Tragedy Of The Commons Outline

Tragedy of the Commons (More can be discussed – see the Elaborate/Extend section).

What is a Commons?

A Commons is something held in common by the public. It is owned by nobody/everybody and can be used by anyone.

Examples of Commons include:

• National forests and parks

• Rivers

• Oceans

• Boston Commons: anyone who lived in Boston could graze their cattle for free; land was too scarce and expensive for everyone to have their own private pastures in the city.

What is a Tragedy of the Commons (Slides 6-7)?

The phrase was first described by biologist Garrett Hardin in 1968 (G. Hardin's 1968 Science article) and describes how shared environmental resources are overused and eventually depleted. He compared shared resources to a common

[Some combination of privatization, cooperation, and regulation can help, if there is adequate enforcement – NSF]

• No easy solution to this problem

• Government can restrict activities or impose fees for the use of common resources.

• Government can lease or sell the rivers, forests, and/or regions of the oceans. If someone owns them, they are more likely to keep them in good condition.

• What about the atmosphere, or animals or fish that move around too much to be owned. How do we protect them?

Elaborate/Extend

This section contains more information about the Tragedy of the Commons.

Detailed Examples of Tragedies of the Commons (Slide 10):

The Lorax – by Dr. Seuss

The truffula trees grow in an unowned commons. The Lorax may speak for the trees, but he does not own them. The Once-ler has no incentive to conserve the truffula trees for, as he notes to himself, if he doesn't cut them down someone else will. He's responding to the incentives created by a lack of property rights in the trees, and the inevitable tragedy results. Had the Once-ler owned the trees, his incentives would have been quite different — and he would likely have acted accordingly — even if he remained dismissive of the Lorax's environmental

He tells him to plant it and treat it with care, and then maybe the Lorax will come back from there. The traditional interpretation is simply that we must all care more for the environment. If we control corporate greed, we can prevent environmental ruin. But perhaps it means something else. A second interpretation of the story is that this boy should plant his truffula trees, and act as their steward. Perhaps giving the boy the last seed is an act of transferring the truffula from the open-access commons to private stewardship. Indeed, the final image — the ring of stones labeled with the word "unless" — could well suggest that enclosure, and the creation of property rights to protect natural resources, is necessary for the Lorax to ever