The atmosphere is another resource being used and abused, as are forests. Timber producers are driven to take as much timber as possible as cheaply as possible, without considering the wider impacts of doing so. Ideally, governments at the local, state, national and international levels would define and manage shared resources. However, there are problems with this. Management inside clear boundaries is quite straightforward, but more problematic are resources shared across jurisdictions. For example, at the international level, states are not bound by a common authority and may view restrictions on resource extraction as a threat to their sovereignty.
As the global population increases and demand for resources follows, the downsides of the Commons become more apparent. Some may argue that this will test the role and practicality of nation-states, leading to a redefinition of international governance.
Further, it may lead some to question the role of supranational governments, such as the United Nations UN or the World Trade Organization; as resources become more limited, some may argue that managing the commons may not have a solution at all.
Moving away from international solutions to address trans-border problems has its own limitations. A potential solution is to affix property rights to public spaces. For example, charging a toll to use a freeway or implementing a tax for dumping wastewater would reduce the number of users to those who act in the best interests of others, not only themselves.
The toll or tax , of course, cannot apply to the freeway once it crosses a border into another country — unless a treaty between the two countries concerned by the freeway is entered into and the same toll is established in both countries. Other solutions could include government intervention or developing strategies to trigger collective behaviour, such as assigning small groups in a community a plot of land to look after.
Cover photo credit: Unsplash. Org is a not-for-profit environmental organisation based in Hong Kong. It aims to raise awareness about the loss of biodiversity and the deteriorating conditions of natural ecosystems worldwide. Each individual rationally expands the number of sheep in his flock, but since they all do it, they exceed the carrying capacity of the land, leading inevitably to ruin Hardin described a social dilemma that arises under special conditions.
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The rational man finds that his share of the cost of the wastes he discharges into the commons is less than the cost of purifying his wastes before releasing them.
It was first coined in an article in Science in by Garrett Hardin. At its core, the Tragedy of the Commons demonstrates that, when something is owned by a group not privately owned , the overall sustainability can be impacted because no single person technically owns it or is responsible for it.
Men pay most attention to what is their own; they care less for what is common; or at any rate they care for it only to the extent to which each is individually concerned. He suggests changing the social implication of a commons by using privatization and taxes to solve commons problems. The Tragedy of the Commons The population problem has no technical solution; it requires a fundamental extension in morality. The population problem has no technical solution; it requires a fundamental extension in morality.
He posed the population problem in stark terms. First, he examined the relation of population to resources, and concluded population must be brought under control.
He then analyzed the dynamics that have caused population to swell. From this analysis, he proposed solutions. Basically, Hardin says, if we help the poor, soon we will ALL be poor.
The problem of starvation and overpopulation would just get worse until the poor have eventually depleted everything. Grazing lands held in common will become over-saturated with livestock because the food the animals consume is shared among all herdsmen. Hardin's point was if humans faced the same issue as in the example with herd animals, each person would act in his own self interest and consume as much of the commonly accessible scarce resource as possible, making the resource even harder to find.
In economics terms, the tragedy of the commons may occur when an economic good is both rivalrous in consumption and non-excludable.
These types of goods are called common-pool resource goods as opposed to private goods , club goods, or public goods. A rival good means that only one person can consume a unit of a good i. Note that in order for a tragedy for the commons to occur the good must also be scarce, since a non-scarce good cannot be rivalrous in consumption; by definition there is always plenty to go around if it is not scarce e.
A good that is non-excludable means that individual consumers are unable to prevent others from also consuming the good before you get your hands on a unit of it. It is this combination of properties common-pool, scarce, rivalry in consumption, and non-excludability that sets the stage for the tragedy of the commons. Each consumer maximizes the value they get from the good by consuming as much as they can as fast as they can before others deplete the resource, and no-one has an incentive to reinvest in maintaining or reproducing the good since they can not prevent others from appropriating the value of the investment by consuming the product for themselves.
The good becomes more and more scarce and may end up entirely depleted. A critical aspect to understanding and overcoming of the tragedy of the commons is the role that institutional and technological factors play in the rivalry and excludability of a good.
Human societies have evolved many varied methods of dividing up and enforcing exclusive rights to economic goods and natural resources, or punishing those who over consume common resources over the course of history.
One possible solution is top-down government regulation or direct control of a common-pool resource. Regulating consumption and use, or legally excluding some individuals, can reduce over-consumption and government investment in conservation and renewal of the resource can help prevent it's depletion. For example government regulation can set limits on how many cattle may be grazed on government lands or issue fish catch quotas.
However, top-down government solutions tend to suffer from the well known rent-seeking , principal-agent , and knowledge problems that are inherent in economic central planning and politically driven processes. Assigning private property rights over resources to individuals is another possible solution, effectively converting a common-pool resource into a private good. Institutionally this depends on developing some mechanism to define and enforce private property rights, which might occur as an outgrowth of existing institutions of private property over other types of goods.
Technologically it means developing some way to identify, measure, and mark units or parcels of the common pool resource off into private holdings, such as branding maverick cattle. This solution can suffer from some of the same problems as top-down government control, because most often, this process of privatization has occurred by way of a government forcibly assuming control over a common-pool resource and then assigning private property rights over the resource to its subjects based on a sale price or simple political favor.
This brings us to another popular solution to overcoming the tragedy of the commons, that of co-operative collective action as described by economists led by Nobelist Elinor Ostrom.
By limiting use to local farmers and herders, managing use through practices such as crop rotation and seasonal grazing, and providing enforceable sanctions against overuse and abuse of the resource, these collective action arrangements readily overcame the tragedy of the commons along with other problems. Often this also involves limiting access to the resource to only those who are parties to the collective action arrangement, effectively converting a common pool resource in to a kind of club good.
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