Tragedy of Freedom in a Commons
Tragedy of Freedom in a Commons
At the end of a thoughtful article on the future of nuclear war, Wiesner and York (1) concluded that: “Both sides in the arms race are… confronted by the dilemma of steadily increasing military power and steadily decreasing national security. It is our considered profes- sional judgment that this dilemma has no technical solution. If the great powers continue to look for solution professional a of science and technology only, the result will be to worsen the situation.” I would like to focus your attention not on the subject of the article (na- tional security in a nuclear world) but on the kind of conclusion they reached, namely that there is no technical solu- tion to the problem. An implicit and almost universal assumption of discussions published in professional and semipopular scientific journals is that the problem under discussion has a technical solution. A technical solution may be defined as one that requires a change only in the techniques of the natural sciences, demanding little or nothing in the way of change in human values or ideas of morality. In our day (though not in earlier times) technical solutions are always welcome. Because of previous failures in prophecy, it takes courage to assert that a desired technical solution is not possible. Wiesner and York exhibited this courage; publishing in a science journal, they insisted that the solution to the problem was not to be found in the natural sciences. They cautiously qualified their statement with the phrase, “It is our considered professional judgment, .” Whether they were right or not is not the concern of the present article. Rather, the concern here is with the important concept of a class of human problems which can be called “no technical solution problems,” and, more specifically, with the identification and discussion of one of these. The author is professor of biology, University of California, Santa Barbara. This article is based on a presidential address presented before the meeting of the Pacific Division of the Ameri- can Association for the Advancement of Science at Utah State University, Logan, 25 June 1968. 13 DECEMBER 1968 It is easy to show that the class is not a null class. Recall the game of tick- tack-toe. Consider the problem, “How can I win the game of tick-tack-toe?” It is well known that I cannot, if I assume (in keeping with the conventions of game theory) that my opponent understands the game perfectly. Put an- other way, there is no “technical solution” to the problem. I can win only by giving a radical meaning to the word “win.” I can hit my opponent over the head; or I can drug him; or I can falsify the records. Every way in which I “win” involves, in some sense, an abandonment of the game, as we intuitively understand it. (I can also, of course, openly abandon the game-refuse to play it. This is what most adults do.)
The class of “No technical solution problems” has members. My thesis is that the “population problem,” as conventionally conceived, is a member of this class. How it is conventionally conceived needs some comment. It is fair to say that most people who anguish over the population problem are trying to find a way to avoid the evils of over- population without relinquishing any of the privileges they now enjoy. They think farming the seas or developing new strains of wheat will solve the problem-technologically. I try to show that the solution they seek cannot be found here. The population problem can- not be solved in a technical way, any more than can the problem of winning the game of tick-tack-toe. What Shall We Maximize? Population, as Malthus said, naturally tends to grow “geometrically,” or, as we would now say, exponentially. In a finite world this means that the per capita share of the world’s goods must steadily decrease. Is ours a finite world? A fair defense can be put forward for the view that the world is infinite; or that we do not know that it is not. But, in terms of the practical problems that we must face in the next few genera- tions with the foreseeable technology, it is clear that we will greatly increase human misery if we do not, during the immediate future, assume that the world available to the terrestrial human population is finite. “Space” is no escape (2). A finite world can support only a finite population; therefore, population growth must eventually equal zero. (The case of perpetual wide fluctuations above and below zero is a trivial variant that need not be discussed.) When this condition is met, what will be the situation of mankind? Specifically, can Ben- tham’s goal of “the greatest good for the greatest number” be realized? No-for two reasons, each sufficient by itself. The first is a theoretical one. It is not mathematically possible to maximize for two (or more) variables at the same time. This was clearly stated by von Neumann and Morgenstern (3), but the principle is implicit in the theory of partial differential equations, dating back at least to D’Alembert (1717- 1783). The second reason springs directly from biological facts. To live, any organism must have a source of energy (for example, food). This energy is utilized for two purposes: mere main- tenance and work. For man, mainte- nance of life requires about 1600 kilo- calories a day (“maintenance calories”). Anything that he does over and above merely staying alive will be defined as work, and is supported by “work cal- ories” which he takes in. Work calories are used not only for what we call work in common speech; they are also re- quired for all forms of enjoyment, from swimming and automobile racing to playing music and writing poetry. If our goal is to maximize population it is obvious what we must do: We must make the work calories per person ap- proach as close to zero as possible. No gourmet meals, no vacations, no sports, no music, no literature, no art. . . . I think that everyone will grant, without argument or proof, that maximizing population does not maximize goods. Bentham’s goal is impossible. In reaching this conclusion I have made the usual assumption that it is the acquisition of energy that is the problem. The appearance of atomic energy has led some to question this assumption. However, given an infinite source of energy, population growth still produces an inescapable problem. The problem of the acquisition of en- ergy is replaced by the problem of its dissipation, as J. H. Fremlin has so wit- tily shown (4). The arithmetic signs in the analysis are, as it were, reversed; but Bentham’s goal is still unobtainable. The optimum population is, then, less than the maximum. The difficulty of defining the optimum is enormous; so far as I know, no one has seriously tackled this problem. Reaching an ac- ceptable and stable solution will surely require more than one generation of hard analytical work-and much per- suasion. We want the maximum good per person; but what is good? To one per- son it is wilderness, to another it is ski lodges for thousands. To one it is estu- aries to nourish ducks for hunters to shoot; to another it is factory land. Comparing one good with another is, we usually say, impossible because goods are incommensurable. Incommensurables cannot be compared. Theoretically this may be true; but in real life incommensurables are commesurable. Only a criterion of judgment and a system of weighting are needed. In nature the criterion is survival. Is it better for a species to be small and hide- able, or large and powerful? Natural selection commensurates the incommensurables. The compromise achieved de- pends on a natural weighting of the values of the variables. Man must imitate this process. There is no doubt that in fact he already does, but unconsciously. It is when the hidden decisions are made explicit that the arguments begin. The problem for the years ahead is to work out an accept- able theory of weighting. Synergistic effects, nonlinear variation, and difficul- ties in discounting the future make the intellectual problem difficult, but not (in principle) insoluble. Has any cultural group solved this practical problem at the present time, even on an intuitive level? One simple fact proves that none has: there is no prosperous population in the world to- day that has, and has had for some
time, a growth rate of zero. Any people that has intuitively identified its opti- mum point will soon reach it, after which its growth rate becomes and remains zero. Of course, a positive growth rate might be taken as evidence that a population is below its optimum. However, by any reasonable standards, the most rapidly growing populations on earth today are (in general) the most misera- ble. This association (which need not be invariable) casts doubt on the optimistic assumption that the positive growth rate of a population is evidence that it has yet to reach its optimum. We can make little progress in work- ing toward optimum poulation size until we explicitly exorcize the spirit of Adam Smith in the field of practical demography. In economic affairs, The Wealth of Nations (1776) popularized the “invisible hand,” the idea that an individual who “intends only his own gain,” is, as it were, “led by an invisible hand to promote… the public interest” (5). Adam Smith did not assert that this was invariably true, and perhaps neither did any of his followers. But he contributed to a dominant tendency of thought that has ever since interfered with positive action based on rational analysis, namely, the tendency to as- sume that decisions reached individually will, in fact, be the best decisions for an entire society. If this assumption is correct it justifies the continuance of our present policy of laissez-faire in reproduction. If it is correct we can as- sume that men will control their individ- ual fecundity so as to produce the opti- mum population. If the assumption is not correct, we need to reexamine our individual freedoms to see which ones are defensible.
