"Privatizing" public resources by creating stronger property rights is an increasingly popular environmental policy option. While advocates of these "market-based' approaches tend to f5ocus on their efficiency and ecological implications, the policies also raise important considerations of equity and distributive justice. Private Rights in Public Resources confronts these ethical implications by showing that, despite their limited attention as subjects of academic study, equity ideas have long had an influence in environmental policy. It argues that equity issues should be considered more explicitly in both the analysis and formulation of environmental policy.

Leigh Raymond investigates equity norms through original studies of two important environmental laws, the Acid Rain Title of the 1990 Clean Air Act Amendments (CAAA) and the 1934 Taylor Grazing Act (TGA). He reviews legislative records, administrative documents, and interviews key policymakers. Confirming that much of the debate in the two programs centered on the equity or fairness of the initial allocation of property rights, he then uses the theories of John Locke, Morris Cohen and others to build a framework for identifying the competing norms of equity in play.

Raymond's study reveals that, despite the different historical and ecological settings, the political actors in the two cases struggled to reconcile similar arguments -- and were able to achieve a similar synthesis of conflicting ownership ideas. He notes that the prominence of equity arguments in the debates and decisions about allocations contradict traditional views that the TGA and the CAAA simply "grandfathered" rights to existing users.

Raymond extendshis analysis to ongoing national and international debates about allocations of greenhouse gas emissions. He demonstrates how ideas about equity and fairness operate in the context of global climate change, where there is less structure in the political, legal, and scientific context of the policy debate.

Buying land to conserve it is not a recent phenomenon. Buying Nature chronicles the evolution of land acquisition as a conservation strategy in the United States since the late 1700s. It goes beyond the usual focus on conservation successes to provide a critical assessment of both public and private land acquisition efforts.The book shows that for more than 200 years, both private purchasers -- such as the Nature Conservancy and the Trust for Public Land -- and governmental agencies have acquired land for conservation. It documents trends of growing complexity in transactions and a blurring of public and private roles. The preservation of Mount Vernon and its grounds, for example, began with a private group -- the Mount Vernon Ladies Association of the Union -- and continues today with a mosaic of private, state, and federal actors. The current emphasis on private land trust acquisitions, the authors argue, may undercut other effective governmental efforts to preserve the environment and may not be the best way to meet conservation goals.Buying Nature emphasizes the accountability issues that arise when the line between public and private efforts is indistinct. The authors also pay unique attention to how federal land agencies' individual histories shape their participation in modern land acquisition transactions. An unusual mix of scholarship, the book combines political, legal and constitutional, and economic history with rich case studies of land conservation and quantitative analyses of acquisitions over time to provide a new and distinctive perspective on enduring questions of public policy and environmental protection.