tragedy of the commons essay summary

The Tragedy of the Commons

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Summary: “the tragedy of the commons”.

Published in 1968, the essay “The Tragedy of the Commons,” by ecologist Garrett James Hardin , argues that human overpopulation will stress ecosystems beyond their limits and cause a resource catastrophe. The essay has greatly influenced environmentalists.

Hardin was a politically controversial, award-winning science writer who taught ecology at the University of California at Santa Barbara for over 30 years. Critics on both sides of the political spectrum have resented not only some of his proposed solutions to overpopulation but also parts of his rationale; Hardin was a utilitarian who believed the most moral course of action is that which maximizes the wellbeing of the greatest number of people—and this principle took precedence over the idea of natural or universal rights. Hardin therefore tended to favor anything that might reduce the possibility of overpopulation, from abortion to limits on immigration. Hardin has fallen into disfavor in many academic circles due to his eugenicist sympathies, beliefs in racial intelligence disparities, and stigmatizing remarks on poverty—but despite the pall this record casts, Hardin’s fusion of utilitarian pragmatism and scientific stringency left a formidable ecological legacy.

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The opening paragraphs of “The Tragedy of the Commons” serve as an introduction that warns that technical solutions to big problems sometimes make those problems worse. He cites the Cold War development of nuclear weapons, each advance of which brought more danger than safety to the world. Solutions to such dilemmas require advances in human ethics rather than improvements in technology. This principle applies also to the problem of human overpopulation: As technology advances, societies increase in size and begin to overtax their environments.

Section 2, “What Shall We Maximize?” asks whether human population can grow indefinitely. The author answers that Earth’s resources are finite, and that population growth must therefore hover around zero or a disaster becomes inevitable. Economist and clergyman Thomas Malthus warned that continuous growth becomes “geometric,” or exponential, rising faster and faster until it outstrips all resources. Continuously growing populations will eventually require continuously increasing sacrifices, until utilitarian philosopher Jeremy Bentham’s hope for “the greatest good for the greatest number” becomes impossible (Section 2, Paragraph 2). Even an endless source of energy would likely be insufficient for an indefinitely increasing population.

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People will have to decide what they’ll sacrifice for protection against catastrophic overgrowth. So far, though, no civilization has solved the problem of population growth, and already the fastest-growing countries often are the most resource-stressed.

Economist Adam Smith in 1776 popularized the idea of the “invisible hand” that permits individual workers, laboring strictly for private gain, to unintentionally create value for all. This idea, however, when allowed to run free in the realm of reproduction, leads to ever-increasing populations and worsening strains on the natural world and its resources. The freedom to reproduce, argues Hardin, may have to be restricted.

Section 3, “Tragedy of Freedom in a Commons ,” describes how resources get overused as a population increases. Herders who use a common field, or “commons,” to graze their animals will, under stable conditions, add to their herds until the field is at capacity. At that point, adding an additional animal will still benefit the herder, and the resulting overgrazing will be shared by everyone and not solely by that herder. This leads to herders adding to their own herds until the common area, exhausted by overuse, can no longer feed the herds.

Tragedy is the inevitable unfolding of fate, and the logic of the herders leads inevitably to a catastrophe in the commonly used field. This logic also causes, for example, overgrazing on federal land in the western US, overfishing in the oceans, and overcrowding in America’s national parks.

Section 4, “Pollution,” describes another exploitation of the commons. It’s very cheap to dump pollutants into the environment instead of purifying them, and the polluting effects are small for the dumper. Over time, though, as everyone dumps pollutants, the effects accumulate and return to poison all within the environment. Even then, it’s still economically efficient to pollute: Each time, the cost of additional pollution is outweighed by the savings from dumping the effluents.

In Section 5, “How To Legislate Temperance?” the author asserts that the ethics of pollution depend on the situation: “[T]he morality of an act is a function of the state of the system at the time it is performed” (Section 5, Paragraph 1). Thus, a single American frontiersman in 1818 who kills a bison merely for its tongue had no discernible effect on the millions of buffalo around him, whereas such an act in 1968, when the number of bison had dwindled to a few thousand, would be considered appalling.

Attempts to judge the morality of a particular environmental action can backfire. Photos of a killed elephant or blazing grassland, without context , may mislead viewers; prohibitions can become unreasonable; bureaucrats who enforce the laws may become corrupted. Laws must be carefully thought out and bureaucrats given the correct incentives.

Section 6, “Freedom to Breed Is Intolerable,” argues that, in a state of nature, overbreeding by animals usually leads to fewer offspring in total, but the modern human welfare state rewards excessively large human families. The United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights of 1967 maintains that the total number of children in a family is the decision of that family. Given problems of overpopulation already present in the world, this covenant becomes a “tragic ideal.”

Section 7 is titled “Conscience Is Self-Eliminating.” The author presents evidence that conscience is an insufficient motivation for change. Citing Darwinian logic, Hardin maintains that appeals to parents to limit their family size for the good of humanity results in larger families: Those who limit their size get outbred by those who don’t, until most or all of the descendants tend to have larger, more selfish families. “To make such an appeal is to set up a selective system that works toward the elimination of conscience from the race” (Section 7, Paragraph 4).

In Section 8, “Pathogenic Effects of Conscience,” Hardin theorizes that people who are told to limit their own reproduction face a “double bind” that damns them if they agree and ostracizes them if they refuse. Such appeals to conscience, popular among political leaders, generally don’t lead to improvements but do cause a wasteful epidemic of anxiety.

Section 9, “Mutual Coercion Mutually Agreed Upon,” suggests a better approach whereby groups come to a consensus on which behaviors deserve punishment. Punishment is a form of coercion that no one likes, but it can be tolerated for its beneficial effects overall. As for the commons, the classic alternative is private property and inheritance. This system, Hardin admits, can be problematic—”An idiot can inherit millions” (Section 9, Paragraph 5)—but it’s better than the destructive misuse of a commons.

The author observes that reform sometimes gets stymied by those who believe any changes must be perfect, as if the current system already is perfect. In fact, all systems have flaws, including the old ways, and a rational comparison of old and new methods can help to determine the best choice.

The tenth and final Section, “Recognition of Necessity,” notes that the commons, once spaciously vast in a world of few people, becomes overwhelmed on a planet with billions of humans. Most resources and environments commonly held today are stressed by pollution and overuse; restrictions on such misuse will curtail individual freedoms but also resolve environmental and resource problems that, in themselves, constrain human action. The main liberty to curtail, then, is the freedom to reproduce at will. That is the only way to prevent an overpopulation disaster.

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Explainer: What Is the ‘Tragedy of the Commons’?

First posited in 1968 by American ecologist Garret Hardin, the Tragedy of the Commons describes a situation where shared environmental resources are overused and exploited, and eventually depleted, posing risks to everyone involved. Hardin argues that to prevent this, there should be some restrictions to the amount of usage, for example, property rights must be affixed. 

What Is the Tragedy of the Commons?

The definition of the Tragedy of the Commons is an economic and environmental science problem where individuals have access to a shared resource and act in their own interest, at the expense of other individuals. This can result in overconsumption, underinvestment, and depletion of resources.

Garrett Hardin, an evolutionary biologist, wrote a paper called “The Tragedy of the Commons” in the journal Science in 1968. In  summary of the Hardin paper, the Tragedy of the Commons addressed the growing concern of overpopulation, and Hardin used an example of sheep grazing land when describing the adverse effects of overpopulation. In this case, grazing lands held as private property will see their use limited by the prudence of the land holder in order to preserve the value of the land and health of the herd. Grazing lands held in common will become over-saturated with livestock because the food the animals consume is shared among all herdsmen.

Hardin argues that individual short-term interest – to take as much of a resource as possible – is in opposition to societal good. If everyone was to act on this individual interest, the situation would worsen for society as a whole- demand for a shared resource would overshadow the supply, and the resource would eventually become entirely unavailable. 

Conversely, exercising restraint would yield benefits for all in the long-term, as the shared resource would remain available. 

Tragedy of the Commons: Examples

Arguably the best examples of Tragedy of the Commons occur in situations that lead to environmental degradation. 

Among many things, pollution is caused by wastewater. As the number of households and companies increase and dump their waste into the water, the water loses its ability to clean itself. This results in water that is toxic to wildlife and the people that live around and rely on it. 

Overfishing

Another example of the Tragedy of the Commons lies in overfishing. In Canada, the Grand Banks fishery off the coast of Newfoundland was a means of livelihood for regional fishermen. Abundant in cod, the fishery allowed fishermen to catch as many cod as they desired without negatively impacting their population. 

Then, in the 1960s, advancements in technology allowed fishermen to catch vast quantities of cod, far more than before. However, with each passing season, the amount of cod deteriorated and by the 1990s, the fishing industry in the region collapsed because there wasn’t enough fish to go around. This situation where individual fishermen took advantage of opportunities to benefit themselves in the short term, even when their actions were clearly detrimental to society in the long term, encapsulates the self-preserving mindset behind the Tragedy of the Commons. These fishermen thought logically, but not collectively, which led to their downfall. 

