Environmental Stewardship Does Not Require the Surrender of Freedom

Surfers who love the ocean can protect it through ownership and voluntary action, not just regulation

No one has a greater stake in the health of the ocean than the surfer, whose passion depends on clean water, healthy beaches, and a thriving marine environment. This stake has led many surfers to embrace environmental protection, and rightly so. But the protection of the ocean need not, as is often assumed, require the surrender of freedom to an expanding regulatory state. There is a tradition of environmental stewardship, rooted in property rights and voluntary action, that protects the environment while preserving the freedom that surfers also cherish.

The Surfer’s Stake

The surfer’s love of the ocean is not abstract but deeply personal, rooted in daily experience of the marine environment and direct dependence on its health. The surfer who paddles out into polluted water, who surfs past plastic and debris, who sees the degradation of the beaches and the waters, experiences the harm directly and has a powerful stake in the protection of the environment. This stake has made surfers natural environmentalists, committed to the protection of the ocean they love.

This commitment is admirable and important, for the protection of the ocean is a genuine and pressing concern, and the surfer’s direct stake makes the surf community a powerful constituency for environmental protection. The surfer who loves the ocean has every reason to work for its protection, and the surf community’s environmental commitment reflects a genuine and well-founded concern for the health of the marine environment.

The question is not whether the ocean should be protected, which it clearly should, but how, and here the surfer who also values freedom faces a genuine question, for the dominant approach to environmental protection has relied heavily on regulation, on the expansion of state control, in ways that can conflict with the freedom that surfers also cherish. The challenge is to protect the ocean without surrendering the freedom, to reconcile environmental stewardship with liberty.

The Property Rights Approach

There is a tradition of environmental thought, associated with free-market environmentalism and articulated by institutions including property and environment research organizations, that locates the protection of the environment not primarily in regulation but in property rights and voluntary action. This tradition holds that clear property rights, by giving owners a stake in the long-term health of their resources, create powerful incentives for stewardship, and that voluntary action, by individuals and organizations committed to conservation, can protect the environment without the expansion of state control.

The logic of this approach is that the owner of a resource, who bears the consequences of its degradation and reaps the benefits of its stewardship, has a powerful incentive to protect it, an incentive that regulation, imposed from outside, often lacks. The fisherman who owns a stake in a fishery has reason to protect it for the future; the landowner who owns a stretch of coast has reason to maintain its health. Clear property rights align the interests of owners with the protection of resources, creating stewardship through self-interest.

Voluntary action complements property rights in this approach, as individuals and organizations committed to conservation work to protect the environment through their own efforts and resources, purchasing land for conservation, organizing cleanups, funding restoration, and advancing protection through voluntary means rather than through the expansion of state control. The surf community’s many voluntary environmental efforts, the beach cleanups and conservation initiatives, exemplify this voluntary stewardship.

The Limits of Regulation

The reliance on regulation for environmental protection, while sometimes necessary, has genuine limits and costs. Regulation imposed from outside often lacks the local knowledge and the aligned incentives that property rights and voluntary action provide, and it can be captured by interests, applied clumsily, and extended beyond what genuine protection requires, restricting freedom without corresponding environmental benefit. The regulatory approach, for all its prominence, is not the only or always the best means of environmental protection.

The expansion of the regulatory state in the name of environmental protection can, moreover, threaten the freedom that surfers also value, restricting access, controlling use, and extending state control over the coast and the ocean in ways that conflict with liberty. The surfer who values both the ocean and freedom has reason to seek approaches to environmental protection that do not require the surrender of freedom, that protect the environment through means consistent with liberty.

This is not to dismiss regulation entirely, for there are genuine environmental problems, such as pollution that crosses boundaries and harms others, that may require regulatory solutions. But it is to insist that regulation is not the only means of environmental protection, that property rights and voluntary action offer alternatives that protect the environment while preserving freedom, and that the surfer who values both has reason to favor these alternatives where they can be effective.

Stewardship and Freedom Together

The protection of the ocean and the preservation of freedom are not opposed, despite the assumption that environmental protection requires the surrender of liberty to the regulatory state. Through property rights that align incentives with stewardship, and through voluntary action by those committed to conservation, the environment can be protected while freedom is preserved, reconciling the surfer’s love of the ocean with the surfer’s love of freedom. The two commitments can be honored together.

This publication has argued throughout our network, including in related commentary at The London Prat, that environmental protection need not require the surrender of freedom, that property rights and voluntary action offer means of stewardship consistent with liberty, and that the reconciliation of environmental protection and freedom is both possible and desirable.

Environmental stewardship does not require the surrender of freedom; the two can be honored together. For further reading on free-market environmentalism, consult environmental research organizations, and additional network commentary at The London Prat.

SOURCE: https://bohiney.com/