Market proponents argue that people are more likely to take care of what they own personally, and that commonly owned goods would be better looked after if they were in private hands: 'people who litter in public parks and public thoroughfares do not, in general, dump trash in their own back yards' (Seneca amp; Taussig 1984: 85).
They argue that environmental degradation occurs because of incomplete ownership of rights to use valuable resources. These environmental resources have traditionally been owned in common by everyone (or, one might say, owned by no one individual).
Economists claim there is a strong tendency for people to overexploit and degrade common property resources - because if they don't someone else will, so they might as well get in first. Under this line of reasoning, species become endangered because no one owns them. They point to the fact that all endangered species are undomesticated, and that privately owned livestock faces no such risk of extinction. They cite the example of whales, which nobody owns. Since the supply of whales is obviously limited, those who get in first will get the most. This provides an incentive for overharvesting. Of course, overharvesting of whales has now been stopped by international treaties, but economists argue that the allocation of ownership rights is a better way to protect species.
The idea behind rights-based measures for conservation is that if people have a right to the use of particular natural resources, they will consider the longer term and manage those resources sustainably. Jeff Bennett (1991: 5) gives the example of a waterway for which legal usage rights, whether for waste disposal, recreation or fishing, are sold to the highest bidder. This, he argues, would provide an incentive for those who have paid for those rights to devise ways of protecting their environmental property.
Another rationale for creating rights to the environment is that the scarcer these rights are, and the more demand there is for them, the more they will cost. This is supposed to ensure that the rights are used as efficiently as possible. That is, if the rights to a resource such as wildlife, or water entitlements, are worth a lot of money, those who own them will not squander them. Additionally, it is assumed that those who can earn the most money from using such rights will be willing to pay the most for them and so the resource will end up being used for the highest value activity.