The Tragedy of the Commons can also be applied to the COVID-19 pandemic. In its early days, people were generally wary of mixing with anyone outside their immediate family, leaving their homes less and working from home. However, another result of the pandemic was that people began to stock up on food and utilities. People likely assumed that everyone else would stock up as well and so the only solution was to preempt this scenario and stockpile food before the next person could. Again, people were thinking logically, but not collectively, and herein lies the relevance of the Tragedy of the Commons. Individuals took advantage of opportunities that benefited themselves, but spread out the harmful effects of their consumption across society. 

Retailers responded by imposing restrictions on the number of items one could buy, but it was too late. Entire grocery aisles were empty, wiped clean. 

You might also like: Carbon Tax: A Shared Global Responsibility For Carbon Emissions

What About the Environment?

Shared resources that mitigate the impacts of the climate crisis are abused constantly. 

No single authority can pass laws that protect the entire ocean. Each country can only manage and protect the ocean resources along its coastlines, leaving the shared common space beyond any particular jurisdiction vulnerable to pollution. This has led to obscene amounts of ocean pollution, as seen in garbage patches that accumulate in the centre of circular currents, for example. This will affect everyone as these pollutants cycle through the marine food chain, and then humans as we consume fish. Another problem facing the oceans are dead zones , areas in lakes and oceans where no marine life can live because of the lack of oxygen caused by excessive pollution and fertiliser runoff. 

The atmosphere is another resource being used and abused, as are forests. Unregulated and illegal logging pose great risks to forests’ ability to store carbon. In some parts of the world, vast expanses of rainforests aren’t governed in a way that allows effective management for resource extraction. Timber producers are driven to take as much timber as possible as cheaply as possible, without considering the wider impacts of doing so. 

Poor governance exacerbates the problem of the Tragedy of the Commons. 

Who Is Meant to Fix It?

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. Additionally, more difficulties arise when resources cannot be divided, such as in whale treaties when the fishing of the whales’ food source is separately regulated. 

Economist Scott Barrett at Columbia University in New York says that international law “has no teeth, so treaties are essentially voluntary. “Even when countries decide to take part in collective conservation efforts, they can simply pull out again when they want to,” as Canada did in 2011 when it pulled out of the Kyoto Protocol and when America withdrew from the Paris Agreement in late 2019 – though they rejoined shortly in the following year by the Biden Administration. 

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 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. 

What Can Be Done?

A potential solution to this 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. 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. 

Overall, regulating consumption and use can reduce over-consumption and government investment in conservation and renewal of the resource can help prevent its depletion.

Featured image by: Matteo de Mayda

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The Tragedy of the Commons Summary & Analysis

Summary of the tragedy of the commons by garett hardin .

The Tragedy of the Commons  is an academic article written by  Garett Hardin  and published in 1968. The subtitle quotes, ‘The population problem has no technical solution; it requires a fundamental extension in morality.’ The principal themes of the text include a discussion on the problem of high levels of population growth, the central role of over-exploitation of commons in resource depletion and its connection with population growth, the absence of technical solutions, the problems in defining optimum levels of population and the definition of ‘good’, the failure of appeals to conscience and bureaucratic law and the necessity of employing alternative solutions such as enclosures and privatization of property to stop the negative effects of the use of commons. Garett Hardin was an American ecologist who centered his research on the issue of population growth and over-exploitation of resources. He is best known for his work  The Tragedy of the Commons  which has become one of the most frequently cited papers in environmental science. 

The Tragedy of the Commons | Summary & Analysis

Hardin’s text begins with a discussion of an article written to address an issue not directly concerning what Hardin is working with. He says the reader must focus on the conclusion the author draws instead of the subject. He highlights the idea put forward by the authors that while  technical solutions  (which require a change in techniques of the natural sciences) are welcome, they often are not possible. He argues that there is a class of problems that do not have any technical solutions, and places his discussion of the population problem in the same category. 

He asserts that people wish to solve the  population problem  without letting go of their own privileges and seeking to develop newer techniques such as framing the seas, but according to him, these methods are ineffective. 

  What Shall We Maximize? 

Hardin starts off with a discussion of the  Malthusian principles . He argues that since our world has finite resources in all practical terms, it can only support a finite population possible by achieving a zero population growth rate. He argues that the  Benthamite philosophy  of Utilitarianism of achieving maximum good for the maximum people is not possible because first, two variables can’t expand at the same time mathematically, and second, since all humans require energy levels derived from finite resources, an unlimited increase in population will necessitate reduction of individual energy levels until they reach zero, which is impossible. He also points out the  theoretical difficulties in determining what is good  for everyone since the definition may be subjective.

He argues that in order to reach the  optimum level of population  where everyone’s ‘good’ is achievable, it is necessary to determine a collectively acceptable system of weighing that decides on compromises and adjustments, yet no society currently has reached such a stage where this is possible. He is critical of Adam Smith’s theory of the ‘invisible hand’ that the pursuit of individual profit leads to collective good, and the current miserable state of the expanding population is proof of it. 

Tragedy of Freedom in a Commons

In this section, Hardin considers  critiques of Adam Smith’s theory , specifically the work of William Forster Lloyd, a mathematician. He elaborates on the same using the example of a  hypothetical common pasture shared by multiple herdsmen . Each herdsman wants to maximize their own gain by adding more animals to graze on the pasture. However, as more and more animals are added, the pasture becomes overgrazed and eventually destroyed, rendering it unusable for anyone. Hardin labels this dilemma as the tragedy of the commons, where individuals acting rationally in their self-interest ultimately results in the collective loss of a valuable resource. He discusses other examples such as the case of oceanic territory rights and National parks, arguing that their use or function as commons has led to their overexploitation and exhaustion. 

Pollution  

In this section, Hardin discusses the  reverse of over-extraction, which is over-pollution , wherein harmful and toxic substances are put in ecosystems. Each individual acts in terms of personal profitability which leads to  large-scale degradation . He further states that while the tragedy of the commons may be avoided through the privatization of property, it is not possible to do this for resources such as air and water, rather, the concept of private property here favors pollution since it enables individuals to act according to their own will in their share of the ecosystem. He adds that the problem of pollution is a product of  overpopulation  which has deteriorated the natural cleansing capacity of resources. 

How To Legislate Temperance? 

Hardin argues that morality is produced and applicable under certain contexts, states, and systems, hence it changes with time and space. However, this idea of changing the nature of morality is something that escapes those who are involved in the process of codification. He argues that  laws continue to be based on past ethics  which make them unsuitable to the present problems. Additionally, the current structure of the state makes the implementation of laws a  highly bureaucratic process  which is also liable to  corruption and malpractice . His central idea is that it is difficult to legislate and control temperance through any laws and hence what is required is corrective feedback systems that would keep custodians of the law honest whilst also developing mechanisms that invest valid authority in custodians so people follow the laws they seek to promote. 

Freedom to Breed Is Intolerable

Hardin proposes the idea that in a welfare state which controls social behavior it is not possible to adopt an ‘each to its own’ attitude. This means that children who are ‘bred’ can’t be just abandoned and left on their own or get involved in a process of ‘dog eats dog’ that controls the population. Therefore,  overbreeding  becomes a social issue and one difficult to tackle for the state due to the  overlapping of the principles of freedom to procreate and the rights of every newborn.  He sees problems in ideas such as those proposed by the United Nations which give freedom to families to act in accordance with their own wishes. He asserts that one needs to see the fault lines in such an approach and consider the tragic consequences of population growth. 

Conscience is Self-Eliminating

He continues his discussion on overbreeding by arguing that  appeals to conscience are not sufficient  to control such a process since it can cause endless debates and pleas. He states the work of C.G. Darwin to argue that since individual’s consciences differ and this difference only accumulates over time, the  only solution is an evolutionary removal of conscience  from human attitude

Pathogenic Effects of Conscience  

Continuing his critique of appeals to conscience, he considers the issue to ‘double bind’, wherein individuals facing appeals to their conscience may either  fear condemnation  if they disagree or  unfair distribution of resources  monopolized by those who don’t disagree. 

This can eventually result in a situation where individuals who are less responsible and use the resource carelessly outcompete and finally supplant those who operate carefully. He also considers the  negative effects of guilt and anxiety  that are caused by attempting to solve a problem through appeals to conscience. 

Mutual Coercion, Mutually Agreed Upon

To address the tragedy of the commons, Hardin proposes the idea of  ‘mutual coercion mutually agreed upon.’  He asserts that despite the fact that the word coercion is interpreted negatively often, it must function as a crucial  form of social arrangements  that prevent objects from becoming common. He argues that coercion is not some arbitrary guidelines but a mutually agreed upon measure that may not be enjoyed by everyone but nevertheless are important device for sustenance. He states that measures such as regulation, resource privatization, or other types of social action that restrict private use are necessary to prevent overexploitation. He acknowledges that the solution of private property is not without its limitations, but reiterates that  unfairness to some is better than complete devastation  and we do not have the time to wait for a ‘perfect reform’. 

