Thus, while the book
considers research on both environmental quality and environmental
stewardship, its primary interest is in the latter. In contrast to environmental
quality, the concept of environmental stewardship implies agency.
Environmental stewardship is a function of decisions by actors, for which
government can provide a supportive setting.
1.1 Determinants of environmental quality
In pursuit of its inquiry into the conditions for successful environmental
stewardship, the book starts with a look at previous research on the (cross
national) determinants of environmental quality and stewardship in chapter
2. Given a lack of differentiation between the two debates in earlier research,
both literatures include relevant information. In the overview provided in
chapter 2, the discussion pays particular attention to assessments of the
1. Introduction 3
'Environmental Kuznets Curve,' i.e. the relationship between economic
growth and environmental quality. Research on this relationship caused quite
a stir in the early 1990s. Many of our local, regional, and global
environmental problems today appear to have been exacerbated if not caused
by industrialization and the pattern of development today's developed
countries have followed: "Currently, one average person from an industrial
country consumes up to fifty times as much material and energy as an
average person from a developing country" (Sagasti and Colby, 1993: 97). In
consequence, it becomes extremely important whether we believe that future
economic growth in developed and especially developing countries will lead
to increasing or decreasing environmental problems.
Accordingly, the world listened up when scholars proclaimed that
economic growth fosters improvements in environmental quality (Grossman
and Krueger, 1991, 1995; World Bank, 1992). These scholars conducted
studies that showed that the relationship between economic growth and
environmental quality can take a variety of forms, but that an Environmental
Kuznets Curve is the one form that applies to the majority of indicators
tested. An Environmental Kuznets Curve describes a deterioration of
environmental quality with initial increases in per capita income levels, and
an improvement in environmental quality once a certain level of per capita
income has been reached. Some observers interpreted these results to mean
that with sufficient economic growth the world could simply 'grow out' of
its environmental problems.
Such pronouncements turned out to be premature, however. By now,
numerous studies have explored the implications of economic growth for
environmental quality. They find that the Environmental Kuznets Curve is
less dominant than previously thought and that other relationships, most
importantly uniformly deteriorating or improving environmental quality with
rising per capita incomes, are powerful and frequent as well. Furthermore,
individual research efforts have shown contradictory findings on the
economic growth-environmental quality relationship. Finally, newer studies
have emphasized an often neglected acknowledgement of the earlier ones.
There is nothing automatic about the relationship between changes in per
capita income levels and environmental quality. Increases in per capita
incomes even at higher levels do not have to lead to improvements in
environmental quality. The Environmental Kuznets Curve may be a function
of specific historical political, economic, and social conditions.
Thus, while the earlier studies provided valuable insights into the
dynamics between environmental quality and economic growth, they have
made answering a different question even more important: how can we
improve environmental quality at any given level of development? If we do
not want to sit back and wait to grow into or out of a specific environmental