The rebuttal to the invisible hand in population control is to be found in a scenario first sketched in a little-known pamphlet (6) in 1833 by a mathematical amateur named William Forster Lloyd (1794-1852). We may well call it “the tragedy of the commons,” using the word “tragedy” as the philosopher Whitehead used it (7): “The essence of dramatic tragedy is not unhappiness. It resides in the solemnity of the remorse- less working of things.” He therr goes on. to say, “This inevitableness of destiny can only be illustrated in terms of hu- man life by incidents which in fact in-volve unhappiness. Forit is only by them that the futility of escape can be made evident in the drama.” The tragedy of the commons develops in this way. Picture a pasture open to all. It is to be expected that each herds- man will try to keep as many cattle as possible on the commons. Such an ar- rangement may work reasonably satis- factorily for centuries because tribal wars, poaching, and disease keep the numbers of both man and beast well below the carrying capacity of the land. Finally, however, comes the day of reckoning, that is, the day when the long-desired goal of social stability be- comes a reality. At this point, the in- herent logic of the commons remorse- lessly generates tragedy. As a rational being, each herdsman seeks to maximize his gain. Explicitly or implicitly, more or less consciously, he asks, “What is the utility to me of adding one more animal to my herd?” This utility has one negative and one positive component. 1) The positive component is a func- tion of the increment of one animal. Since the herdsman receives all the proceeds from the sale of the additional animal, the positive utility is nearly +1. 2) The negative component is a func- tion of the additional overgrazing created by one more animal. Since, however, the effects of overgrazing are shared by all the herdsmen, the negative utility for any particular decision- making herdsman is only a fraction of -1.MAdding together the component par- tial utilities, the rational herdsman concludes that the only sensible course for him to pursue is to add another animal to his herd. And another; and another. . . . But this is the conclusion reached by each and every rational herdsman sharing a commons. Therein is the tragedy. Each man is locked into a system that compels him to increase his herd without limit-in a world that is limited. Ruin is the destination to- ward which all men rush, each pursuing his own best interest in a society that believes in the freedom of the com- mons. Freedom in a commons brings ruin to all. Some would say that this is a plati- tude. Would that it were! In a sense, it was learned thousands of years ago, but natural selection favors the forces of psychological denial (8). The individual benefits as an individual from his ability to deny the truth even though society as a whole, of which he is a part, suffers. Education can counteract the natural tendency to do the wrong thing, but the inexorable succession of generations requires that the basis for this knowl- edge be constantly refreshed. A simple incident that occurred a few years ago in Leominster, Massachusetts, shows how perishable the knowledge is. During the Christmas shopping season the parking meters downtown were covered with plastic bags that bore tags reading: “Do not open until after Christ- mas. Free parking courtesy of the mayor and city council.” In other words, facing the prospect of an increased de- mand for already scarce space, the city fathers reinstituted the system of the commons. (Cynically, we suspect that they gained more votes than they lost by this retrogressive act.)In an approximate way, the logic of the commons has been understood for a long time, perhaps since the dis- covery of agriculture or the invention of private property in real estate. But it is understood mostly only in special cases which are not sufficiently general- ized. Even at this late date, cattlemen leasing national land on the western ranges demonstrate no more than an ambivalent understanding, in constantly pressuring federal authorities to increase the head count to the point where over- grazing produces erosion and weed- dominance. Likewise, the oceans of the world continue to suffer from the sur- vival of the philosophy of the commons. Maritime nations still respond automat- ically to the shibboleth of the “freedom of the seas.” Professing to believe in the “inexhaustible resources of the oceans,” they bring species after species of fish and whales closer to extinction (9).The National Parks present another instance of the working out of the tragedy of the commons. At present, they are open to all, without limit. The parks themselves are limited in extent- there is only one Yosemite Valley- whereas population seems to grow with- out limit. The values that visitors seek in the parks are steadily eroded. Plainly, we must soon cease to treat the parks as commons or they will be of no value to anyone. What shall we do? We have several options. We might sell them off as pri- vate property. We might keep them as public property, but allocate the right to enter them. The allocation might be on the basis of wealth, by the use of an auction system. It might be on the basis of merit, as defined by some agreed-
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upon standards. It might be by lottery. Or it might be on a first-come, first- served basis, administered to long queues. These, I think, are all the reasonable possibilities. They are all objectionable. But we must choose-or acquiesce in the destruction of the com- mons that we call our National Parks.