Recognition of Necessity 

The concluding sections emphasize the idea that the use of commons is only explainable under optimum levels of population. In the absence of the same, it is important to acknowledge the  need for collective action in the management of shared resources.  Hardin suggests that societies must  learn from historical examples  and recognize the potential consequences of unregulated exploitation as well as  continue the process of privatization . He states that past enclosures are acceptable while those in the present are criticized under the banner of rights and freedom. However, to Hardin, these small infringements on personal liberty are less important than addressing the problem at hand. 

The Tragedy of the Commons | Socio-Historical Context 

During the 1960s, the world was grappling with a range of  environmental and social challenges.  Significant economic and scientific breakthroughs during the post-World War II era fueled greater  industrialization and population growth . Concerns about resource depletion, pollution, and the effects of human activity on the environment also arose as a result of these advancements.

During this time,  environmental awareness and conservation movements grew  in popularity as more people became aware of the possible effects of unrestrained use of natural resources. In light of this, Hardin’s essay connected with the continuing discussions about sustainability and resource management. Hardin highlighted the underlying  tensions between individual self-interest and the well-being of society  by framing the problem as the tragedy of the commons. His essay contested the widely held belief that people behaving in their own self-interest would inevitably result in the best outcomes for everyone.

However, beyond its value as a text written for the purposes of environmental conservation, there has also been a  substantial critique of its arguments  that highlight other nuances in its context. 

It is worth noting that the essay was published  during the Cold War  era when the ideological struggle between capitalism and communism was a prominent feature of global politics.  Scholars  have since criticized his work as being  propaganda for the promotion of private property  and capitalist ethics. The issues of exploitation of resources remain undealt as big corporate firms and/or governments have used corruption and bribery to first, monopolize resources and b, exploit them unchecked. The problem of private ownership leading to unchecked exploitation and the issues of surpassing regulations through corruption and bribery are discussed by Hardin himself, but he somehow fails to address them when presenting private property as a solution. It has been argued that in an idealized world, proposed privatization regimes for land, oceans, and wildlife could theoretically satisfy the requirements for private property or market solutions, but in the real world, it is impossible to satisfy or even reasonably approximate those idealized conditions. 

Beyond the Cold War, the post-World War II era was also the time when the  ‘Third World’  was emerging. The Third World is used to generally refer to countries that emerged as post-colonial or post-imperial states in the 20th century. These countries with weak economies and fragile political systems were often under the influence or guidance of either Cold War camps and dependent on superpowers to support them. This is the context where scholars have traced the rise of neo-imperialism, wherein developed countries have  systematically monopolized the internal resource management policies of Third World countries  for their own financial gains in exchange for ostensible support being provided to develop the countries.  Scholars have  also looked into how the myth of the tragedy of the commons was used to promote the monopolization and enclosure of resources in the Third World. 

Since its publication, the essay has been widely debated and has influenced environmental policy discussions, resource management strategies, and the understanding of collective action problems. It remains a significant contribution to the ongoing dialogue surrounding sustainability and the balance between individual rights and the protection of shared resources.

The Tragedy of the Commons | Literary Devices

Garett Hardin employs  irony  to highlight his arguments. He looks at the original purpose of a process or institution and then details the actual effect, pointing out the reversed nature of the consequences. His central critique of the idea of commons in the text is that a system of resource allocation that was supposed to mutually benefit everyone ends up causing inevitable ruin. 

‘ 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 .’

When characterizing the inefficiency of using appeals to conscience to convince individuals to restrict the overexploitation of resources, he highlights how it actually leads to more exploitation and even causes negative consequences for the individual under concern. 

He argues, 

‘ To conjure up a conscience in others is tempting to anyone who wishes to extend his control beyond the legal limits .’

He further states, 

‘ When we use the word responsibility in the absence of substantial  sanctions are we not trying to browbeat a free man in the commons into acting against his own interest? ’

He also points out the negative effects of inducing guilt in non-cooperators. He uses the rhetoric of irony to establish the negative and reverse from intended effects of appeals to conscience. 

Another important theme in the text is that some common and mutually agreed upon regulations for the use of commas are necessary to prevent their overexploitation and eventual exhaustion. He also puts forth the idea that since appeals to conscience and bureaucratic law remain largely inefficient, coercive measures that are collectively agreed upon are necessary. However, he states that the current trend of liberal politics pushes forth the ideas of freedom, rights, and individuality, which work against the development of such coercive forces. He uses  metaphor  to compare these trends to a taboo, which disincentive criticism. While referring to the United Nations Declaration on Human Rights states that ‘any choice and decision with regard to the size of the family must irrevocably rest with the family itself’. He believes this to be an incorrect and harmful approach, and argues that liberal interpretations of coercion work like a taboo to prevent the conceptualization of a valid in-depth analysis or critique of such ideas. 

‘ At the present time, in liberal quarters, something like a taboo acts to inhibit criticism of the United Nations .’

He also uses metaphor and compares the discomfort experienced at the criticism of such ideas to the discomfort one may have felt denying the existence of witches in 16th century Salem, nevertheless, one needs to acknowledge the significance of such denials and criticisms and work on them. 

‘ It is painful to have to deny categorically the validity of this right; denying it, one feels as uncomfortable as a resident of Salem, Massachusetts, who denied the reality of witches in the 17th century ’

Occasionally, Hardin also used  allusion  and referred to other historical or mythological events that are not directly related to the question of property or commons. 

For instance, he refers to the Witch Trials of Salem while discussing the criticism of the United Nations, 

He also refers to the exorcism (an adjuration addressed to evil spirits to force them to abandon an object, place, or person; technically, a ceremony used in both Jewish and Christian traditions to expel demons from persons who have come under their power, Encyclopedia Britannica) when referring to the need to remove the overpowering influence of Adam Smith in practical demography. 

‘ We can make little progress in working toward optimum population size until we explicitly exorcize the spirit of Adam Smith in the field of practical demography ’

Hardin also uses the technique of  rhetorical questions  to reiterate the obviousness of some arguments. 

To exemplify, he asks, ‘ Is ours a finite world? ’, to highlight the limited nature of earth’s resources. 

He argues for the relative nature of interpreting goodness and benefits by asking:

‘ We want the maximum good per person; but what is good ?’

He also seeks to point out the ineffectiveness of previously used methods by asking questions about their failures or successes. 

‘ Has any cultural group solved this practical problem at the present time, even on an intuitive level? ’ ‘ Has any President during the past generation failed to call on labor unions to moderate voluntarily their demands for higher wages, or to steel companies to honor voluntary guidelines on prices? ’

Therefore, Hardin makes use of multiple literary devices to improve the persuasiveness of his text. 

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April 23, 2019

The Tragedy of the Tragedy of the Commons

The man who wrote one of environmentalism’s most-cited essays was a racist, eugenicist, nativist and Islamaphobe—plus his argument was wrong

By Matto Mildenberger

Garrett Hardin in 1972.

Bill Johnson Getty Images

This article was published in Scientific American’s former blog network and reflects the views of the author, not necessarily those of Scientific American

Fifty years ago, University of California professor Garrett Hardin penned an influential essay in the journal Science . Hardin saw all humans as selfish herders: we worry that our neighbors’ cattle will graze the best grass. So, we send more of our cows out to consume that grass first. We take it first, before someone else steals our share. This creates a vicious cycle of environmental degradation that Hardin described as the “tragedy of the commons.”

It's hard to overstate Hardin’s impact on modern environmentalism. His views are taught across ecology, economics, political science and environmental studies. His essay remains an academic blockbuster, with almost 40,000 citations . It still gets republished in prominent environmental anthologies .

But here are some inconvenient truths: Hardin was a racist, eugenicist, nativist and Islamophobe . He is listed by the Southern Poverty Law Center as a known white nationalist. His writings and political activism helped inspire the anti-immigrant hatred spilling across America today.

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And he promoted an idea he called “ lifeboat ethics ”: since global resources are finite, Hardin believed the rich should throw poor people overboard to keep their boat above water.

To create a just and vibrant climate future, we need to instead cast Hardin and his flawed metaphor overboard.

People who revisit Hardin’s original essay are in for a surprise. Its six pages are filled with fear-mongering. Subheadings proclaim that “freedom to breed is intolerable.” It opines at length about the benefits if “children of improvident parents starve to death.” A few paragraphs later Hardin writes: “If we love the truth we must openly deny the validity of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.” And on and on. Hardin practically calls for a fascist state to snuff out unwanted gene pools. 

Or build a wall to keep immigrants out. Hardin was a virulent nativist whose ideas inspired some of today’s ugliest anti-immigrant sentiment. He believed that only racially homogenous societies could survive. He was also involved with the Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR), a hate group that now cheers President Trump’s racist policies. Today, American neo-Nazis cite Hardin’s theories to justify racial violence.

These were not mere words on paper. Hardin lobbied Congress against sending food aid to poor nations, because he believed their populations were threatening Earth’s “carrying capacity.”

