The environmental desirability of government intervention

Besides providing assurance of property rights as discussed in the previous chapter, governments can influence the environmental implications of property rights through the intervention in ‘private’ property rights on behalf of the environment. Private, in this context, means property rights not owned by government, i.e. includes both ‘private property regimes’ and ‘common property regimes’ as well as open-access. This chapter, therefore, focuses on the question to what extent government intervention in private property rights is desirable from an environmental point of view.