Pollution In a reverse way, the tragedy of the commons reappears in problems of pollution. Here it is not a question of taking something out of the commons, but of putting something in-sewage, or chemical, radioactive, and heat wastes into water; noxious and danger- ous fumes into the air; and distracting and unpleasant advertising signs into the line of sight. The calculations of utility are much the same as before. The rational man finds that his share of the cost of the wastes he discharges into the commons is less than the cost of purifying his wastes before releasing them. Since this is true for everyone, we are locked into a system of “fouling our own nest,” so long as we behave only as independent, rational, free-enter- prisers. The tragedy of the commons as a food basket is averted by private prop- erty, or something formally like it. But the air and waters surrounding us can- not readily be fenced, and so the trag- edy of the commons as a cesspool must be prevented by different means, by co- ercive laws or taxing devices that make it cheaper for the polluter to treat his pollutants than to discharge them un- treated. We have not progressed as far with the solution of this problem as we have with the first. Indeed, our particu- lar concept of private property, which deters us from exhausting the positive resources of the earth, favors pollution. The owner of a factory on the bank of a stream-whose property extends to the middle of the stream-often has difficulty seeing why it is not his natural right to muddy the waters flowing past his door. The law, always behind the times, requires elaborate stitching and fitting to adapt it to this newly perceived aspect of the commons. The pollution problem is a con- sequence of population. It did not much matter how a lonely American frontiers- man disposed of his waste. “Flowing water purifies itself every 10 miles,” my grandfather used to say, and the myth was near enough to the truth when he was a boy, for there were not too many people. But as population became denser, the natural chemical and biological re- cycling processes became overloaded, calling for a redefinition of property rights. How To Legislate Temperance? Analysis of the pollution problem as a function of population density un- covers a not generally recognized prin- ciple of morality, namely: the morality of an act is a function of the state of the system at the time it is performed (10). Using the commons as a cesspool does not harm the general public under frontier conditions, because there is no public; the same behavior in a metropo- lis is unbearable. A hundred and fifty years ago a plainsman could kill an American bison, cut out only the tongue for his dinner, and discard the rest of the animal. He was not in any impor- tant sense being wasteful. Today, with only a few thousand bison left, we would be appalled at such behavior. In passing, it is worth noting that the morality of an act cannot be determined from a photograph. One does not know whether a man killing an elephant or setting fire to the grassland is harming others until one knows the total system in which his act appears. “One picture is worth a thousand words,” said an ancient Chinese; but it may take many words to validate it. It is as tempting to ecologists as it is to reformers in general to try to persuade others by way of the photographic shortcut. But the essense of an argument cannot be photo- graphed: it must be presented rationally -in words. That morality is system-sensitive escaped the attention of most codifiers of ethics in the past. “Thou shalt not…” is the form of traditional ethical directives which make no allow- ance for particular circumstances. The laws of our society follow the pattern of ancient ethics, and therefore are poorly suited to governing a complex, crowded, changeable world. Our epicyclic solu- tion is to augment statutory law with administrative law. Since it is practically impossible to spell out all the conditions under which it is safe to burn trash in the back yard or to run an automobile without smog-control, by law we dele- gate the details to bureaus. The result is administrative law, which is rightly feared for an ancient reason-Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?”Who shall watch the watchers themselves?” John Adams said that we must have “a gov- ernment of laws and not men.” Bureau administrators, trying to evaluate the morality of acts in the total system, are singularly liable to corruption, produc- ing a government by men, not laws. Prohibition is easy to legislate (though not necessarily to enforce); but how do we legislate temperance? Ex- perience indicates that it can be ac- complished best through the mediation of administrative law. We limit possi- bilities unnecessarily if we suppose that the sentiment of Quis custodiet denies us the use of administrative law. We should rather retain the phrase as a perpetual reminder of fearful dangers we cannot avoid. The great challenge facing us now is to invent the corrective feedbacks that are needed to keep cus- todians honest. We must find ways to legitimate the needed authority of both the custodians and the corrective feed- backs.
Freedom To Breed Is Intolerable
The tragedy of the commons is in- volved in population problems in an- other way. In a world governed solely by the principle of “dog eat dog”-if indeed there ever was such a world- how many children a family had would not be a matter of public concern. Parents who bred too exuberantly would leave fewer descendants, not more, be- cause they would be unable to care adequately for their children. David Lack and others have found that such a negative feedback demonstrably con- trols the fecundity of birds (11). But men are not birds, and have not acted like them for millenniums, at least.
If each human family were depen- dent only on its own resources; if the children of improvident parents starved to death; if, thus, overbreeding brought its own “punishment” to the germ line- then there would be no public interest in controlling the breeding of families. But our society is deeply committed to the welfare state (12), and hence is confronted with another aspect of the tragedy of the commons. In a welfare state, how shall we deal with the family, the religion, the race, or the class (or indeed any distinguish- able and cohesive group) that adopts overbreeding as a policy to secure its own aggrandizement (13)? To couple the concept of freedom to breed with the belief that everyone born has an equal right to the commons is to lock the world into a tragic course of action. Unfortunately this is just the course of action that is being pursued by the United Nations. In late 1967, some 30 nations agreed to the following (14): The Universal Declaration of Human Rights describes the family as the natural and fundamental unit of society. It fol- lows that any choice and decision with regard to the size of the family must irre- vocably rest with the family itself, and cannot be made by anyone else. It is painful to have to deny categor- ically the validity of this right; denying it, one feels as uncomfortable as a resi- dent of Salem, Massachusetts, who denied the reality of witches in the 17th century. At the present time, in liberal quarters, something like a taboo acts to inhibit criticism of the United Nations. There is a feeling that the United Nations is “our last and best hope,” that we shouldn’t find fault with it; we shouldn’t play into the hands of the archconservatives. However, let us not forget what Robert Louis Stevenson said: “The truth that is suppressed by friends is the readiest weapon of the enemy.” If we love the truth we must openly deny the validity of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, even though it is promoted by the United Nations. We should also join with Kingsley Davis (15) in attempting to get Planned Parenthood-World Popula- tion to see the error of its ways in em- bracing the same tragic ideal.
Conscience Is Self-Eliminating
It is a mistake to think that we can control the breeding of mankind in the long run by an appeal to conscience. Charles Galton Darwin made this point when he spoke on the centennial of the publication of his grandfather’s great book. The argument is straightforward and Darwinian. People vary. Confronted with appeals to limit breeding, some people will un- doubtedly respond to the plea more than others. Those who have more children will produce a larger fraction of the next generation than those with more susceptible consciences. The dif- ference will be accentuated, generation by generation. In C. G. Darwin’s words: “It may well be that it would take hundreds of generations for the progenitive instinct to develop in this way, but if it should do so, nature would have taken her revenge, and the variety Homo contracipiens would become extinct and would be replaced by the variety Homo progenitivus” (16). The argument assumes that con- science or the desire for children (no matter which) is hereditary-but heredi- tary only in the most general formal sense. The result will be the same I whether the attitude is transmitted through germ cells, or exosomatically, to use A. J. Lotka’s term. (If one denies the latter possibility as well as the former, then what’s the point of educa- tion?) The argument has here been stated in the context of the population problem, but it applies equally well to any instance in which society appeals to an individual exploiting a commons to restrain himself for the general good-by means of his conscience. To make such an appeal is to set up a selective system that works toward the elimination of conscience from the race.
