This chapter assesses the utility and limitations of public property-based approaches to avoiding the tragedy of open access. There are, generally speaking, two distinct methods of imposing public property rights on environmental goods. One is the explicit assertion of public/state ownership. The other is public regulation, which constitutes an implicit assertion of public property rights sufficient to accomplish the regulation's purpose. The first section of the chapter deals with outright public ownership. The second section addresses regulation as a public property-based approach to environmental protection. The chapter will conclude with a preliminary assessment of some of the problems arising from public ownership of environmental goods, which prompt efforts at partial or complete privatization.

Public ownership of environmental goods

In the western world we are accustomed to believing that private ownership of resources is not just efficient but the norm. The first belief – that private ownership is efficient – is correct often enough, but the second belief is dubious. Even today in the United States, where the concept of private ownership is as well entrenched as anywhere, the federal government is by far the country's largest landowner. The United States government owns 33 percent of all lands in the fifty states. Adding the acreage owned by state and local governments, the total amount of publicly owned lands in the United States rises to 42 percent (National Research Council 1992). That is a comparatively high percentage of public landownership for a noncommunist country.