The catchment care principle: A new equity principle for environmental policy, with advantages for efficiency and adaptive governance

The paper also argues that the 'catchment care' principle offers a principle-based approach that encourages burden sharing rather than a winner takes all political game, and is likely to enhance the ability of societies to craft constructive policy responses to some of our most difficult environmental challenges. In addition to encouraging more adaptive governance and the protection of ecosystem integrity, the paper argues that the application of the catchment care principle provides a middle ground anchoring point for the political negotiation of policy changes. This is likely to encourage more socially efficient outcomes by reducing incentives to invest in economically unproductive lobbying activity and by encouraging political outcomes that diverge less from underlying social preferences.