Of course, plenty of flawed people have left behind noble ideas. That Hardin’s tragedy was advanced as part of a white nationalist project should not automatically condemn its merits.

But the facts are not on Hardin’s side. For one, he got the history of the commons wrong. As Susan Cox pointed out , early pastures were well regulated by local institutions. They were not free-for-all grazing sites where people took and took at the expense of everyone else.

Many global commons have been similarly sustained through community institutions. This striking finding was the life’s work of Elinor Ostrom, who won the 2009 Nobel Prize in Economics (technically called the Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel). Using the tools of science—rather than the tools of hatred—Ostrom showed the diversity of institutions humans have created to manage our shared environment.

Of course, humans can deplete finite resources. This often happens when we lack appropriate institutions to manage them. But let’s not credit Hardin for that common insight. Hardin wasn’t making an informed scientific case. Instead, he was using concerns about environmental scarcity to justify racial discrimination.

We must reject his pernicious ideas on both scientific and moral grounds. Environmental sustainability cannot exist without environmental justice. Are we really prepared to follow Hardin and say there are only so many lead pipes we can replace? Only so many bodies that should be protected from cancer-causing pollutants? Only so many children whose futures matter?

This is particularly important when we deal with climate change. Despite what Hardin might have said, the climate crisis is not a tragedy of the commons . The culprit is not our individual impulses to consume fossil fuels to the ruin of all. And the solution is not to let small islands in Chesapeake Bay or whole countries in the Pacific sink into the past, without a seat on our planetary lifeboat.

Instead, rejecting Hardin’s diagnosis requires us to name the true culprit for the climate crisis we now face. Thirty years ago, a different future was available. Gradual climate policies could have slowly steered our economy towards gently declining carbon pollution levels. The costs to most Americans would have been imperceptible.

But that future was stolen from us. It was stolen by powerful, carbon-polluting interests who blocked policy reforms at every turn to preserve their short-term profits. They locked each of us into an economy where fossil fuel consumption continues to be a necessity, not a choice. 

This is what makes attacks on individual behavior so counterproductive. Yes, it’s great to drive an electric vehicle (if you can afford it) and purchase solar panels (if powerful utilities in your state haven’t conspired to make renewable energy more expensive). But the point is that interest groups have structured the choices available to us today. Individuals don’t have the agency to steer our economic ship from the passenger deck.

As Harvard historian Naomi Oreskes reminds us , “[abolitionists] wore clothes made of cotton picked by slaves. But that did not make them hypocrites … it just meant that they were also part of the slave economy, and they knew it. That is why they acted to change the system, not just their clothes.”

Or as Representative Alexandria Ocasio Cortez tweeted : “Living in the world as it is isn’t an argument against working towards a better future.” The truth is that two-thirds of all the carbon pollution ever released into the atmosphere can be traced to the activities of just ninety companies.

These corporations’ efforts to successfully thwart climate action are the real tragedy .

We are left with very little time. We need political leaders to pilot our economy through a period of rapid economic transformation, on a grand scale unseen since the Second World War. And to get there, we are going to have make sure our leaders listen to us, not—as my colleagues and I show in our research—fossil fuel companies.

Hope requires us to start from an unconditional commitment to one another, as passengers aboard a common lifeboat being rattled by heavy winds. The climate movement needs more people on this lifeboat, not fewer. We must make room for every human if we are going to build the political power necessary to face down the looming oil tankers and coal barges that send heavy waves in our direction. This is a commitment at the heart of proposals like the Green New Deal.

Fifty years on, let’s stop the mindless invocation of Hardin. Let’s stop saying that we are all to blame because we all overuse shared resources. Let’s stop championing policies that privilege environmental protection for some human beings at the expense of others. And let’s replace Hardin’s flawed metaphor with an inclusive vision for humanity—one based on democratic governance and cooperation in this time of darkness.

Instead of writing a tragedy, we must offer hope for every single human on Earth. Only then will the public rise up to silence the powerful carbon polluters trying to steal our future.

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ECONLIB CEE

Tragedy of the Commons

By garrett hardin.

By Garrett Hardin,

I n 1974 the general public got a graphic illustration of the “tragedy of the commons” in satellite photos of the earth. Pictures of northern Africa showed an irregular dark patch 390 square miles in area. Ground-level investigation revealed a fenced area inside of which there was plenty of grass. Outside, the ground cover had been devastated.

The explanation was simple. The fenced area was private property, subdivided into five portions. Each year the owners moved their animals to a new section. Fallow periods of four years gave the pastures time to recover from the grazing. The owners did this because they had an incentive to take care of their land. But no one owned the land outside the ranch. It was open to nomads and their herds. Though knowing nothing of Karl Marx , the herdsmen followed his famous advice of 1875: “To each according to his needs.” Their needs were uncontrolled and grew with the increase in the number of animals. But supply was governed by nature and decreased drastically during the drought of the early 1970s. The herds exceeded the natural “carrying capacity” of their environment, soil was compacted and eroded, and “weedy” plants, unfit for cattle consumption, replaced good plants. Many cattle died, and so did humans.

The rational explanation for such ruin was given more than 170 years ago. In 1832 William Forster Lloyd, a political economist at Oxford University, looking at the recurring devastation of common (i.e., not privately owned) pastures in England, asked: “Why are the cattle on a common so puny and stunted? Why is the common itself so bare-worn, and cropped so differently from the adjoining inclosures?”

Lloyd’s answer assumed that each human exploiter of the common was guided by self-interest. At the point when the carrying capacity of the commons was fully reached, a herdsman might ask himself, “Should I add another animal to my herd?” Because the herdsman owned his animals, the gain of so doing would come solely to him. But the loss incurred by overloading the pasture would be “commonized” among all the herdsmen. Because the privatized gain would exceed his share of the commonized loss, a self-seeking herdsman would add another animal to his herd. And another. And reasoning in the same way, so would all the other herdsmen. Ultimately, the common property would be ruined.

Even when herdsmen understand the long-run consequences of their actions, they generally are powerless to prevent such damage without some coercive means of controlling the actions of each individual. Idealists may appeal to individuals caught in such a system, asking them to let the long-term effects govern their actions. But each individual must first survive in the short run. If all decision makers were unselfish and idealistic calculators, a distribution governed by the rule “to each according to his needs” might work. But such is not our world. As James Madison said in 1788, “If men were angels, no Government would be necessary” ( Federalist, no. 51). That is, if all men were angels. But in a world in which all resources are limited, a single nonangel in the commons spoils the environment for all.

The spoilage process comes in two stages. First, the non-angel gains from his “competitive advantage” (pursuing his own interest at the expense of others) over the angels. Then, as the once noble angels realize that they are losing out, some of them renounce their angelic behavior. They try to get their share out of the commons before competitors do. In other words, every workable distribution system must meet the challenge of human self-interest. An unmanaged commons in a world of limited material wealth and unlimited desires inevitably ends in ruin. Inevitability justifies the epithet “tragedy,” which I introduced in 1968.

Whenever a distribution system malfunctions, we should be on the lookout for some sort of commons. Fish populations in the oceans have been decimated because people have interpreted the “freedom of the seas” to include an unlimited right to fish them. The fish were, in effect, a commons. In the 1970s, nations began to assert their sole right to fish out to two hundred miles from shore (instead of the traditional three miles). But these exclusive rights did not eliminate the problem of the commons. They merely restricted the commons to individual nations. Each nation still has the problem of allocating fishing rights among its own people on a noncommonized basis. If each government allowed ownership of fish within a given area, so that an owner could sue those who encroach on his fish, owners would have an incentive to refrain from overfishing. But governments do not do that. Instead, they often estimate the maximum sustainable yield and then restrict fishing either to a fixed number of days or to a fixed aggregate catch. Both systems result in a vast overinvestment in fishing boats and equipment as individual fishermen compete to catch fish quickly.

Some of the common pastures of old England were protected from ruin by the tradition of stinting—limiting each herdsman to a fixed number of animals (not necessarily the same for all). Such cases are spoken of as “managed commons,” which is the logical equivalent of socialism . Viewed this way, socialism may be good or bad, depending on the quality of the management. As with all things human, there is no guarantee of permanent excellence. The old Roman warning must be kept constantly in mind: Quis custodiet ipsos custodes? (Who shall watch the watchers themselves?)

Under special circumstances even an unmanaged commons may work well. The principal requirement is that there be no scarcity of goods. Early frontiersmen in the American colonies killed as much game as they wanted without endangering the supply, the multiplication of which kept pace with their needs. But as the human population grew larger, hunting and trapping had to be managed. Thus, the ratio of supply to demand is critical.

The scale of the commons (the number of people using it) also is important, as an examination of Hutterite communities reveals. These devoutly religious people in the northwestern United States live by Marx’s formula: “From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs.” (They give no credit to Marx, however; similar language can be found several places in the Bible.) At first glance Hutterite colonies appear to be truly unmanaged commons. But appearances are deceiving. The number of people included in the decision unit is crucial. As the size of a colony approaches 150, individual Hutterites begin to undercontribute from their abilities and overdemand for their needs. The experience of Hutterite communities indicates that below 150 people, the distribution system can be managed by shame; above that approximate number, shame loses its effectiveness.

