ABSTRACT
This chapter concerns the conservation of the earth's common resources. Types and impacts of environmental degradation reviews society's perception and the severity of this issue, both in a historical and a social context. It evaluates a number of regimes and approaches towards containing degradation, such as: 'regulation', 'assigning a cost to common resources' and 'green management schemes in the disguised rentier state'. The chapter highlights the degradation of oceanic ecosystems as a consequence of, as well as a cause of, climate change. It discusses the eco-taxation, aimed at providing an incentive perhaps to exceed rather than merely achieve a target. Taxation is one approach to assigning a market cost to global or regional resources which would otherwise be depleted by excessive demand. Global warming itself triggers feedback effects; for instance, methane begins to escape from melting permafrost, accelerating climate change.
