0966Q Lee Wolfe's Tragedy of the Commons

The Tragedy of the Commons


To have an ecological consciousness,
is to live in a world of wounds.
                                        -- Aldo Leopold


For he who thinks, life is a comedy;
for he who feels, life is a tragedy.
                                        --Voltaire

The "Tragedy of the Commons" (Hardin, 1968) outlined inevitable negative effects on a common resource as a result of each user pursuing individual interests. From this sprung the notion that the pursuit of individual interests will result in collective disaster in the absence of external controls. This paper had considerable impact on environmental and ecological thought over the past several decades, leading to the belief that strong regulatory control was the only answer. More recently, other approaches have been demonstrated for balancing individual and collective interests through better communication, education, and public involvement. One such approach, initiated by C.S. Hollings, is "Adaptive Environmental Assessment," which attempts to incorporate the results of management practices and societal values into each succeeding assessment. Another is the concept of "Socio-ecological Characterization" which attempts to involve local constituents in assessment programs and all interested parties in access to the latest information and analytical tools. This is a philosophy of informed and wide-spread empowerment needed to complement centralized management.

Subject:
Re: Tragedy of the Commons

Sender:
Ed. Policy Analysis Forum

From:
Lee Wolfle

Jim Knudsen Wrote:

I am new to this list so I have not followed this thread for long; however, I will offer you an economist's definition of commons. Economists refer to commons as a shortened form of common property resource. Such a resource is sometimes said to be owned by everyone and so by no one. The classic example of such a resource is the fish in the ocean.

On 13 December 1968, Garrett Hardin wrote ("The Tragedy of the Commons," _Science_, Vol. 162, pp. 1243-1248):

"The Tragedy of Freedom in a Commons...is to be found in a scenario first sketched in a little-known pamphlet [W.F. Lloyd, Two Lectures on the Checks to Population, (Oxford University Press, 1833)] in 1833 by a mathematical amateur named William Forster Lloyd (1794-1852). We may well call it "the tragedy of the commons," using the word "tragedy" as the philospher Whitehead used it [A.N. Whitehead, Science and the Modern World, New York: Mentor, 1948]: "The essence of dramatic tragedy is not unhappiness. It resides in the solemnity of the remorseless working of things." He then goes on to say, "This inevitableness of destiny can only be illustrated in terms of human life by incidents which in fact involve unhappiness. For it is only by them that the futility of escape can be made evident in the drama."

"The tragedy of the commons develops in this way. Picture a pasture open to all. [The Boston Commons comes to my mind. LW.] It is to be expected that each herdsman will try to keep as many cattle as possible on the commons. Such an arrangement may work reasonable satisfactorily for centuries because tribal wars, poaching, and disease keep the numbers of both man and beast well below the carrying capacity of the land. Finally, however, comes the day of reckoning, that is, the day when the long-desired goal of social stability becomes a reality. At this point, the inherent logic of the commons remorselessly generates tragedy.

"As a rational being, each herdsman seeks to maximize his gain. Explicitly or implicitly, more or less consciously, he asks, "What is the utility to me of adding one more animal to my herd?" This utility has one negative and one positive component.
"Adding together the component partial utilities, the rational herdsman concludes that the only sensible course for him to pursue is to add another animal to his heard. And another; and another.... But this is the conclusion reached by each and every rational herdsman sharing a commons. Therein is the tragedy. Each man is locked into a system that compels him to increase his herd without limit--in a world that is limited. Ruin is the destination toward which all men rush, each pursuing his own best interest in a society that believes in the freedom of the commons. Freedom in a commons brings ruin to all."

Lee M. Wolfle Blacksburg, Virginia U.S.A. 24061 - wolfle@vtvm1.cc.vt.edu

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