If any group could make a commonistic system work, an earnest religious community like the Hutterites should be able to. But numbers are the nemesis. In Madison’s terms, nonangelic members then corrupt the angelic. Whenever size alters the properties of a system, engineers speak of a “scale effect.” A scale effect, based on human psychology, limits the workability of commonistic systems.

Even when the shortcomings of the commons are understood, areas remain in which reform is difficult. No one owns the Earth’s atmosphere. Therefore, it is treated as a common dump into which everyone may discharge wastes. Among the unwanted consequences of this behavior are acid rain, the greenhouse effect, and the erosion of the Earth’s protective ozone layer. Industries and even nations are apt to regard the cleansing of industrial discharges as prohibitively expensive. The oceans are also treated as a common dump. Yet continuing to defend the freedom to pollute will ultimately lead to ruin for all. Nations are just beginning to evolve controls to limit this damage.

The tragedy of the commons also arose in the savings and loan (S&L) crisis. The federal government created this tragedy by forming the Federal Savings and Loan Insurance Corporation (FSLIC). The FSLIC relieved S&L depositors of worry about their money by guaranteeing that it would use taxpayers’ money to repay them if an S&L went broke. In effect, the government made the taxpayers’ money into a commons that S&Ls and their depositors could exploit. S&Ls had the incentive to make overly risky investments, and depositors did not have to care because they did not bear the cost. This, combined with faltering federal surveillance of the S&Ls, led to widespread failures. The losses were “commonized” among the nation’s taxpayers, with serious consequences to the federal budget (see savings and loan crisis ).

Congestion on public roads that do not charge tolls is another example of a government-created tragedy of the commons. If roads were privately owned, owners would charge tolls and people would take the toll into account in deciding whether to use them. Owners of private roads would probably also engage in what is called peak-load pricing, charging higher prices during times of peak demand and lower prices at other times. But because governments own roads that they finance with tax dollars, they normally do not charge tolls. The government makes roads into a commons. The result is congestion.

About the Author

The late Garrett Hardin was professor emeritus of human ecology at the University of California at Santa Barbara. He died in 2003.

Further Reading

Related content, terry anderson on the environment and property rights.

Tragedy of the Commons Analytical Essay

The “tragedy of the commons” idea was first brought to fore by Garrett Hardin. By it, Hardin refers to a scenario where selfish utilization of resources by an individual ends up having negative effects on the entire community. People have various private and selfish needs that they seek to satisfy at any given moment. On the other hand, the community as a whole has collective interests which may not necessarily be the same as individual needs (Manning 32).

In this regard, the way one person will want to use certain resources may not be in the best interest of the group as a whole. In his view, people should be regulated in that how they use various resources so that society at large can benefit. Tragedy of the commons affects continuity of life in an ecosystem. Hardin refers to common resources whose unregulated consumption can affect the community negatively (Hetzel 3).

According to Hardin, common resources should be regulated so as to ensure that their consumption is beneficial to the community as a whole. Tragedy of the commons occurs because people are given too much freedom when it comes to making choices about resource utilization. In his view, if a common resource is used while taking into consideration the collective interests of a community, each individual will benefit (Manning 112). Tragedy of the commons can lead to overuse of various resources and inability of an ecosystem to sustain itself.

It is important to note that tragedy of the commons is catastrophic to the community if it is allowed to happen. Depletion of one resource can lead to extinction of various organisms. I disagree with Hardin on his argument that tragedy of the commons is a problem with no technical solution, as the solution to tragedy of the commons calls for both technical and non-technical approaches.

It should be noted that for tragedy of the commons to be avoided, values and believes of people must be changed (Dauvergne 223). People should learn the virtue of sharing and avoid egocentric desires for the benefit of everybody in the society. To achieve this, the change of moral values in individuals will be required.

Nonetheless, one cannot be prevented from using a given resource if he or she is not given a substitute (Hetzel 9). Therefore, tragedy of the commons requires a technological solution in order to be averted. To ensure sustainable energy sources in the future we have to come up with renewable sources of energy and embrace them.

Notably, common resources have to be utilized albeit in a manner that serves the interests of the whole community. It is important to note that there are circumstances when it is acceptable to use common resources without necessarily depleting them. One of the ways is when the rate of consumption is lower than the rate of replacement or renewal (Manning 134). This will ensure that resources are saved for future generations.

Moreover, if there are regulations that control utilization of common resources, then their depletion can be put under control. Any resource will be depleted if it is over used and control is necessary. Also when societal interests are put first before the individual interests, utilization of communal resources would be reasonable (Dauvergne 256). These can be achieved through regulation or by exhorting people to change their values. These circumstances can help avert the tragedy of the commons.

Works Cited

Dauvergne, Peter. Handbook of Global Environmental Politics . Northampton: Edward Elgar Publishing, 2005. Print.

Hetzel, Julia. To What Extent is the Tragedy of the Commons Restricting Option When Dealing with a Gloabal Ecological Crisis . Munchen: GRIN Verlag, 2011. Print.

Manning, Robert E. Parks and Carrying Capacity: Commons Without Tragedy . Washington: Island Press, 2007. Print.

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IvyPanda. (2019, June 11). Tragedy of the Commons. https://ivypanda.com/essays/tragedy-of-the-commons/

"Tragedy of the Commons." IvyPanda , 11 June 2019, ivypanda.com/essays/tragedy-of-the-commons/.

IvyPanda . (2019) 'Tragedy of the Commons'. 11 June.

IvyPanda . 2019. "Tragedy of the Commons." June 11, 2019. https://ivypanda.com/essays/tragedy-of-the-commons/.

1. IvyPanda . "Tragedy of the Commons." June 11, 2019. https://ivypanda.com/essays/tragedy-of-the-commons/.

Bibliography

IvyPanda . "Tragedy of the Commons." June 11, 2019. https://ivypanda.com/essays/tragedy-of-the-commons/.

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What is the tragedy of the commons - nicholas amendolare.

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Is it possible that overfishing, super germs, and global warming are all caused by the same thing? In 1968, a man named Garrett Hardin sat down to write an essay about overpopulation. Within it, he discovered a pattern of human behavior that explains some of history’s biggest problems. Nicholas Amendolare describes the tragedy of the commons.

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Tragedy of the Commons: What It Is and 5 Examples

• 06 Feb 2019

Have you ever thought about the environmental impact of the items used in your daily life? Are they harming the environment? Perhaps they have a positive effect. For some individuals, this may be the reason they chose these items in the first place.

Yet, this isn’t always the case. What if the production or use of your favorite products threatens the ecosystem? Or worse, what if your consumption threatens the very existence of those products?

While this notion may seem implausible, it turns out there are many goods that are being produced unsustainably, endangering resources, or negatively impacting the environment.

What Is the Tragedy of the Commons?

The tragedy of the commons refers to a situation in which individuals with access to a public resource (also called a common) act in their own interest and, in doing so, ultimately deplete the resource.

This economic theory was first conceptualized in 1833 by British writer William Forster Lloyd. In 1968, the term “tragedy of the commons” was used for the first time by Garret Hardin in Science Magazine .

This theory explains individuals’ tendency to make decisions based on their personal needs, regardless of the negative impact it may have on others. In some cases, an individual’s belief that others won’t act in the best interest of the group can lead them to justify selfish behavior. Potential overuse of a common-pool resource—hybrid between a public and private good— can also influence individuals to act with their short-term interest in mind, resulting in the use of an unsustainable product and disregard the harm it could cause to the environment or general public.

It’s helpful for both firms and individuals to understand the tragedy of the commons so they can make more sustainable and environmentally-friendly choices. Here are five real-world examples of the tragedy of the commons and an exploration of the solution to this problem.

Check out our video on the tragedy of the commons below, and subscribe to our YouTube channel for more explainer content!

5 Tragedy of the Commons Examples

1. coffee consumption.

While a simple cup of coffee might seem harmless, coffee consumption is a prime example of the tragedy of the commons. Coffee plants are a naturally occurring shared resource, but overconsumption has led to habitat loss endangering 60 percent of the plants' species —including the most commonly brewed Arabica coffee.

2. Overfishing

As the global population continues to rise, the food supply needs to increase just as quickly. However, overhunting and overfishing have the potential to push many species into extinction. For example, overfishing of the Pacific bluefin tuna has caused an all-time population low of approximately three percent of their original population. This not only endangers the Pacific bluefin tuna, but also risks further marine ecosystem endangerment as a result.

3. Fast Fashion

Overproduction by fashion brands has created extreme product surplus to the point that luxury brand Burberry burnt $37.8 million worth of its 2018 season’s leftovers to avoid offering a discount on unsold wares. Furthermore, as new trends emerge rapidly within social networks on the Internet and social media, consumers are constantly purchasing new clothing items and disposing of old, out-of-trend items that ultimately end up in landfills and contribute to pollution.

