ABSTRACT
This chapter urges the most fundamental point: equity norms exert substantial influence over the making of environmental policy. It explains the allocation processes without recourse to normative principles grounded in property theory. Norms influence daily lives in myriad ways; why would people expect them, in the end, to be any less influential in their political institutions. The apparent importance of the normative ideas, some reluctance considers equity explicitly in studies of public policy is discussed. The trend may experience the beginnings of a welcome reversal; unfortunately it is still the case that for many public policy scholars, equity remains a concept of only secondary importance. Yet, as economist H. Peyton Young has observed, Set against the arguments is the fact that people who are not acquainted with them insist on using the term 'equity'. Many discussions of market-based policies note that the initial distribution of rights is independent of the choice to use a property-based instrument in the first place.
