The Evolution of the ‘Tragedy of the Commons’

10/24/20231 min read

wheat field
wheat field

Origins:

  • Since the pursuit of private gain benefits the individual while detriments are shared by all, humans are incentivized to seek short-term personal advantage which ultimately leads to devastation for all (Gunn 1991).

  • Hardin attributed the problem of pollution to unchecked population growth and density, overwhelming the planet's natural capacity for dilution and absorption of waste, and proposed two solutions – privatisation or restriction to access (Gunn 1991).

Extension:

  • Prevention of environmental catastrophe requires “mutual coercion, mutually agreed upon”, on the basis that, where resources are limited, “ego-centered impulses naturally impose costs on the group, and hence on all its members” (Hardin 1998).

  • Deprivation of freedoms ought to be proportional to the extent to which the population surpasses the planet’s capacity to absorb waste (Hardin 1998).

Debunkment:

Ostrom 2009

  • Finite commons can avoid devastation and be “managed by local commons without any regulation by central authorities or privatization”, with appropriate governance, trust, and cooperation (Frischmann et al 2019).

Lozny and McGovern 2019:2

  • Property rights should be managed in accordance with the community’s capacity for collective problem-solving, or “participatory polycentric governance”.

Conceptual clarification (Frischmann et al (2019):

  • “Commons” does not refer to resources per se but instead the structures governing those resources.

  • Apart from open-access sharing (as proposed in 1968), which presupposes that no entity owns or has property rights over the common goods, commons imply ownership – and therefore access – by a defined community.

(234 words)

References:

  • Frischmann, B. M., A. Marciano, and G. Battista Ramello. (2019). ‘Retrospectives: Tragedy of the commons after 50 years’, Journal of Economic Perspectives 33 (4) pp. 211–28.

  • Gunn, A.S. (1991). ‘Environmental ethics for engineers’. Chapter 2.2: The Tragedy of the Commons by C. Tate. (Milton Park: Taylor & Francis Group, 1991).

  • Hardin, G. (1998). ‘Extensions of ‘the tragedy of the commons’, Science 280(5364) 1998, pp.682–683.

  • Lozny, L.R. and T.H. McGovern (eds.) (2019). ‘Global perspectives on long term community resource management’. (New York: Springer International Publishing 2019).