4. Traffic Congestion

Traffic congestion is one of the best-known modern examples of the tragedy of the commons. According to a study by the Harvard School of Public Health , air pollution from traffic congestion in urban areas contributes to more than 2,200 premature deaths annually in the United States alone. As more people decide that roads and highways are the fastest way to travel to work, more cars end up on the roads, ultimately slowing down traffic and polluting the air.

5. Groundwater Use

In the United States, groundwater is the source of drinking water for about half the population, and roughly 50 billion gallons are used each day for agriculture. Because of this, groundwater supply is decreasing faster than it can be replenished. In drought-prone areas, the risk for water shortage is high and restrictions are often put in place to mitigate it. Some individuals, however, ignore water restrictions and the supply ultimately becomes smaller for everyone.

Related: The Parlor Room Podcast: HBS Professor Forest Reinhardt on Climate Change and the Tragedy of the Commons

How Can the Tragedy of the Commons Be Avoided?

How would you react to discovering that your consumption habits are depleting natural resources? You have two primary options: finding alternative, sustainable products and preventing overconsumption.

Finding Alternative and Sustainable Products

To drive change and avoid the tragedy of the commons, it’s important to boycott the products or brands causing the alleged harm and search for alternatives. Finding sustainable options, rather than carrying on with what Sustainable Business Strategy Professor Rebecca Henderson calls, “business as usual,” directly addresses the impact of your consumption habits. Unfortunately this response has not grown in popularity, since many consumers feel boycotting a product won’t make a large enough impact to make a difference.

The tragedy of the commons shows us how, without some sort of regulation or public transparency of choices and actions associated with public goods, there's no incentive for individuals to hold themselves back from taking too much. In fact, individuals may even have a “use it or lose it” mentality; if they’re aware of the inevitability that the good itself will be depleted, they may think, “I better get my share while I still can.”

Related: What Does "Sustainability" Mean in Business?

Preventing Overconsumption

You’ve likely encountered examples of the tragedy of the commons in your everyday life; these hypothetical scenarios can offer insight into how to prevent the overconsumption of resources. Consider how you’d respond in the following scenarios:

• If everyone in your community abides by the town’s lawn-watering regulations, you're more likely to follow them as well. Who wants a bright green lawn while the rest of the town's lawns are brown?
• No one wants to pay a premium for something they’ll likely throw away or use as a trash bag. Charging for grocery bags raises the stakes, because it involves the customer’s bottom line. Chances are, this change will lead you to keep reusable bags in your car, just in case you need to stop at the grocery store on the way home.

These examples show how, when faced with a public good, individuals can be motivated to cooperate through monetary or moral incentives or penalties. What’s truly fascinating is that this also holds true on a larger scale.

Remember the previous example of luxury fashion brands burning surplus clothing? Well, Burberry—having heard its customers’ reactions to the burning of inventory, regardless of how sustainably its products were disposed of—has since pledged to stop burning clothes and using real fur.

Developing a Sustainable Mindset

It’s easy for both individuals and organizations to fall victim to the tragedy of the commons. However, it doesn’t have to be this way. By developing a more sustainable mindset , you can become better aware of the long-term impact that your short-term choices have on the environment both in your personal life and at work.

Are you interested in learning more? Explore our Sustainable Business Strategy course and other business in society courses to discover how you can make a difference and become a purpose-driven leader.

This post was updated on August 17, 2022. It was originally published on February 6, 2019.

About the Author

Locals at the Marienfluss Conservancy in Namibia meet to discuss conservation. Photo courtesy of NACSO/WWF Namibia

The miracle of the commons

Far from being profoundly destructive, we humans have deep capacities for sharing resources with generosity and foresight.

by Michelle Nijhuis   + BIO

In December 1968, the ecologist and biologist Garrett Hardin had an essay published in the journal Science called ‘The Tragedy of the Commons’. His proposition was simple and unsparing: humans, when left to their own devices, compete with one another for resources until the resources run out. ‘Ruin is the destination toward which all men rush, each pursuing his own best interest,’ he wrote. ‘Freedom in a commons brings ruin to all.’ Hardin’s argument made intuitive sense, and provided a temptingly simple explanation for catastrophes of all kinds – traffic jams, dirty public toilets, species extinction. His essay, widely read and accepted, would become one of the most-cited scientific papers of all time.

Even before Hardin’s ‘The Tragedy of the Commons’ was published, however, the young political scientist Elinor Ostrom had proven him wrong. While Hardin speculated that the tragedy of the commons could be avoided only through total privatisation or total government control, Ostrom had witnessed groundwater users near her native Los Angeles hammer out a system for sharing their coveted resource. Over the next several decades, as a professor at Indiana University Bloomington, she studied collaborative management systems developed by cattle herders in Switzerland, forest dwellers in Japan, and irrigators in the Philippines. These communities had found ways of both preserving a shared resource – pasture, trees, water – and providing their members with a living. Some had been deftly avoiding the tragedy of the commons for centuries; Ostrom was simply one of the first scientists to pay close attention to their traditions, and analyse how and why they worked.

The features of successful systems, Ostrom and her colleagues found, include clear boundaries (the ‘community’ doing the managing must be well-defined); reliable monitoring of the shared resource; a reasonable balance of costs and benefits for participants; a predictable process for the fast and fair resolution of conflicts; an escalating series of punishments for cheaters; and good relationships between the community and other layers of authority, from household heads to international institutions.

When it came to humans and their appetites, Hardin assumed that all was predestined. Ostrom showed that all was possible, but nothing was guaranteed. ‘We are neither trapped in inexorable tragedies nor free of moral responsibility,’ she told an audience of fellow political scientists in 1997.

What Hardin had portrayed as a tragedy was, in fact, more like a comedy. While its human participants might be foolish or mistaken, they are rarely evil, and while some choices lead to disaster, others lead to happier outcomes. The story is far less predictable than Hardin thought, and its twists and turns can lead to uncomfortable places. But in those surprises lie the possibilities that Hardin never saw.

Y ou might think that scientists, and the public, would eagerly trade Hardin’s dark speculations about human nature for Ostrom’s sunnier findings about our capabilities. But as I learned while researching and writing my book Beloved Beasts (2021), a history of the modern conservation movement, Ostrom’s conclusions have faced stubborn resistance. During the early years of her career, colleagues criticised her for spending too much time studying the differences among systems and too little time looking for a unifying theory. ‘When someone told you that your work was “too complex”, that was meant as an insult,’ she recalled.

Ostrom insisted that complexity was as important to social science as it was to ecology, and that institutional diversity needed to be protected along with biological diversity. ‘I still get asked, “What is the way of doing something?” There are many, many ways of doing things that work in different environments,’ she told an audience in Nepal in 2010. ‘We have got to get to the point that we can understand complexity, and harness it, and not reject it.’

Her research gained global prominence in 2009, when, aged 76, Ostrom became the first woman to be awarded the Nobel Prize in Economic Sciences. But for a variety of reasons – perhaps because she was a woman in a male-dominated field, or perhaps because her sophisticated work didn’t lend itself to a catchy name – her carefully collected data hasn’t dislodged Hardin’s metaphor from the public imagination.

When Ostrom died in 2012, she was celebrated by her colleagues for her pioneering work, her plainspoken humility, and her steady resistance to what she called ‘panaceas’. She knew from experience how corrosive simple stories could be. Hardin, for his part, seemed bent on making his own ideas as repugnant as possible. Among his proposed solutions to the tragedy of the commons was coercive population control: ‘Freedom to breed is intolerable,’ he wrote in his 1968 essay, and should be countered with ‘mutual coercion, mutually agreed upon’. He feared not only runaway human population growth but the runaway growth of certain populations. What if, he asked in his essay, a religion, race or class ‘adopts overbreeding as a policy to secure its own aggrandisement’? Several years after the publication of ‘The Tragedy of the Commons’, he discouraged the provision of food aid to poorer countries: ‘The less provident and less able will multiply at the expense of the abler and more provident, bringing eventual ruin upon all who share in the commons,’ he predicted. He compared wealthy nations to lifeboats that couldn’t accept more passengers without sinking.

Hardin compared wealthy nations to lifeboats that couldn’t accept more passengers without sinking.

In his later years, Hardin’s racism became more explicit. ‘My position is that this idea of a multiethnic society is a disaster,’ he told an interviewer in 1997. ‘A multiethnic society is insanity. I think we should restrict immigration for that reason.’ Hardin died in 2003, but the nonprofit Southern Poverty Law Center, alert to the longevity of his ideas, maintains his profile in its ‘extremist files’ and classifies him as a white nationalist.

Still, many of those who abhor Hardin’s racist ideas – or would if they were aware of them – are seduced by the simplicity of his tragedy. If academic citation indexes are any guide, the tragedy of the commons remains far better known to scholars than any of Ostrom’s findings. It continues to be taught, uncritically, to high-school students in environmental science courses. It’s used as a justification by those who support severe restrictions on human immigration and reproduction. Even more frequently, it’s casually invoked as an explanation for human failures: even the eminent biologist E O Wilson, in his book Half-Earth (2016), describes the weakness of international climate-change agreements and the ongoing depletion of ocean resources as tragedies of the commons, without making clear that such tragedies can be averted.