Pathogenic Effects of Conscience
The long-term disadvantage of an appeal to conscience should be enough to condemn it; but has serious short- term disadvantages as well. If we ask a man who is exploiting a commons to desist “in the name of conscience,” what are we saying to him? What does he hear?-not only at the moment but also in the wee small hours of the night when, half asleep, he remembers not merely the words we used but also the nonverbal communication cues we gave him unawares? Sooner or later, consciously or subconsciously, he senses that he has received two communications, and that they are contradictory: (i) (intended communication) “If you don’t we ask, we will openly condemn you for not acting like a responsible citizen”; (ii) (the unintended. communication) “If you do behave as we ask, we will secretly condemn you for a simpleton who can be shamed into standing aside while the rest of us exploit the commons.” Everyman then is caught in what Bateson has called a “double bind.” Bateson and his co-workers have made a plausible case for viewing the double bind as an important causative factor in the genesis of schizophrenia (17). The double bind may not always be so damaging, but it always endangers the mental health of anyone to whom it is applied. “A bad conscience,” said Nietzsche, “is a kind of illness.” is tempting to anyone who wishes to extend his control beyond the legal limits. Leaders at the highest level succumb to this temptation. Has any President during the past generation failed to call on labor unions to moder- ate voluntarily their demands for higher wages, or to steel companies to honor voluntary guidelines on prices? I can recall none. The rhetoric used on such occasions is designed to produce feel- ings of guilt in noncooperators.
For centuries it was assumed without proof that guilt was a valuable, perhaps even an indispensable, ingredient of the civilized life. Now, in this post-Freudian world, we doubt it. Paul Goodman speaks from the modern point of view when he says: “No good has ever come from feeling guilty, neither intelligence, policy, nor compassion. The guilty do not pay attention to the object but only to them- selves, and not even to their own in- terests, which might make sense, but to their anxieties” (18). One does not have to be a profes- sional psychiatrist to see the conse- quences of anxiety. We in the Western world are just emerging from a dreadful two-centuries-long Dark Ages of Eros that was sustained partly by prohibi- tion laws, but perhaps more effectively by the anxiety-generating mechanisms of education. Alex Comfort has told the story well in The Anxiety Makers (19); it is not a pretty one. Since proof is difficult, we may even concede that the results of anxiety may sometimes, from certain points of view, be desirable. The larger question we should ask is whether, as a matter of policy, we should ever encourage the use of a technique the tendency (if not the intention) of which is psycholog- ically pathogenic. We hear much talk these days of responsible parenthood; the coupled words are incorporated into the titles of some organizations de- voted to birth control. Some people have proposed massive propaganda campaigns to instill responsibility into the nation’s (or the world’s) breeders. But what is the meaning of the word responsibility in this context? Is it not merely a synonym for the word con- science? When we use the word re- sponsibility in the absence of substantial sanctions are we not trying to browbeat a free man in a commons into acting against his own interest? Responsibility is a verbal counterfeit for a substantial quid pro quo. It is an attempt to get something for nothing.
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If the word responsibility is to be used at all, I suggest that it be in the sense Charles Frankel uses it (20). “Responsibility,” says this philosopher, “is the product of definite social ar- rangements.” Notice that Frankel calls for social arrangements-not propaganda. Mutual Coercion Mutually Agreed upon The social arrangements that produce responsibility are arrangements that create coercion, of some sort. Consider bank-robbing. The man who takes money from a bank acts as if the bank were a commons. How do we prevent such action? Certainly not by trying to control his behavior solely by a verbal appeal to his sense of responsibility. Rather than rely on propaganda we follow Frankel’s lead and insist that a bank is not a commons; we seek the definite social arrangements that will keep it from becoming a commons. That we thereby infringe on the free- dom of would-be robbers we neither deny nor regret. The morality of bank-robbing is particularly easy to understand because we accept complete prohibition of this activity. We are willing to say “Thou shalt not rob banks,” without providing for exceptions. But temperance also can be created by coercion. Taxing is a good coercive device. To keep downtown shoppers temperate in their use of parking space we introduce parking meters for short periods, and traffic fines for longer ones. We need not actually forbid a citizen to park as long as he wants to; we need merely make it increasingly expensive for him to do so. Not prohibition, but carefully biased options are what we offer him. A Madi- son Avenue man might call this per- suasion; I prefer the greater candor of the word coercion. Coercion is a dirty word to most liberals now, but it need not forever be so. As with the four-letter words, its dirtiness can be cleansed away by ex- posure to the light, by saying it over and over without apology or embarrassment. To many, the word coercion implies arbitrary decisions of distant and irre- sponsible bureaucrats; but this is not a necessary part of its meaning. The only kind of coercion I recommend is mutual coercion, mutually agreed upon by the majority of the people affected. To say that we mutually agree to coercion is not to say that we are re- quired to enjoy it, or even to pretend we enjoy it. Who enjoys taxes? We all grumble about them. But we accept compulsory taxes because we recognize that voluntary taxes would favor the conscienceless. We institute and (grum- blingly) support taxes and other coercive devices to escape the horror of the commons. An alternative to the commons need not be perfectly just to be preferable. With real estate and other material goods, the alternative we have chosen is the institution of private property coupled with legal inheritance. Is this system perfectly just? As a genetically trained biologist I deny that it is. It seems to me that, if there are to be dif- ferences in individual inheritance, legal possession should be perfectly cor- related with biological inheritance-that those who are biologically more fit to be the custodians of property and power should legally inherit more. But genetic recombination continually makes a mockery of the doctrine of “like father, like son” implicit in our laws of legal in- heritance. An idiot can inherit millions, and a trust fund can keep his estate intact. We must admit that our legal system of private property plus inheri- tance is unjust-but we put up with it because we are not convinced, at the moment, that anyone has invented a better system. The alternative of the commons is too horrifying to contem- plate. Injustice is preferable to total ruin. It is one of the peculiarities of the warfare between reform and the status quo that it is thoughtlessly governed by a double standard. Whenever a re- form measure is proposed it is often defeated when its opponents trium- phantly discover a flaw in it. As Kings- ley Davis has pointed out (21), worship- pers of the status quo sometimes imply that no reform is possible without unan- imous agreement, an implication con- trary to historical fact. As nearly as I can make out, automatic rejection of proposed reforms is based on one of two unconscious assumptions: (i) that the status quo is perfect; or (ii) that the choice we face is between reform and no action; if the proposed reform is imperfect, we presumably should take no action at all, while we wait for a perfect proposal. But we can never do nothing. That which we have done for thousands of years is also action. It also produces evils. Once we are aware that the status quo is action, we can then com- pare its discoverable advantages and disadvantages with the predicted ad- vantages and disadvantages of the pro-posed reform, discounting as best we can our lack of experience. Based on such a comparison, we can make a rational decision that will not involve the unworkable assumption that only perfect systems are tolerable.
