Accounting for Mother Nature - by Terry L Anderson & Laura E Huggins & Thomas Michael Power (Hardcover)

About the Book

Accounting for Mother Nature offers innovative and lasting approaches for dealing with the growing pressure on our natural resources and the increasingly bitter conflict over their management.

Book Synopsis

In the face of growing pressure on our natural landscapes and increasingly bitter conflict over their management and use, simply defending the status quo is not enough. Finding a balance between producing commodities, such as lumber, and maintaining amenities, such as open space, is crucial if we hope to promote environmental stewardship and healthy economies. Accounting for Mother Nature brings together experts with wide-ranging experience to provide a comprehensive examination of the critical debate around the management of scarce natural resources.

The contributors to this volume consider how unconstrained use of nature's bounty had lead not only to damage and waste, but also to divisive conflict. With a focus particularly on the American West, this volume examines the often-negative outcomes of government's management of land and natural resources. In turn, the contributors explore the role that private individuals and organizations can play in protecting natural and agrarian landscapes.

Through its detailed analyses, Accounting for Mother Nature makes the case for innovation within the private nonprofit sector and marks out new frontiers for research.

Review Quotes

"America's public land system is outdated and failing the West. Accounting for Mother Nature offers an insightful diagnosis and innovative ideas for public land reform. It is an important contribution to the public land policy debate." --Robert H. Nelson, University of Maryland, and author of Public Lands and Private Rights

"For some, using "markets" and "environment" in the same sentence is like mixing oil and water. For this group of scholars, markets and market-like institutions are potential solutions to the growing number of resource and amenity conflicts found in the American West. Accounting for Mother Nature is a great example of institutional detail and clever policy suggestions." --Doug Allen, Simon Fraser University

About the Author

Terry L. Anderson is the Executive Director of the Property and Environment Research Center (PERC); Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University; and Professor Emeritus at Montana State University. His work with Donald Leal helped launch the idea of "free market environmentalism." Anderson is the author or editor of thirty books, including the most recent, Self-Determination The Other Path for Native Americans (2006), coedited with Bruce L. Benson and Thomas E. Flanagan. Laura E. Huggins is a research fellow and Director of Development with PERC, as well as a research fellow at the Hoover Institution. Huggins is the author, along with Terry L. Anderson, of Property Rights: A Practical Guide to Freedom and Prosperity (2003).Thomas Michael Power is Professor of Economics and Chair of the Economics Department at the University of Montana. He specializes in natural resource and environmental economics and their relationship to local and regional development. He is author of five books including Lost Landscapes and Failed Economies: The Search for Value of Place (1996) and Post-Cowboy Economics: Pay and Prosperity in the New American West (2001).