The horrible air in Beijing has been making the news again, and for good reason. Check out these pictures for reasons why. The topic of environmentalism and its compatibility with liberty has been brought up before here at the consortium, but I’d like to briefly use this opportunity to point out something on property rights.

Conservatives and, lamentably, some libertarians often attribute environmental destruction to “the tragedy of the commons,” but this is short-sighted. Anthropologists have long pointed out that land and property held in common is actually governed quite well. Political scientists and economists have recently begun to come around to this point as well, with Elinor Ostrom (a political scientist by training) winning the 2009 Nobel Prize in Economics for her work on how some societies govern the commons.

Common land and its use often requires an informal set of rules for maintaining a harmonious balance between man and land, and is also a characteristic feature of societies that we would variously label, rightly or wrongly, as stateless, pastoral, foraging, tribal, or my personal favorite: undeveloped. In other words, common land is often exploited by poor people who do not have the resources to institute a regime based largely on private property. With this in mind, just think: would you want to be the party that is found guilty for violating an agreed-upon set of rules for a specific area of land? Even if there were no formal state apparatus charged with enforcing a society’s rules? Not only would you have to face justice, but you’d also be held responsible for the possible suffering of many other people depending on the land, which could lead to other forms of punishment besides fines or violence; punishments that could affect the lives of your loved ones and your loved ones’ loved ones.

Well Brandon, if property held in common is not responsible for all of the pollution in China, are you suggesting that capitalism is?

No, but good question! Property rights still play a key role here. I like to divide property rights regimes into three broad categories: private, common, and state-owned property. It is this third type of regime that is responsible for the environmental destruction going on in China, not private property or common property.

This distinction between state property and common property is an important one. Firstly, the environmental destruction in China is not only targeted at common ownership of the land myths espoused by the Right. The tragedy in China is also being exploited by the Left, but instead of erroneously blaming common ownership of the land, the Left is blaming private property for the destruction.

By drawing a distinction between the three types of property rights regimes, and putting the blame squarely on the shoulders of state-owned property, libertarians would be making huge advances towards not only the development of  large swathes of the earth’s poor, but it would also provide a framework for halting the ongoing destruction of China’s environment. Two birds with one stone, baby!

If skeptics push for more evidence, might I suggest drawing their attention towards not only present-day China, but the environmental catastrophe that occurred within the Soviet bloc during the Cold War. Private property did not destroy the Aral Sea, and neither did the common land tenure systems of the various pastoral societies that had successfully exploited their environment for centuries prior to the arrival of Soviet central planning. The environmental destruction ongoing in China is not the result of private property or common land tenure, either. It is the result of state-sponsored, centrally planned development projects. Indeed, one of the silent tragedies of these projects is the assault on private property rights undertaken by Beijing in the name of development, as it arbitrarily relocates whole segments of the population to new places in order to build damns, highways, railroads, etc.

The ethnic cleansing campaigns of the US government in the mid 19th century suddenly come to mind. Those railroad projects were largely undertaken by state-sponsored initiatives, through land that had been appropriated by state-sponsored initiatives, and were protected by the armed wing of the state as well (with one notable exception, of course). State-sponsored dam projects

Too often the Left and the Right hurl libelous charges at each other in the name of making the other side look awful. The libertarian needs to stand above the fray and point out the not-so-obvious for everybody. It would go a long way towards making the world a better place to live in.