Recognition of Necessity
Perhaps the simplest summary of this analysis of man’s population problems is this: the commons, if justifiable at all, is justifiable only under conditions of low-population density. As the human population has increased, the commons have had to be abandoned in one aspect after another.First, we abandoned the commons in food gathering, enclosing farm land, and restricting pastures and hunting and fishing areas. These restrictions are still not complete throughout the world. Somewhat later we saw that the commons as a place for waste disposal would also have to be abandoned. Re- restrictions on the disposal of domestic sewage are widely accepted in the Western world; we are still struggling to close the commons to pollution by automobiles, factories, insecticide sprayers, fertilizing operations, and atomic energy installations. In a still more embryonic state is our recognition of the evils of the commons in matters of pleasure. There is almost no restriction on the propagation of sound waves in the public medium. The shopping public is assaulted with mindless music, without its consent. Our government is paying billions of dollars to create supersonic transport which will disturb 50,000 people for every one person who is whisked from coast to coast 3 hours faster. Advert- times muddy the airwaves of radio and television and pollute the view of travelers. We are a long way from out lawing the commons in matters of pleasure. Is this because our Puritan inheritance makes us view pleasure as something of a sin, and pain (that is, the pollution of advertising) as a sign of virtue? Every new enclosure of the commons involves the infringement of somebody’s liberty. Infringe- mats made in the distant past are ac- accepted because no contemporary complains of a loss. It is the newly pro- posed infringements that we vigorously oppose; cries of “rights” and “freedom” fill the air. But what does “freedom” mean? When men mutually agreed to pass laws against robbing, mankind be- came freer, not less so. Individuals locked into the logic of the commons are free only to bring on universal ruin; once they see the necessity of mutual coercion, they become free to pursue other goals. I believe it was Hegel who said, “Freedom is the recognition of necessity.” The most important aspect of necessity that we must now recognize, is the necessity of abandoning the commons in breeding. No technical solution can rescue us from the misery of overpopulation. Freedom to breed will bring ruin to all. At the moment, to avoid hard decisions many of us are tempted to propagandize for conscience and responsible parenthood. The temptation must be resisted because an appeal to independently acting consciences selects for the disappearance of all conscience in the long run and an increase in anxiety in the short. The only way we can preserve and nurture other and more precious freedoms is by relinquishing the freedom to breed, and that very soon. “Freedom is the recognition of necessity”–and it is the role of education to reveal to all the necessity of abandoning the freedom to breed. Only so, can we put an end to this aspect of the tragedy of the commons.
TRAGEDY OF THE COMMONS?
The Struggle to Govern the Commons
Human institutions ways of organizing activities affect the resilience of the environ- ment. Locally evolved institutional arrangements governed by stable communities and buffered from outside forces have sustained resources successfully for centuries, al- though they often fail when rapid change occurs. Ideal conditions for govemance are increasingly rare. Critical problems, such as transboundary pollution, tropical deforesta- tion, and climate change, are at larger scales and involve nonlocal influences. Promising strategies for addressing these problems include dialogue among interested parties, officials, and scientists; complex, redundant, and layered institutions; a mix of institu- tional types; and designs that facilitate experimentation, learning, and change.
In 1968, Hardin (1) drew attention to two human factors that drive environmental change. The first factor is the increasing de- mand for natural resources and environmen- tal services, stemming from growth in human population and per capita resource consump- tion. The second factor is the way in which humans organize themselves to extract re- sources from the environment and eject efflu- ents into it what social scientists refer to as institutional arrangements. Hardin’s work has been highly influential (2) but has long been aptly criticized as oversimplified (3-6).
Hardin’s oversimplification was twofold: He claimed that only two state-established in- stitutional arrangements-centralized govern- ment and private property-could sustain com- mons over the long run, and he presumed that resource users were trapped in a commons di- lemma, unable to create solutions (7-9). He missed the point that many social groups, in- cluding the herders on the commons that pro- vided the metaphor for his analysis, have strug- gled successfully against threats of resource degradation by developing and maintaining self-governing institutions (3, 10-13). Although these institutions have not always succeeded, neither have Hardin’s preferred alternatives of private or state ownership.
In the absence of effective governance institutions at the appropriate scale, natural resources and the environment are in peril from increasing human population, consump- tion, and deployment of advanced technolo- gies for resource use, all of which have reached unprecedented levels. For example, it is estimated that “the global ocean has lost
‘Environmental Science and Policy Program and De- partments of Sociology and Crop and Soil Sciences, Michigan State University, East Lansing, MI 48824, USA, 2Center for the Study of Institutions, Population, and Environmental Change and Workshop in Political Theory and Policy Analysis, Indiana University, Bloomington, IN 47408, USA. “Division of Social and Behavioral Sciences and Education, The National Academies, Washington, DC 20001, USA. more than 90% of large predatory fishes” with an 80% decline typically occurring “within 15 years of industrialized exploit tion” (14). The threat of massive ecosystem degradation results from an interplay among ocean ecologies, fishing technologies, and inadequate governance.
