Understanding the Tragedy of the Commons

Zubair Lone

In his seminal work, Politics, Aristotle mentions, “What is common to the greatest
number gets the least amount of care.” This is one of the earliest references to what is
known as the tragedy of the commons, in the present day social sciences.

The tragedy of the commons refers to a phenomenon in which every individual tries
to reap the greatest benefit from a given resource. As the demand for the resource
overwhelms the supply, every individual who consumes an additional unit directly
harms others who can no longer enjoy the benefits.

The phenomenon was first described in a pamphlet by economist William Foster

Lloyd in 1833 in a discussion of overgrazing of cattle on village common areas. More
than 100 years later, ecologist Dr. Garett Hardin revived the concept in his 1968
paper in Science to describe what happens when many individuals share a limited
resource like grazing lands, fishing areas, living space, and even clean air. Hardin
argued that these situations pitch short-term self-interest against common good. And
they end badly for everyone resulting in overgrazing, overfishing, overpopulation,
pollution and other social and environmental problems.

A few examples

The key feature of a tragedy of the commons is that it provides an opportunity for an
individual to benefit himself or herself while spreading out any negative effects
across the larger population.

Imagine farmers letting their cows graze on a village common grazing area. And each
one of them, for instance, is allowed six grazing cows. If now, one of them brings an
extra animal or two to graze there, and does not help in maintaining the grassland,
he free-loads or cheats. If this goes on uncontrolled, soon the grazing land will be
worthless -- denuded of grass, compacted by hooves, and prey to erosion. In the long
run, all the cows will have a harder time surviving. Another example, consider a
village fish pond where each individual fisherman is motivated to take as many fish
as he can for himself. Anxious to avoid losing out to his neighbours, a fisherman will
conclude that it is in his best interest to take an extra fish, or two, or three.
Unfortunately, this is the same conclusion reached by the other fishermen.
Ultimately, a decline in the fish population due to such over exploitation is shared by
the entire village. This is the tragedy of the commons.

As can be seen, both of these examples highlight that optimising for the self in the
short term is not optimal for anyone in the long term.
The much complex and myriad real life implications

Overgrazing and overfishing are definitely simplified examples of the tragedy of the
commons. It plays out in more complex systems of real life with much far-reaching
impacts. The overuse of antibiotics has lead to short term gains in livestock
production and in treating common illnesses but it has also resulted in the evolution
of antibiotic resistant bacteria which threaten the entire population. A coal fired
power plant produces cheap electricity for its customers and profits for its owners.
These local benefits are helpful in the short term but pollution from mining and
burning coal is spread across the entire atmosphere and sticks around for thousands
of years. There are other examples too- horrible public conveniences, littering, water
shortages, deforestation, traffic jams, even the purchase of bottled water.

How to avert the tragedy?

Dr Garrett Hardin, who popularised this phrase, suggested that it may be done by
regulation, or by privatising the “public good.” For instance, in case of overgrazing,
one way to avert the tragedy would be for the community to impose a cap-and-trade
system on grazing. Here is how it could work. The community studies the problem
and figures out what the carrying capacity of the field is in terms of number of cows.
Then they allocate grazing share equally to everyone in the community. Community
members can buy and sell these shares so that if someone does not want to deal with
cows, they can still benefit from the common resource by selling their shares to
someone who is willing to graze more cows. The shares would be re-allocated each
year, in case the carrying capacity changed. Another approach might be for the
community to sell the land to individuals and then let each individual farmer manage
their own plot of land, in which case they would have an economic incentive to
manage their land in the best way possible, avoiding the over-grazing problem.
Moreover, the community might also place some restrictions on what the owners
could do with the land, like preventing them from undertaking construction or
diversion of farmland.

In the final analysis, when you have a commonly held resource with open access,
everyone has to act together in a coordinated, regulated way in order to avoid
depleting or damaging the resource and ensuring that the resource optimally serves
the best interests of everyone – both in the short-run and long-run.