Nonviolent Action and Free Market Environmentalism

This paper’s unique contribution is to connect the concepts of nonviolent action and free market environmentalism (fme). The scholarship on nonviolent action explores diverse institutional arrangements that facilitate peace and mitigate violence. fme uses comparative institutional analysis to explore how property rights, entrepreneurship, and mutually beneficial exchange can address environmental problems. By synthesizing the literatures on nonviolent action and fme, this paper argues that many environmental problems can be addressed in voluntary, peaceful, positive-sum ways. Individuals can nonviolently address environmental issues when property rights are secure, mutually beneficial exchange can occur, entrepreneurs can innovate, and new institutions can be tried. Public policies may sometimes be required, but ill-designed policies may spark negative-sum conflict, property destruction, and violence. Three case studies demonstrate how peaceful, voluntary action can effectively address environmental issues, including large-scale land preservation at the American Prairie Reserve, the conservation of the greater sage-grouse, and climate change mitigation.

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