ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on nonhuman resources, with emphasis on other life forms and physical elements useful to humans. A neoinstitutionalist theory of environmental control, like any other theory, is based on preconceptions, values, and a fundamental approach to solving problems. While the Progressive conservation movement captured the national political mood, the seeds of a related, but more radical environmental movement had sprouted. The instrumental value criteria of the continuity of human life, the noninvidious re-creation of community, and the corollary of environmental compatibility, explained in the introduction, form the core of institutionalist values. The value corollary of environmental compatibility and the institutional adjustment principle of coevolutionary sustainability are consistent with Leopold’s land ethic. Traditional economics texts emphasize how competitive markets weed out inefficient producers and provide a good or service to consumers at the lowest possible price.