Despite the evidence gathered by Ostrom and her colleagues, it seems, many are still all too willing to believe the worst of their fellow humans – to the detriment of conservation efforts worldwide. Like Hardin, many conservationists assume that humans can only be destructive, not constructive, and that meaningful conservation can be achieved only through total privatisation or total government control. Those assumptions, whether conscious or unconscious, close off an entire universe of alternatives.

W hile Ostrom’s ideas are not yet familiar maxims, they haven’t been ignored. In southern Africa in the 1980s, some conservationists recognised that parks and reserves, many created by colonial governments, had divided subsistence hunters and farmers from much of the wildlife that had long sustained them – and which, in some cases, they’d managed as a commons for generations. The resulting lack of local support meant that even the best-patrolled park boundaries were vulnerable to incursions by human neighbours, people unlikely to tolerate – much less protect – the large, sometimes troublesome species that ranged beyond even the largest reserves.

In response, new initiatives attempted to redistribute the burdens and benefits of conservation: the Communal Areas Management Programme for Indigenous Resources (CAMPFIRE) project in Zimbabwe directed revenue from hunting and tourism on communal lands to district councils, incentivising those councils and their communities to control illegal hunting. In neighbouring Zambia, the Administrative Management Design (ADMADE) programme trained local people as wildlife rangers, then transferred some wildlife management responsibilities, and benefits, from the national government to community boards. These and similar efforts became known as community-based conservation.

In 1987, when the South African conservationist Garth Owen-Smith attended a conference on community-based conservation in Zimbabwe, a comment by Harry Chabwela, the director of Zambia’s national parks, left a lasting impression. ‘At this conference we have talked a lot about giving local people this and giving them that, but what has been forgotten is that they also want power,’ Chabwela said. ‘They want a say over the resources that affect their lives. That is more important than money.’

Owen-Smith had already spent years living in Namibia, which was controlled by South Africa and known as South West Africa. When severe drought and an epidemic of illegal hunting threatened livelihoods and wildlife in the territory’s northwestern desert in the early 1980s, Owen-Smith had supported the creation of a system of community game guards. The unarmed guards – many of whom were hunters themselves – were so effective at tracking illegal hunters that, after a few years, the killing of elephants and rhinos in the region stopped completely. Antelope numbers improved so much that Owen-Smith was able to persuade the national conservation department to reopen limited game hunting in the area – a development much appreciated by locals.

Chabwela’s comment about power motivated Owen-Smith to think bigger. When he returned home, he and his partner Margaret Jacobsohn began to talk with community leaders and members about ways of restoring some local authority over wildlife. After Namibia won independence from South Africa in 1990, the new government recruited Jacobsohn and Owen-Smith to survey rural attitudes toward conservation, and the survey confirmed what the two had by then been hearing for years: most people didn’t want the occasionally dangerous species they lived with to be killed or removed – but they did, as Chabwela had suggested, want a say in their management. In 1996, the Namibian National Assembly passed a law that allowed groups of people living on communal land to establish institutions called conservancies. Conservancies would be governed by elected committees, and all members would share the benefits of any tourism or commercial hunting within conservancy boundaries.

Trophy hunters are sometimes directed toward lions and elephants who have become aggressive toward people.

The first conservancies on communal land were formalised in 1998, and there are now more than 80 of them in Namibia. They cover more than 40 million acres of land, and stretch from the northwestern desert to the humid, densely populated Zambezi Region in the northeast. They earn revenue from lodges, campgrounds and guide services, both as partners in joint ventures and as solo operators. They participate in annual surveys of game and wildlife populations and, in cooperation with the national conservation ministry, set quotas for both subsistence and commercial hunting within their boundaries. They employ their own game guards, who are currently fending off a continent-wide wave of rhino poaching driven by Asian demand for powdered rhino horn (a discredited traditional medicine). And, every year, the members of each conservancy assemble to call their governing committees to account.

In August 2019, I attended the general meeting of Orupembe Conservancy, held in an open-air pavilion on the outskirts of Onjuva, a tiny town hundreds of miles from the nearest gas station, and even further from a paved road. Most of the people at the meeting were semi-nomadic herders, many of whom had travelled long distances from even more isolated corners of the conservancy. (I was present thanks to the expert off-road driving skills of the guide Edison Kasupi, who grew up in nearby Purros Conservancy.) When the Onjuva committee called the meeting to order, there were 95 people seated inside the pavilion, about half of the conservancy members and just enough for a quorum. The chairman Henry Tjambiru commented that the current drought had forced many people to take their herds further afield, preventing them from attending.

Orupembe Conservancy has several sources of income, all relatively modest: a campsite, a small lodge that it co-owns with two other conservancies, and contracts with a handful of hunting guides. (Some conservancies have very little income, and fund their operations with donations from international conservation groups; others, such as the neighbouring Marienfluss Conservancy, have joint venture agreements with upscale lodges that can net more than $100,000 a year in salaries and fees.)

After a review of the year’s earnings, the committee distributed a list of local species and the current hunting quotas for each. Because the drought had worsened since the quotas were set, conservancy members had voluntarily left most of them unfilled. While wildlife surveys earlier in the year had suggested that 75 oryx could be killed without harming the population, for example, only three had been shot so far. The meat from two of those was currently boiling in a nearby row of pots, about to be served for lunch.

The meeting, which lasted several hours, was disrupted by procedural inefficiencies, lively sideline arguments and, at one point, an accusation of petty corruption. But as the sun sank and the meeting came to a ragged end, I realised with surprise that I was exhilarated. During an exceptionally difficult year, these conservancy members had taken the trouble to travel to the meeting, consider the long-term future of other species, and recommit themselves to ensuring it.

I n reviving the commons, the Namibian conservancies have revived the relationships between people and wildlife – and the results, as Ostrom would be unsurprised to learn, are complex. Where parks and reserves separate land into clearly defined categories, community-based conservation proposes that land can be simultaneously protected and utilised – through the cooperative efforts of the people who live on it. It’s a profound challenge to Hardin’s assumptions, and while some of its outcomes are easy to applaud – the recovery of elephants and rhinos, the arrival of new jobs – others make outsiders squirm.

John Kasaona, who grew up in northwestern Namibia and, as a boy, watched Owen-Smith and his father set out on game-guard patrols, is now the executive director of Integrated Rural Development and Nature Conservation, a nonprofit organisation that provides technical support to the conservancies. When he travels overseas to talk about the accomplishments of the Namibian conservancy system, he mentions only briefly, if at all, that its success depends in part on income from trophy hunters – tourists who pay for the privilege of shooting an animal for sport, and who in some cases keep hides or horns for display. For many conservancies, trophy hunting is not only a source of income but a tool for preserving the peace between humans and other species, since trophy hunters are sometimes directed toward individual lions or elephants who have become aggressive toward people.

Kasaona is well aware of the images that trophy hunting conjures in his listeners’ minds: Theodore Roosevelt standing next to a fallen elephant, dwarfed by the carcass and its upturned tusks; Eric Trump grinning as he hefts the limp body of a leopard, his brother Don Jr beside him; the Zimbabwean lion named Cecil, whose illegal killing by a dentist from Minnesota during a guided hunt in 2015 caused a global outcry. For some in North America and Europe, trophy hunting in Africa has come to symbolise human sins against other species.

In 2017, after Kasaona spoke at a Smithsonian Institution conference in Washington, DC, a young woman stood to speak at the audience microphone. ‘I think that some pieces were missing from the presentation,’ she began. Kasaona had not shown images of the animals slain by trophy hunters, she said. He had neglected to mention that the lion or elephant spotted by a visiting family on safari might be killed the next day. Kasaona, at the podium, acknowledged the international controversy over trophy hunting, but said that regulated commercial hunts remained an important source of revenue for the Namibian conservancies. There was more to say, but the session was over, and any further discussion was washed away by chatter.

Even in the darkest times, Ostrom’s work reminds us that the future is unpredictable and full of opportunity.

More than two years later, I met up with Kasaona in the town of Swakopmund, about halfway down the Namibian coast. We talked over generous plates of springbok curry at the colonial-era Hansa Hotel, where German is spoken more frequently than English, and both are far more common than any of Namibia’s 20-plus Indigenous languages and dialects.

I asked Kasaona to finish answering his questioner at the Smithsonian conference. ‘People say: “I don’t like what they’re doing to animals,” but most of them wouldn’t want to live next to a lion that could harm their family,’ he said. The majority of tourists who hunt for sport in Namibia pursue more common species such as springbok, whose hunting is permitted through the conservancy quota system. In the case of globally threatened species, the number of animals (if any) that can be shot each year is set by the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES). In 2004, the parties to the convention approved applications by Namibia and South Africa to allow limited hunting of black rhinos, determining that the population had recovered to the point that five male rhinos could be shot in each country each year. In Namibia, the national conservation ministry chooses which rhinos will be hunted – usually older animals that have become aggressive or territorial – and issues permits for the hunts. The permit fee is deposited in a national conservation trust fund, and in one recent case a hunter paid $400,000 to shoot a single male rhino, far more than most conservancies earn in a year.

