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What are the tragedy of the commons?
The Tragedy of the Commons was a study written by Garrett Hardin. Hardin argued that humanity has created a society where people act upon their own inter…ests rather than for the good of the society as a whole. In this study, he uses the example of a common pasture land to illustrate the tragedy of the commons. Because the land is unclaimed or owned, any farmer/herder had access to it, and would have her/his livestock feeding off the land. There was no restriction to the amount of animals that each farmer/herder could have grazing on the land. So logically, if it cost the same amount to graze one animal versus ten animals, what's a smart farmer to do? (It was in the best interest for farmers/herders to have as many animals as possible.) Again, because this is unclaimed land, everyone in the community would also graze their animal. What the community failed to take note of was the carrying capacity of the land and as a result, suffered the consequences. The land became unfit to sustain the animals as the soil eroded and the land became a waste ground. Animals no longer had plants to feed on, so they died which caused people to die as well (lack of food?). This was the tragedy of the commons. I learnt about this study in my Grade 12 World Issues class, as this could be applied to other problems that we face such as population growth. Hardin had made this connection to the tragedy of the commons. The world is like the common pastureland finite, and population is like the grazing livestock’s, growing uncontrollably. If population continues to increase like the livestocks on the pastureland did, humanity might suffer the same consequences of the livestock. (MORE)
