Abstract
In his influential 1968 article, “The Tragedy of the Commons,” Garrett Hardin explained why a scarce resource open to all is subject to overexploitation.1 He used as an example of the commons a pasture open to all herdsmen for cattle grazing. Hardin pointed out that eventually the pasture will become overgrazed. The reason? Each herdsman can capture all the benefits of adding more cows, while facing only a fraction of the costs—the harm caused by excessive grazing—because costs are shared by all. The tragedy, notes Hardin, is that each individual is “locked into a system” of competition for grass that leads to ruin.2 A similar tragedy occurs when a fishing territory is open to all fishers. Each fisher captures all the benefits of harvesting more fish, while facing only a fraction of the costs—the reduction of the fish population for future harvest.3 Similar logic can explain the deterioration of other resources, such as airsheds and waterways open to all for dumping purposes.
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Notes
Garrett Hardin, “The Tragedy of the Commons,” Science 162 (December 1968): 1244.
The collapse of the Pacific sardine fishery provides a classic example. See J. L. McHugh, “Jeffersonian Democracy and the Fisheries,” in World Fisheries Policy: Multidisciplinary Views, ed. B. J. Rothschild (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1972), 134–55.
William Ophuls, “Leviathan or Oblivion?” in Toward a Steady-State Economy, ed. Herman Daley (San Francisco: W. H. Freeman, 1973), 228.
Richard J. Agnello and Lawrence P. Donnelley, “Property Rights and Efficiency in the Oyster Industry,” Journal of Law and Economics 18 (1975): 521–33; Richard J. Agnello and Lawrence P. Donnelley, “Price and Property Rights in the Fisheries,” Southern Economic Journal 42 (October 1979): 253–62.
Svein Jentoft and Trond Kristoffersen, “Fishermen’s Co-management: The Case of the Lofoten Fishery,” Human Organization 48 (1989): 355.
Louis De Alessi, “Private Property Rights as the Basis for Free Market Environmentalism,” in Who Owns the Environment? ed. Peter J. Hill and Roger E. Meiners (Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield Publishers, 1998), 8.
Elinor Ostrom, Governing the Commons:The Evolution of Institutions for Collective Action (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1990); Terry L. Anderson and Randy T. Simmons, eds., The Political Economy of Customs and Culture: Informal Solutions to the Commons Problem (Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield Publishers, 1993).
S. V. Ciriacy-Wantrup and Richard C. Bishop, “‘Common Property’ as a Concept in Natural Resources Policy,” Natural Resources Journal 15 (1975): 13–27.
Robert Netting, Balancing on an Alp (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1981).
Margaret A. McKean, “Management of Traditional Common Lands (Iriachi) in Japan,” in Proceedings of the Conference on Common Property Resource Management, April 21–26, 1985, National Research Council (Washington, DC: National Academy Press, 1986), 533–89.
Marilyn B. Brewer, “Ingroup Bias in the Minimal Intergroup Situation:A Cognitive Motivational Analysis,” Psychological Bulletin 86 (1979): 307–24.
Many activities of young people require that parents and children participate in fund-raising activities, even though it might be more efficient for them to work at other independent jobs to raise money. A possible explanation for requiring participation is that it excludes those less interested in the activity and inculcates values that help overcome the free-rider problem.
For an explanation of this choice, see Terry L. Anderson and Fred McChesney, “Raid or Trade: An Economic Model of Indian-White Relations,” Journal of Law and Economics 37 (April 1994): 39–74.
R. L. Olson, “Social Structure and Social Life of the Tlingit in Alaska,” Anthropological Records 26 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1967).
Steve Langdon, “From Communal Property to Common Property of Limited Entry: Historical Ironies in the Management of Southeast Alaska Salmon,” in A Sea of Small Boats, ed. John Cordell (Cambridge, MA: Cultural Survival, 1989), 304–32.
Kalervo Oberg, The Social Economy of the Tlingit Indians, American Ethnological Society Monograph 55 (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1973), and Frederica De Laguna, The Story of a Tlingit Community, Bureau of American Ethnology Bulletin 172 (Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1972).
W. Goldsmith and T. H. Haas, “Possessory Rights of the Natives of Southeastern Alaska,” report to the Commissioner of Indian Affairs, Bureau of Indian Affairs, U.S. Department of the Interior, Juneau, Alaska, 1946.