The trophy-hunting system in Namibia isn’t perfect, Kasaona acknowledges – there are cases where hunters have killed the wrong animal – but over the long term, he said, it benefits both the conservancies and the species in question by reducing conflicts between people and wildlife. When international conservation groups promise to regulate and censure trophy hunting out of existence, Kasaona hears what he calls ‘another kind of colonisation’ – a violation of the local authority that he and others have spent decades building up, and a threat to the revenue it depends on. ‘What do they say to the people whose livelihood depends on what they are trying to ban?’ he says.

Global restrictions on trophy hunting, Kasaona argues, are a simplistic response to a complex situation – what Ostrom might call a panacea. Not all countries are alike; not all conservancies are alike; not all conservancy members are alike; not even all trophy hunters are alike. And a few individual lions and elephants are far more dangerous than others, as those who have lost loved ones and livelihoods to rogue animals can attest.

While those viral images of trophy hunters with carcasses might all seem to say the same thing, they don’t. Some, surely, are symbols of corruption or needless violence. But, in the best cases, they’re examples of sustainable utilisation: colonial nostalgia, harnessed by the formerly colonised to further multispecies survival.

O strom’s principles of commons management now underlie not only the Namibian conservancy system but hundreds of similar efforts throughout the world. Many have revived and adapted conservation practices developed centuries ago, developing new rules suited to current circumstances. Their creators cooperate in the management of coral reefs in Fiji, highland forests in Cameroon, fisheries in Bangladesh, oyster farms in Brazil, community gardens in Germany, elephants in Cambodia, and wetlands in Madagascar. They operate in thinly populated deserts, crowded river valleys, and abandoned urban spaces.

While conservation almost always carries at least some short-term costs, researchers have found that many community-based conservation projects reduce those costs and, over time, deliver significant benefits to their human participants, tangible and intangible alike. And while community-based conservation began as a reaction to top-down conservation strategies, it can operate in parallel with large parks and reserves – and even foster their creation. In northwestern Namibia, two neighbouring conservancies have proposed to establish a ‘people’s park’ where livestock would be excluded and tourist numbers would be limited by a permit system, allowing lions and other large predators to more easily avoid conflicts with humans. Should the national legislature approve the conservancies’ proposal, the region could serve as a core habitat from which large carnivores can range in relative safety – since the region’s biological diversity is now protected not only by law, but by supportive human neighbours.

Community-based conservation can’t solve everything, and it doesn’t always succeed in protecting the commons. In many cases, national governments don’t recognise the longstanding land claims of Indigenous and other rural communities, creating uncertainty that interferes with community efforts to manage for the long term. Even well-established systems are vulnerable to internal conflict, and to external pressures ranging from drought to war to global market forces. As Ostrom often reminded her audiences, any strategy can succeed or fail. Community-based conservation is distinctive because many societies have only begun to understand – or remember – its potential. ‘What we have ignored is what citizens can do,’ she said.

At Indiana, Ostrom and her husband Vincent, also a political scientist, founded the Workshop in Political Theory and Policy Analysis, affectionately known as ‘The Workshop’ to the researchers who continue to gather there. Current students of commons management struggle, as Ostrom did, with the difficulty of managing large-scale resource problems such as air pollution at the community level. They wrestle with the implications of her findings for the digital landscape, where the veneration of open access often collides with Ostrom’s definition of the commons as a boundaried, regulated space. And despite what one researcher in 2011 dubbed ‘Ostrom’s Law’ – that whatever works in practice can work in theory – even Ostrom’s admirers sometimes echo her earliest critics, lamenting that the field lacks an overarching theory.

The challenge of understanding the complexity of all species continues, as does the challenge of seeing possibility in what so often looks like a collective tragedy. But even in the darkest times, Ostrom’s work can remind us that the future is deliciously unpredictable, and full of opportunities for us to stumble away from the edge.

This original essay draws on the book ‘Beloved Beasts: Fighting for Life in an Age of Extinction’ (2021) by Michelle Nijhuis, published by W W Norton & Co.

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Tragedy Of The Commons Essay

Garrett Hardin’s The Tragedy of the Commons is a seminal work on the problems of population growth and overpopulation. In it, Hardin argued that the traditional model of agriculture, in which each farmer tries to maximize his own yield, leads to the ruin of the commons (the shared resources on which all depend).

He suggested that instead, farmers should adopt a model of cooperative management, in which they work together to ensure the sustainability of the commons. This would require sacrifices by individual farmers, but would be ultimately beneficial for all.

The Tragedy of the Commons has been highly influential, and its ideas are still relevant today. As our world becomes more crowded and our resources more limited, we must find ways to cooperate in order to sustain ourselves. Hardin’s work is a valuable contribution to this conversation.

The tragedy of the commons was first described by Garrett Hardin in his Journal in 1968, and it is one of the most pressing problems facing the world today. He defined as exploitation of human on the environment without taking into account externalities. He used four examples from history to illustrate this concept.

If each herdsman tries to maximize his gain, he will ultimately overgraze the pasture, leading to its ruin. The problem is that what is good for each individual in the short-run is bad for all of them in the long-run.

The Tragedy of the Commons is a term used in social science to describe a situation in a shared-resource system where individual users acting independently according to their own self-interest behave contrary to the common good of all users by depleting or spoiling that resource through their collective action.

The concept originated as an analogy to a hypothetical tragedy written about by British economist William Forster Lloyd in 1833, and became widely known as a result of an article written by American ecologist Garrett Hardin in 1968. In this article, Hardin applied the concept to human population growth, arguing that if each individual tries to maximize his or her own reproductive rate, then the resultant exponential population growth will deplete Earth’s resources and lead to catastrophe for all.

The Tragedy of the Commons has been used as a model for a variety of situations where individuals acting independently and in their own self-interest can ultimately destroy a shared resource or commons. These situations range from the depletion of fisheries due to overfishing, to the problem of pollution where each polluter does not have to bear the full cost of the environmental damage they cause.

In each case, those who benefit from the exploitation of the shared resource do not pay the full cost, and so have no incentive to change their behavior. The only way to avoid the Tragedy of the Commons is for users to act cooperatively, and in some cases this may require government intervention.

It usually occurs after the agricultural revolution and lasts into the post-industrial era, when Hardin was concerned. This implies that individuals are using public resources more effectively than private ones in today’s world. Because he discusses declining human assets at the end of his book, this is not an option in a post-industrial society where there are four herders who share one grazing land.

The Tragedy of the Commons is a parable that illustrates how common resources are exploited when individuals act in their own self-interest. Garrett Hardin’s article, “The Tragedy of the Commons,” was first published in 1968 and explores how unchecked population growth will lead to the depletion of scarce resources. The article is based on the idea of a commons, which is a shared resource that anyone can use.

In the article, Hardin uses the example of a pasture that is open to all herdsmen to graze their animals. He argues that, because each herdsman wants to maximize his own profits, they will all eventually overgraze the pasture, leading to its ruin. This is an example of the tragedy of the commons, where the ruin of a shared resource is caused by the selfish interests of individuals.

The Tragedy of the Commons is relevant to the issue of overpopulation because it illustrates how unchecked population growth can lead to the depletion of resources. Hardin’s article was published at a time when the world’s population was growing rapidly, and it served as a warning about the dangers of overpopulation. The article is still relevant today, as the world’s population continues to grow and put strain on finite resources.

Hardin’s warnings about the Tragedy of the Commons are even more pressing in light of climate change and other environmental problems that have arisen since his article was published. The Tragedy of the Commons is a reminder that we must all act in the interests of the common good in order to preserve our shared resources for future generations.

Over the next few years, over 200 geos will be linked to road access according to [NSB, 2013]. Road construction is often through dense forest that has been covered with ancient trees and destroys the natural beauty of the environment, but people prefer a road connection for their daily transportation because it makes transporting more timber easier. Deforestation will occur naturally and have long-term environmental concern as a result of road access.

It is important to have an agreement between the local people and the government in order to improve communication and reliable transportation system while conserving the environment.

Garrett Hardin’s The Tragedy Of The Commons is a well-known essay that addresses the problems of overpopulation and resource depletion. In it, Hardin argues that when individuals are allowed to exploit common resources for their own benefit, they will ultimately do so to the detriment of everyone else. This is because each individual has an incentive to maximize their own gain, regardless of the cost to others. As a result, resources become depleted and everyone suffers.

Hardin’s essay is significant because it highlights the potential problems of population growth and resource depletion. It also provides a possible solution to these problems, which is to have a system in place that limits each individual’s ability to exploit common resources. This would ensure that resources are not depleted and that everyone has access to them.

Hardin’s essay is important reading for anyone interested in the issues of overpopulation and resource depletion. It provides a thought-provoking look at how these problems can be addressed, and offers a possible solution that could help to alleviate them.

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