The book interprets nature and the environment as a scarce resource. It offers a theoretical study of the allocation problem and describes different policy approaches to the environmental problem. The entire spectrum of the allocation issue is studied: the use of the environment in a static context, international and trade aspects of environmental allocation, regional dimensions, global environmental media, environmental use over time and under uncertainty. The book incorporates a variety of economic approaches, including neoclassical analysis, the public-goods approach, benefit-cost analysis, property-rights ideas, economic policy and public-finance reasoning, international trade theory, regional science, optimization theory, and risk analysis. The different aspects of environmental allocation are studied in the context of a single model that is used through the book.