Inshore fisheries are similarly degraded where they are open access or governed by top-down national regimes, leaving local and regional officials and users with insufficient autonomy and understanding to design effec- tive institutions (15, 16). For example, the degraded inshore ground fishery in Maine is governed by top-down rules based on models that were not credible among users. As a result, compliance has been relatively low and there has been strong resistance to strengthening existing restrictions. This is in marked contrast to the Maine lobster fishery, which has been governed by formal and in- formal user institutions that have strongly influenced state-level rules that restrict fishing. The result has been credible rules with very high levels of compliance (17-19). A comparison of the landings of ground fish and lobster since 1980 is shown in Fig. 1. The rules and high levels of compliance related to lobster appear to have prevented the destruction of this fishery but probably are not responsible for the sharp rise in abundance and landings
after 1986.
Resources at larger scales have also been successfully protected through appropriate inter- national governance regimes such as the Montreal Protocol on stratospheric ozone and the Inter- national Commission for the Protection of the Rhine Agreements (20-24). Figure 2 compares the trajectory of atmospheric concentrations of ozone-depleting substances (ODS) with that of carbon dioxide since 1982. The Montreal Protocol, the centrepieces of the intemational agreements on ozone depletion, was signed in 1987. Before then, ODS concen- trations were increasing faster than those of CO2; the increases slowed by the early 1990s and the concentration appears to have stabilized in recent years. The intemational treaty regime to reduce the anthropogenic impact on stratospheric ozone is widely considered an example of a successful effort to protect the global commons. In contrast, international efforts to reduce greenhouse gas concentrations have not yet had an impact.
Knowledge from an emerging science of human-environment interactions, sometimes called human ecology or the “second envi- ronmental science” (25, 26), is clarifying the characteristics of institutions that facilitate or undermine sustainable use of environmental resources under particular conditions (6, 27). The knowledge base is strongest with small- scale ecologies and institutions, where long time series exist on many successes and fail- ures. It is now developing for larger-scale systems. In this review, we address what science has learned about governing the com- mons and why it is always a struggle (28). Why a Struggle?
Devising ways to sustain the earth’s ability to support diverse life, including a reasonable quality of life for humans, involves making tough decisions under uncertainty, complex- ity, and substantial biophysical constraints as well as conflicting human values and inter- ests. Devising effective governance systems is akin to a coevolutionary race. A set of rules crafted to fit one set of socioecological conditions can erode as social, economic, and technological developments increase the po- tential for human damage to ecosystems and even to the biosphere itself. Furthermore, hu- mans devise ways of evading governance rules. Thus, successful commons governance requires that rules evolve.
Effective commons governance is easier to achieve when (i) the resources and use of the resources by humans can be monitored, and the information can be verified and understood at relatively low cost (e.g., trees are easier to monitor than fish, and lakes are easier to mon- itor than rivers) (29); (ii) rates of change in resources, resource-user populations, technolo- gy, and economic and social conditions are moderate (30-32); (iii) communities maintain frequent face-to-face communication and dense social networks sometimes called social cap- ital that increase the potential for trust, allow people to express and see emotional reactions to distrust, and lower the cost of monitoring be- havior and inducing rule compliance (33-36); (iv) outsiders can be excluded at relatively low cost from using the resource (new entrants add to the har- vesting pressure and typically lack un- derstanding of the rules); and (v) users support effective monitoring and rule enforcement (37-39). Few settings in the world are characterized by all of these conditions. The challenge is to devise institutional arrangements that help to establish such conditions or, as we dis- cuss below, meet the main challenges of governance in the absence of ideal con- ditions (6, 40, 41).
The most important contemporary envi- ronmental challenges involve systems that are intrinsically global (e.g., climate change) or are tightly linked to global pres- sures (e.g., timber production for the world market) and that require governance at lev- els from the global all the way down to the local (48, 58, 59). These situations often feature environmental outcomes spatially displaced from their causes and hard-to- monitor, larger scale economic incentives that may not be closely aligned with the condition of local ecosystems. Also, differ- entials in power within user groups or across scales allow some to ignore rules of commons use or to reshape the rules in their own interest, such as when global markets reshape demand for local resources (e.g., forests) in ways that swamp the ability of locally evolved institutions to regulate their use congruent in scale with environmental events and decisions (48, 67). Highly aggregated in- formation may ignore or average out local in- formation that is important in identifying future problems and developing solutions.
For example, in 2002, a moratorium on all fishing for northern cod was declared by the Canadian government after a collapse of this valuable fishery. An earlier near-collapse had led Canada to declare a 200-mile zone of ex- clusive fisheries jurisdiction in 1977 (68, 69). Considerable optimism existed during the 1980s that the stocks, as estimated by fishery scientists, were rebuilding. Consequently, gen- erous total catch limits were established for northem cod and other ground fish, the number of licensed fishers was allowed to increase con- siderably, and substantial government subsidies were allocated for new vessels (70). What went wrong? There were a variety of information- related problems including: (i) treating all
Fig. 2. Atmospheric concentration of CO2 (solid blue line, right scale) and three principal ODS (dashed red line, left scale). The ODS are chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) 11, 12, and 113 and were weighted based on their ozone-depleting potential (156). Data are from (157). ppt, parts per trillion; ppm, parts per million.
The characteristics of resources and so- cial interaction in many subsistence so- cieties present favorable conditions for the evolution of effective self-governing resource institutions (13). Hundreds of docu- mented examples exist of long-term sustainable resource use in such communities as well as in more economically advanced communities with effective, local, selfgovering rights, but there are also many failures (6, 11, 42-44). As human communities have expanded, the selec- tive pressures on environmental governance institutions increasingly have come from broad influences. Commerce has become regional, national, and global, and institutions at all of
these levels have been created to enable and regulate trade, transportation, competition, and conflict (45, 46). These institutions shape envi- ronmental impact, even if they are not designed with that intent. They also provide mechanisms for environmental governance (e.g., national laws) and part of the social context for local efforts at environmental governance. Larger scale govemance may authorize local control, help it, hinder it, or override it (47-52). Now, every local place is strongly influenced by glob- al dynamics (48, 53-57).
The store of governance tools and ways to modify and combine them is far greater than often is recognized (6, 63-65). Global and national environmental policy frequently ig- nores community-based governance and tra- ditional tools, such as informal communica- tion and sanctioning, but these tools can have significant impact (63, 66). Further, no single broad type of ownership-government, pri- vate, or community-uniformly succeeds or fails to halt major resource deterioration, as shown for forests in multiple countries (sup- porting online material text, figs. S1 to $5, and table S1).