In a 1986 journal article, D. Bruce Johnsen makes a compelling case that potlatching was instrumental in enforcing exclusive property rights to salmon streams. See D. Bruce Johnsen, “The Formation and Protection of Property Rights among Southern Kwakiutl Indians,” Journal of Legal Studies 15 ( January 1986): 41–67.
Harold Demsetz, “Toward a Theory of Property Rights,” American Economic Review 57 (May 1967): 347–59 and Terry L. Anderson and Peter J. Hill, “The Evolution of Property Rights: A Study of the American West,” Journal of Law and Economics 18 (1975): 163–79.
Robert Higgs, “Legally Induced Technical Regress in the Washington Salmon Fishery,” Research in Economic History 7 (1982): 82.
Svein Jentoft, “Fisheries Co-management: Delegating Responsibility to Fishermen’s Organizations,” Marine Policy (April 1989): 142.
William C. Herringbone, “Operation of the Japanese Management System,” in Alaska Fisheries Policy, ed. Arleen R. Tusking, Thomas A. Morehouse, and James D. Babb, Jr. (Fairbanks: Institute of Social, Economic and Government Research, 1972), 421.
H. Befu, “Political Ecology of Fishing in Japan: Techno-environmental Impact of Industrialization in the Inland Sea,” Research in Economic Anthropology 3 (1980): 323–92.
Jerome B. Robinson, “The Next Step for Atlantic Salmon,” Field & Stream, September 1994, 22–25.
Peter H. Pearse and James R. Wilson, “Local Co-management of Fish and Wildlife: The Quebec Experience,” Wildlife Society Bulletin 27 (1999): 678.
Even in developed countries such as the United States, a community-based wildlife management can take center stage. An exemplary case is the program carried out by the White Mountain Apache Tribe. See Terry L. Anderson and Donald R. Leal, Enviro-Capitalists: Doing Good While Doing Well (Lanham, MD: Rowman and Little field Publishers, 1997), 150–53.
Valerie Thresher, “Economic Reflections on Wildlife Utilization in Zimbabwe,” master’s thesis, University of California at Davis, 1993, 45.
Environmental Consultants (Pvt) Ltd., People, Wildlife and Natural Resources—The CAMPFIRE Approach to Rural Development in Zimbabwe (Harare, Zimbabwe: Zimbabwe Trust, 1990), 23.
Gregory F. Maggio, “Recognizing the Vital Role of Local Communities in International Legal Instruments for Conserving Biodiversity,” UCLA Journal of Environmental Law & Policy 16 (1997/1998): 199.
At the Tenth Conference of Parties of CITES, held in Zimbabwe in June of 1997, the strict ban on the elephant-ivory trade was lifted. Over objections from animal rights groups, empirical evidence indicating that limited harvests of elephant ivory would increase the health of both elephants and local community economies convinced convention parties to move the African elephant to Appendix II categorization,which allows regulated trade in elephant ivory. See Sean T. McAllister, “Community-Based Conservation: Restructuring Institutions to Involve Local Communities in a Meaningful Way,” Colorado Journal of International Environmental Law & Policy 10 (winter 1999): 220.
Jared Diamond, “Paradise and Oil: In a New Guinea Rain Forest, Environmentalists and Business Executives Learn that What’s Good for This Pristine World is Also Good for the Bottom Line,” Discover, March 1999, 96.
Peter Eaton, “Customary Land Tenure and Conservation in Papua New Guinea,” in Culture and Conservation:The Human Dimension in Environmental Planning, ed. Jeffery A. McNeely and David Pitt (Dover, NH: Croom Helm, 1985), 181–191.
John Stackhouse, “Forests Returning to the Himalayas: First Nepal’s Forestry Program Failed, Then the People Took Over and Saved the Trees,” Globe and Mail, October 22, 1998.
Robert B. Keiter, “Preserving Nepal’s National Parks: Law and Conservation in the Developing World,” Ecology Law Quarterly 22 (1995): 637.
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© 2001 Terry L. Anderson and Donald R. Leal
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Anderson, T.L., Leal, D.R. (2001). Calling on Communities. In: Free Market Environmentalism. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780312299736_11
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