Accounting for Mother Nature: Changing Demands for Her Bounty

by Terry L. Anderson (Editor), Laura E. Huggins (Editor), Thomas Michael Power (Editor)

Overview

In the face of growing pressure on our natural landscapes and increasingly bitter conflict over their management and use, simply defending the status quo is not enough. Finding a balance between producing commodities, such as lumber, and maintaining amenities, such as open space, is crucial if we hope to promote environmental stewardship and healthy economies. Accounting for Mother Nature brings together experts with wide-ranging experience to provide a comprehensive examination of the critical debate around the management of scarce natural resources.

The contributors to this volume consider how unconstrained use of nature's bounty had lead not only to damage and waste, but also to divisive conflict. With a focus particularly on the American West, this volume examines the often-negative outcomes of government's management of land and natural resources. In turn, the contributors explore the role that private individuals and organizations can play in protecting natural and agrarian landscapes.

Through its detailed analyses, Accounting for Mother Nature makes the case for innovation within the private nonprofit sector and marks out new frontiers for research.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780804756983
Publisher:	Stanford University Press
Publication date:	12/13/2007
Edition description:	New Edition
Pages:	312
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 0.80(d)

About the Author

Terry L. Anderson is the Executive Director of the Property and Environment Research Center (PERC); Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University; and Professor Emeritus at Montana State University. His work with Donald Leal helped launch the idea of "free market environmentalism." Anderson is the author or editor of thirty books, including the most recent, Self-Determination The Other Path for Native Americans (2006), coedited with Bruce L. Benson and Thomas E. Flanagan. Laura E. Huggins is a research fellow and Director of Development with PERC, as well as a research fellow at the Hoover Institution. Huggins is the author, along with Terry L. Anderson, of Property Rights: A Practical Guide to Freedom and Prosperity (2003).Thomas Michael Power is Professor of Economics and Chair of the Economics Department at the University of Montana. He specializes in natural resource and environmental economics and their relationship to local and regional development. He is author of five books including Lost Landscapes and Failed Economies: The Search for Value of Place (1996) and Post-Cowboy Economics: Pay and Prosperity in the New American West (2001).

Table of Contents

List of Illustrations     vii
Introduction     1
Perspectives on the Wealth of Nature
Natural Amenities and Ecosystem Services: The Need for Additional Institutional Innovation   Thomas Michael Power     11
Maximizing the Wealth of Nature: A Property Rights Approach   Terry L. Anderson     33
Devolution to Facilitate Change
Institutional Reform for Public Lands?   Daniel Kemmis     53
The State of the Parks: Enhancing or Dissipating the Wealth of Nature?   Holly Lippke Fretwell     73
Property Rights to Facilitate Change
Homegrown Property Rights for the Klamath Basin   Terry L. Anderson   Laura E. Huggins     95
Fishing for Wealth in Coastal Fisheries   Donald R. Leal     119
The Mining Landscape: Bootleggers, Baptists, and the Promised Land   Roger E. Meiners   Andrew P. Morriss     143
The Effects of Public Funding Systems on the Success of Private Conservation Through Land Trusts   Dominic P. Parker     167
Measuring the Wealth of Nature
The Wealth of Nature: Costs as Well as Benefits?   F. Andrew Hanssen     195
Counting the Wealth of Nature: An Overview of Ecosystem Valuation   Timothy Fitzgerald   A. Myrick Freeman III     211
Do Resource States Do Worse?   Ronald N. Johnson     235
Why Individuals Provide Public Goods   David D. Haddock     261
Conclusion     289
Contributors     293
Index     297

Editorial Reviews

"For some, using "markets" and "environment" in the same sentence is like mixing oil and water. For this group of scholars, markets and market-like institutions are potential solutions to the growing number of resource and amenity conflicts found in the American West. Accounting for Mother Nature is a great example of institutional detail and clever policy suggestions." —Doug Allen, Simon Fraser University

"America's public land system is outdated and failing the West. Accounting for Mother Nature offers an insightful diagnosis and innovative ideas for public land reform. It is an important contribution to the public land policy debate." —Robert H. Nelson, University of Maryland, and author of Public Lands and Private Rights

From the Publisher