Requirements of Adaptive Governance in Complex Systems
Providing information. Environmental gover- nance depends on good, trustworthy informa- tion about stocks, flows, and processes within the resource systems being governed, as well as about the human-environment interactions af- fecting those systems. This information must be
northem cod as a single stock instead of recognizing distinct populations with different characteristics, (ii) ignoring the variability of year classes of northern cod, (iii) focusing on offshore-fishery landing data rather than inshore data to “tune” the stock assessment, and (iv) ignoring inshore fishers who were catch- ing ever-smaller fish and doubted the validity of stock assessments (70-72). This experience illustrates the need to collect and model both local and aggre- gated information about resource condi- tions and to use it in making policy at the appropriate scales.
Information also must be congruent
with decision makers’ needs in terms of timing, content, and form of presentation (73-75). Informational systems that simultaneously meet high scientific standards and serve ongoing needs of decision makers and users are particularly useful. Information must not overload the capacity of users to assimilate it. Systems that adequately characterize environmental conditions or human activities with summary indicators such as prices for products or emission permits, or certification of good environmental performance can provide valuable signals as long as they are attentive to local as well as aggregate conditions (76-78).
Effective governance requires not only factual information about the state of the environment and human actions but also information about uncertainty and values. Scientific under- standing of coupled human-biophysical sys- tems will always be uncertain because of inhe ent unpredictability in the systems and because the science is never complete (79). Decision makers need information that characterizes the types and magnitudes of this uncertainty, as well as the nature and extent of scientific ignorance and disagreement (80). Also, because ev- ery environmental decision requires tradeoffs, knowledge is needed about individual and social values and about the effects of decisions on various valued outcomes. For many environ- mental systems, local and easily captured values (e.g., the market value of lumber) have to be balanced against global, diffuse, and hard- to-capture values (e.g., biodiversity and the capability of humans and ecosystems to adapt to unexpected events). Finding ways to measure and monitor the outcomes for such varied val- ues in the face of globalization is a major informational challenge for governance.
Dealing with conflict. Sharp differences in power and in values across interested parties make conflict inherent in environmental choices. Indeed, conflict resolution may be as important a motivation for designing resource institutions as is concern with the resources themselves (81). People bring varying per- spectives, interests, and fundamental philos- ophies to problems of environmental gover- nance (74, 82-84), and their conflicts, if they do not escalate to the point of dysfunction, can spark learning and change (85, 86).
For example, a broadly participatory pro- cess was used to examine alternative strategies for regulating the Mississippi River and its trib- utaries (87). A dynamic model was constructed with continuous input by the Corps of Engi- neers, the Fish and Wildlife Service, local land- owners, environmental groups, and academics from multiple disciplines. After extensive model development and testing against past histor- ical data, most stakeholders had high confi- dence in the explanatory power of the model. Consensus was reached over altemative man- agement options, and the resulting policies gen- erated far less conflict than had existed at the outset (88).
Delegating authority to environmental ministries does not always resolve conflicts satisfactorily, so governments are experi- menting with various governance approaches to complement managerial ones. They range from ballots and polls, where engagement is passive and participants interact minimally, to adversarial processes that allow parties to redress grievances through formal legal proce- dures, to various experiments with intense in- teraction and deliberation aimed at negotiating decisions or allowing parties in potential con- flict to provide structured input to them through participatory processes (89-93).
Inducing rule compliance. Effective gov- ernance requires that the rules of resource use are generally followed, with reasonable stan- dards for tolerating modest violations. It is generally most effective to impose modest sanctions on first offenders, and gradually increase the severity of sanctions for those who do not learn from their first or second encounter (39, 94). Community-based insti- tutiouse informal strategies for achieving compliance that rely on partici- pants’ commitment to rules and subtle social
sanctions. Whether enforcement mechanisms are formal or informal, those who impose them must be seen as effective and legitimate by resource users or resistance and eva- sion will overwhelm the commons gove nance strategy.
Much environmental regulation in com- plex societies has been “command and con- trol.” Goverments require or prohibit specif- ic actions or technologies, with fines or jail terms possible for punishing rule breakers. If sufficient resources are made available for monitoring and enforcement, such approach- es are effective. But when governments lack the will or resources to protect “protected areas” (95-97), when major environmental damage comes from hard-to-detect “nonpoint sources,” and when the need is to encourage innovation in behaviors or technologies rath- er than to require or prohibit familiar ones, command and control approaches are less effective. They are also economically ineffi- cient in many circumstances (98-100).
Financial instruments can provide incen- tives to achieve compliance with environ- mental rules. In recent years, market-based systems of tradable environmental allowanc- es (TEAS) that define a limit to environmen- tal withdrawals or emissions and permit free trade of allocated allowances under those limits have become popular (76, 101, 102). TEAS are one of the bases for the Kyoto agreement on climate change.
Economic theory and experience in some settings suggest that these mechanisms have substantial advantages over command and control (103-106). TEAS have exhibited good environmental performance and eco- nomic efficiency in the U.S. Sulfur Dioxide Allowance Market intended to reduce the prevalence of acid rain (107, 108) and the Lead Phasedown Program aimed at reducing the level of lead emissions (109). Crucial vari- ables that differentiate these highly successful programs from less successful ones, such as chlorofluorocarbon production quota trading and the early EPA emission trading programs, include: (i) the level of predictability of the stocks and flows, (ii) the number of users or producers who are regulated, (iii) the heteroge- neity of the regulated users, and (iv) clearly defined and fully exchangeable permits (110).
TRAGEDY OF THE COMMONS?
TEAS, like all institutional arrangements, have notable limitations. TEA regimes tend to leave unprotected those resources not spe- cifically covered by trading rules (e.g., by- catch of noncovered fish species) (111) and to suffer when monitoring is difficult (e.g., under the Kyoto protocol, the question of whether geologically sequestered carbon will remain sequestered). Problems can also occur with the initial allocation of allowances, es- pecially when historic users, who may be called on to change their behavior most, have disproportionate power over allocation deci-
sions (76, 101). TEAS and community-based systems appear to have opposite strengths and weaknesses (101), suggesting that insti- tutions that combine aspects of both systems may work better than either approach alone. For example, the fisheries tradable permit system in New Zealand has added comanage- ment institutions to complement the market institutions (102, 112).
