July 13, 1998 Missoulian article about property rights in relation to environmental protection, written by P.J. Hill; is a senior associate of the Bozeman-based Political Economy Research Center and the George F. Bennett Professor of Economics at Wheaton College in Wheaton, Illinois.
Strength of private property rights is measure of environmental health Given the role that property rights play in protecting the environment, it is important that groups like the Western Governor's Association Continue to stand up to the administration's flawed environmental "rights" program
The Western Governors' Association has joined the growing list of political groups opposing the Clinton administration's bureaucratic guidelines on "environmental justice." The governors insist that the new permitting regulations, supposedly designed to protect minority neighborhoods from pollution, will actually hurt minority citizens by eliminating jobs.
They are right, but what is missing from both sides of the debate is the realization that the tool necessary to protect minorities - and indeed all citizens - from pollution is readily at hand. It is, very simply, the protection of private property rights. By plucking out of the air new "environmental rights," the Clinton administration is creating unintended and harmful consequences. The government should not be dreaming up new ways to prevent economic development under the guise of civil rights protection; rather, it should vigorously enforce private property rights.
Enforcing private property rights leads to greater prosperity and to better environments. A few people (known as "free market environmentalists") have believed that for years, but new and dramatic evidence of this fact has turned up through an array of international data.
A study by Seth Nolton, Professor of Economics at Wheaton College, found that in countries where governments guarantee property rights and the courts uphold contractual agreements, citizens enjoy much higher environmental quality than their counterparts in countries where private property is limited or outlawed.
Norton used data from the Heritage Foundation's Index of Economic Freedom and from the Economic Freedom of the World study by James D. Gwartney and Robert Lawson. These indexes measure economic freedom in more than 100 nations around the world. Not surprisingly, they show that nations that allow their people economic freedom are those that have prosperity - that is, higher and continually rising, incomes. Now, Norton has correlated these measurements of economic freedom, especially the components that measure the level of property rights protection, with broad measures of environmental quality in countries around the world. The results, which come as no surprise to advocates of free market environmentalism, may well shock those environmentalists who want governments to take ever greater control of people's lives.
In countries that score high on the protection of private property, such as the United States, Switzerland, and England, the vast majority of people (93 percent) have access to safe drinking water. This contrasts with only 60 percent in countries that don't provide protection for private property, such as Algeria, Croatia, and Syria. An even greater discrepancy appears when access to sewage treatment, an important element of disease prevention is compared - 93 percent to 48 percent.
Furthermore, life expectancy - possibly the most meaningful measure of environmental quality - is much higher in countries with a high degree of property rights protection. It is 70 years in these countries, compared with only 50 years in countries with little or no protection of property.
Some may scoff that the differences simply reflect the income gap between nations, such as the United States and Syria. But Norton went further. He used the United Nation's Human Poverty Index, which measures the condition of the poorest people in the poorest nations, and correlated these with quality-of-life measurements. He found that 95 percent of the poor people in countries where property rights are protected live to the age of 40. But fewer than three-quarters survive that long under regimes that flout private property.
Some environmentalists may not consider these measurements of human conditions - access to clean water, sewage treatment and life expectancy - as environmental" indicators, preferring instead to focus on the natural environment. But here, too, the evidence is coming in. Robert Deacon University of California Santa Barbara has studied the connection between property rights protection and deforestation, around the world and over time. Deacon found that secure property rights slow down the rate at which forests are logged. Forest owners allow trees to grow longer because they know that they will be able to log them in the future. They are also more likely to replant forests, confident that their descendants will reap the benefits.
Given the role that property rights play in protecting the environment, it is important that groups like the Western Governor's Association continue to stand up to the administration's flawed environmental "rights" program, but they need to go further. They need to recognize and proclaim the fact that protecting rights will keep communities and the environment in good health.
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