Since the downfall of communism in Eastern Europe, private/individual property has been widely and rightly celebrated as a guarantor of personal liberty (see Pipes 1999) and an engine of social prosperity (see Bethell 1998; De Soto 2000). The arguments advanced in this book do not suggest otherwise. Where environmental protection is concerned, however, celebrations of private property are at least premature and arguably utopian.

Private property regimes do not guarantee effective or efficient environmental protection. The reason is not simply the absence of completely defined property rights in all resources but the costs of coordination and exclusion under private property regimes in some ecological, technological, and institutional circumstances. Sometimes, as shown in chapter 7, public/state or common property regimes are preferable. The most we can legitimately claim about private ownership of environmental goods, then, is that it has substantial but not unlimited utility for conservation.

This conclusion is hardly surprising. We have only just begun, after all, to understand the rich complex of interconnected and ever-changing ecological systems that comprise our world. The notion that a single, sociolegal institution – private property – is both necessary and sufficient to resolve all environmental problems is not just highly improbable but fantastic. It is every bit as unrealistic as Marx's belief that the complete social ownership of the means of production would eradicate pollution and other unwanted byproducts of economic activity (see Cole 1998, p. 160).