Voluntary approaches and those based on information disclosure have only begun to receive careful scientific attention as supple- ments to other tools (63, 77, 113-115). Suc- cess appears to depend on the existence of incentives that benefit leaders in volunteering over laggards and on the simultaneous use of other strategies, particularly ones that create incentives for compliance (77, 116-118). Difficulties of sanctioning pose major prob- lems for international agreements (119-121).
Providing infrastructure. The importance of physical and technological infrastructure is often ignored. Infrastructure, including tech- nology, determines the degree to which a commons can be exploited (e.g., water works and fishing technology), the extent to which waste can be reduced in resource use, and the degree to which resource conditions and the behavior of humans users can be effectively monitored. Indeed, the ability to choose in- stitutional arrangements depends in part on infrastructure. In the absence of barbed-wire fences, for example, enforcing private prop- erty rights on grazing lands is expensive, but with barbed wire fences, it is relatively cheap (122). Effective communication and trans- portation technologies are also of immense importance. Fishers who observe an unautho- rized boat or harvesting technology can use a radio or cellular phone to alert others to illegal actions (123). Infrastructure also af- fects the links between local commons and regional and global systems. Good roads can provide food in bad times but can also open local resources to global markets, creating demand for resources that cannot be used locally (124). Institutional infrastructure is also important, including research, social capital, and multilevel rules, to coordinate between local and larger levels of governance (48, 125, 126).
Be prepared for change. Institutions must be designed to allow for adaptation because some current understanding is likely to be wrong, the required scale of organization can shift, and biophysical and social systems change. Fixed rules are likely to fail because they place too much confidence in the current state of knowledge, whereas systems that guard against the low probability, high con- sequence possibilities and allow for change may be suboptimal in the short run but prove wiser in the long run. This is a principal lesson of adaptive management research (31, 127).
Strategies for Meeting the Requirements of Adaptive Governance
The general principles for robust governance institu- tions for localized resources (Fig. 3) are well established as a result of multiple em- pirical studies (13, 39, 128- 137). Many of these also ap- pear to be applicable to re- gional and global resources (138), although they are less well tested at those scales. Three of them seem to be par- ticularly relevant for prob- lems at larger scales. Analytic deliberation. Well-structured dialogue involving scientists, re- source users, and interest- ed publics, and informed by analysis of key infor- mation about environmental and human-environment systems, appears critical. Such analytic de- liberation (74, 139, 140) provides improved inforDevise rules that are congruent with ecological conditions Clearly define the boundaries of resources and user groups Devise accountability mechanisms for monitors Apply graduated sanctions for violations Establish/use low-cost mechanisms for conflict resolution Provide necessary information Deal with conflict Induce compliance with rules Provide physical, technical, and institutional infrastructure Encourage adaptation and change Involve interested parties in informed discussion of rules (analytic deliberation) Allocate authority to allow for adaptive governance at multiple levels from local to global (nesting) Employ mixtures of institutional types (Institutional variety)
Fig. 3. General principles for robust govemance of environmental resources (green, left and right columns) and the govemance requirements they help meet (yellow, center column) (13,158). Each principle is relevant for meeting several requirements. Arrows indicate some of the most likely connections between principles and requirements. Principles in the right column may be particularly relevant for global and regional problems. mation and the trust in it that is essential for information to be used effectively, builds social capital, and can allow for change and deal with inevitable conflicts well enough to produce consensus on governance rules. The negotiated 1994 U.S. regulation on disinfectant by-products in water that reached an interim consensus, including a decision to collect new information and reconsider the rule on that basis (74), is an excellent example of this approach.
Nesting. Institutional arrangements must be complex, redundant, and nested in many layers (32, 141, 142). Simple strategies for govering the world’s resources that rely exclusively on imposed markets or one-level, centralized com- mand and control and that eliminate apparent redundancies in the name of efficiency have been tried and have failed. Catastrophic failures often have resulted when central governments have exerted sole authority over resources. Ex- amples include the massive environmental deg- radation and impoverishment of local people in Indonesian Bomeo (95), the increased rate of loss and fragmentation of high-quality habitat that occurred after creating the Wolong Nature Reserve in China (143), and the closing of the northem cod fishery along the eastern coast of Canada partly attributable to the excessive quo- tas granted by the Canadian govemment Institutional variety. Govemance should employ mixtures of institutional types (e.g., hierarchies, markets, and community self- governance) that employ a variety of decision rules to change incentives, increase information, monitor use, and induce compliance (6,63, 117). Innovative rule evaders can have more trouble with a multiplicity of rules than with a single type of rule.
Conclusion
Is it possible to govern such critical commons as the oceans and the climate? We remain guardedly optimistic. Thirty-five years ago it seemed that the “tragedy of the commons” was inevitable everywhere not owned pri- vately or by a government. Systematic mul tidisciplinary research has, however, shown that a wide diversity of adaptive governance systems have been effective stewards of many resources. Sustained research coupled to an explicit view of national and international policies as experiments can yield the scientific knowledge necessary to design ap- propriate adaptive institutions.
Sound science is necessary for commons governance, but not sufficient. Too many strategies for governance of local commons are designed in capital cities or by donor agencies in ignorance of the state of the science and local conditions. The results are often tragic, but at least these tragedies are local. As the human footprint on the Earth enlarges (144), humanity is challenged to develop and deploy understanding of large- scale commons governance quickly enough to avoid the large-scale tragedies that will otherwise ensue.
Reflect on the Fishbanks simulation while answering the following questions:
What is the Tragedy of the Commons? How does it relate to natural resource sustainability? Use information from Hardin, G. (1968). The Tragedy of the Commons. Science, 162(3859), 1243-1248. (UL, BBL)
What do you think are the main factors that contribute to the Tragedy of the Commons when it comes to natural resources? Use information from Dietz, T., Ostrom, E., & Stern, P. C. (2003). The struggle to govern the commons. science, 302(5652), 1907-1912
How do you think businesses contribute to the Tragedy of the Commons? How do you think businesses can help avoid the Tragedy of the Commons?
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