Often, knowledge relevant to environmental decision making is specific. Most environmental impacts occur locally. Impacts vary depending on local geology, hydrology, biology and meteorology. While universal knowledge in the form of scientific theorems provides some uniform understanding of the physical world, specific knowledge of each location is what enables understanding of actual environmental harms and potential remedies. Most environmental problems also have a dynamic dimension.
Impacts change over time, depending on many interdependent, location-specific variables.
For example, all resource uses involve dispersed, dynamic and interdependent supplies of materials. Take paper manufacturing, for example. The feedstock for making paper can come from tree farms, from the residue of lumber production, from public forests or from wastepaper. It can come from foreign or domestic supplies. Property rights link individual choices with the consequences of those choices.