Introduction

The second half of the twentieth century may someday be recalled as the time that we became painfully aware of the social and ecological costs of industrialization ... We cannot rely on normal market forces nor on people's best intentions to save their environments and themselves ... In the 1960s and 19 70s ... the only thinkable solution to commons dilemmas was government intervention. [Now] ... the same problems and the same theory trigger discussion of another solution: privatization.