The tragedy
The commons

Hardin and the tragedy of the commons

World population: are things out of control?

source: Population Reference Bureau estimates and UN (medium series) long-range projections of 1992.

It took humans roughly 1500,000 years to reach the first billion. About 130 years to reach the second billion. Maybe 70 for the third billion, 25 for the fourth, etc. Actually, we hit 6 billion some time before the turn of the millennium--growth rates have slowed some. But what to check on this graph is the difference between developed and developing regions of the world (that is, the rich and poor countries). Now it's easy to make statistics look scary. If we took this back 150,000 years on the scale, the increase would really look dramatic. The important thing is that the scale is proportional--that is, that a 100% increase in population is represented by a 100% increase in the height of the curve, no more, no less. The more we stretch out the years, the less dramatic the slope as well (just some statistical literacy fun facts).

Biologist Garrett Hardin says that the 'population problem' cannot be solved by producing more food. It requires a 'non-technical' solution. In other words, technology will not save us from overpopulation.

Hardin cited Thomas Malthus' essay on the principle of population, written in 1798, in which Malthus discussed the problem of food production and population growth. Essentially, people reproduce faster than food can be produced, and inevitably a population will run out of food if it continues to grow at a steady rate, what he called a 'geometric' rate (think about it--mom and dad have two kids, that's four, each of them has two, that's eight, each of them has two, that's 16, etc.). Hardin said that the earth has a limited stock of resources, and if the population continues to grow at such alarming rates as the above graph suggests, that these resources will quickly become depleted--especially some of the non-renewable ones we've discussed in class.

Hardin used the example of a herd of cattle in a village. Imagine a village of, say, 15 households. Each household is allowed to graze one cow on the communal pasture, which produces on average enough grass over the course of the year to support 15 cattle. Now imagine that one household head decides to put an extra cow on the pasture. Because they move around, they're hard to count, and it might not be readily apparent there's an extra cow on the pasture. Now the pasture will of course support 16, but at a lesser weight for each. So the other 14 households see a slight decline in the income from the sale of their cattle, while the 15th has almost doubled his income, by breaking the one-cow rule. He would be called a 'free-rider.' You're probably familiar with the free rider concept from small groups--ever been in one where one or more members does nothing, gets his/her name on the paper and the same grade as those who did all the work? Same concept. For Hardin, the free riders are those societies with high fertility rates and high population growth rates. The earth's resources are finite, and the tragedy of the commons occurs when everyone's property 'becomes no one's property.' In other words, those who reproduce at higher rates are able to gain more resources for themselves, and we all suffer if the earth can't sustain that level of resources use.

Essentially, Hardin is saying that the rational economic decision for the individual--in this case increasing his herd--leads to irrational outcomes for the social group. Take the example of the Prisoners' Dilemma (PD). In the

What did Hardin suggest? Well, Malthus talked of 'moral restraint' and 'celibacy.' Have less kids. Hardin concludes that 'the freedom to breed is intolerable.' It goes for waste as well. Too many people produce too much waste, which cannot be absorbed by the earth's ecosystems, leading to pollution. In the end the wealthy countries will have to provide assistance to the poorer countries with higher fertility rates. The latter are free riders, taking from the global commons resources.

There have been a variety of methods tried to reduce population. The most infamous forced sterilization initiatives were probably in India. However, even the state of Oregon is not without its dark past. China has attempted to limit families to one child, although this policy is being liberalized somewhat (families with a female are being allowed to 'try again'). Others have tried offering incentives for smaller family size. However . . . put yourselves in the shoes of a family in an agrarian society, where growing one's own food is the means of survival, and there are few machines to help. Children become the wealth of the household--a valuable source of labor, as well as the source of social security for elders, since poor countries don't have the resources to fund social security programs (they are not 'welfare states'). Hardin's solution is to increase privatization of property and resources, so that they are not available at a price that rewards free riders. In other words, punish households for having large families and insufficient money to provide for their resource needs.

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What's the problem?

The prisoners' dilemma is often used to characterize the tragedy of the commons. In the prisoners' dilemma, two people are accused of a crime. They are interrogated separately. They can choose either to confess, rat on the other prisoner, or say nothing. Following are the sentences they would receive:

Hardin says that the rational thing to do in the above example is for the prisoner to rat on the other. If he/she does so, the prison term is the shortest. However, if each rats on the other one, they both end up with long prison sentences. The rational behavior for the individual, says Hardin, leads to an irrational outcome for the group. Just like adding one cow to the pasture. Hence the tragedy.

In terms of social problems, who is he blaming (who is 'causally responsible')?
Who is politically responsible? Hardin seems to be blaming certain groups for 'free riding' on the world's resources.
What should be done? Hardin has his ideas . . . Essentially he argues for mutually agreed upon coercion. According to Hardin, the problem lies with those countries with high fertility rates, usually the poorest countries, and often Moslem countries. He says one way to address the problem would be to privatize the commons. If

But let's consider another factor: resource consumption. Who uses resources? Here's one look:

• Footprint: how many hectares are needed to support current consumption patterns (in other words, it's taking resource consumption and representing it as an equivalent amount of land)
• Per capita footprint: how many hectares per person are needed
• Hectare: equals about 2.5 acres

In other words, the average American citizen uses 20 times the resources of the average person from Bangladesh. Some more evidence:

• 25% of world's energy comes from coal, 41% from petroleum; 90% of global commercial energy comes from fossil fuels
• In the 1990s, world CO2 emissions increased 7.5% (they're going up, not down)
• U.S. carbon emissions increased 13% in the 1990s (it had pledged a 7% decrease by 2010 as a signatory of the Kyoto Protocols under the Clinton Administration, but President Bush has pulled out of that treaty)
• In 1997, the U.S. emitted 1/5 of greenhouse gases contributed to the atmosphere by human activity. The three major greenhouse gases are CO2, methane and nitrous oxide.
• World CO2 emissions are increasing (Largest increase: Thailand, South Korea, Taiwan--these are development success stories … models of how countries are supposed to grow their economies. What does this suggest?)U.S. auto fuel efficiency hasn't improved since the 1980s (mainly because of the growth in SUV, Sport Utility Vehicle, sales)

The U.S. and Western Europe (along with Japan, Russia and a few other countries) are using the lion's share of the world's resources. In effect, consumption in the 'West' has driven the globalization of the economy--other countries are producing the goods Americans and Europeans consume. Yes, China and India are increasing their consumption rates, but notice from the above table that China is still consuming at about 1/10 the rate of the U.S.

So . . . . . who are the free riders?? The implication here is that Hardin might have gotten it wrong. What counts may not be so much total population growth, but per capita resource consumption. It isn't just poor countries with high fertility rates, but rich countries with high consumption rates.

The commons and common property

That addresses the 'tragedy' part of the equation. Now for the 'commons' part. A 'commons' is something that is shared by many people. The air, for instance. It's hard to claim ownerhip over it. Or water. Or the world's resources, in a sense. If we privatized the world's resources, then we would have better control over who could use them. Essentially, poor people would likely have worse access if things like water were always private commodities instead of basic human rights and entitlements. In many cases, that is what is happening.

There are different ways to view property. We have mostly here in the states a private property model. You have title to a parcel of land, a car, etc. We often think this implies exclusive ownership (which is what the property rights movement would like to believe has always been the case), but in fact in many ways our use of private property has restrictions. At the other end is state-owned property. In the U.S. we have lots of public lands (the Bureau of Land Management, National Parks, Forest Service), managed by federal agencies. It supposedly belongs to the taxpayers, but in practice there are many competing users for these resources. In between is communal ownership. African cultures provide a good example of communal ownership. Village lands may be claimed by individual families, but they're not 'owned' in the sense that they can be bought or sold. They are there for people's use, and to pass on to future generations. As the saying goes, land is inherited from our ancestors, and borrowed from our children. The Native Americans had similar notions of property--they used it, but did not feel they owned it and had the right to do whatever they wanted with it. White settlers with treaties and a different notion of property often took advantage of the Native Americans to steal their lands from them. The Indians, for their part, were willing to share the resources on the land, but had no history of private ownership and what that might entail. So we have sort of a continuum:

State ownership . . . . private ownership . . . communal ownership

At the end of the continuum is 'open access.' Open access is what Hardin was referring to. An example might be an abandoned lot. With private property, the property owner has rights, and others have a duty to respect those rights. With open access, everyone may have rights, but no one has a duty to respect them. Thus no one has rights, only privileges, because they can't keep others from using the property. But when people have rights, they usually set up some kind of a system to regulate use. Irrigation systems all over the world run this way, to ensure that people living downstream get water, and those upstream aren't free riding on the system. Fisheries also have come up with rules to manage the resources, becuase private property doesn't work very well for commercial or subsistence fishing.

Part of Hardin's argument was based on a misunderstanding of property rights systems. Common property systems have functioning sets of rules governing use. What often happens, though, is that different property rights systems, or cash economies, can influence traditional systems. A market economy that takes a forest and places market value on its goods, for instance, may be overcut if villagers have a need for income, and there are no rules regulating use of the resource to generate income. We've talked in here about how the industrial agricultural model was exported to many parts of the world as a successful experiment. One of the cornerstones of that model is individual property rights, allowing farmers to go to the bank and borrow money to pay for the inputs they needed (tractor, seed, fertilizer, other chemicals, equipment, etc.). That tends to disrupt traditional property rights systems. In other words, in many cases privatization has allowed for free riding, not been a solution to a free riding problem. Private industry has been able to pollute with little accountability. If members of a community had a say in how a river should be managed and what effluents could be dumped into it, for instance (more of a commn property model), pollution might be less of a problem.

But if you agree with Hardin, private property may be a partial solution anyway, because the problem is caused by poor people overusing resources. If we restrict their use by restricting access and placing a price tag on them, it becomes harder for the poor to 'free ride,' because it costs them money to use the resources. They don't bear the brunt of the cost of having too many children, says Hardin, but instead benefit when resources are 'free.' We also need to address, he said, the 'intolerable freedom to breed.' However, as the article by Ciriacy-Wantrup and Bishop notes, common property resources are rarely unclaimed. They don't meet Hardin's standard that 'everybody's property is nobody's property.' For instance, community forests in the Swiss Alps are often communally owned and managed. Farmland may be private, but if people need wood for construction, fuel, etc., they go through the community. The resource users make their own rules and govern themselves (versus, for instance, the Forest Service making rules and managing the forest).

Let's go back to the prisoners' dilemma. What if those prisoners had been allowed to talk to each other before being interrogated? Might the outcome have been different? Common property resources allow for cooperation and communication. If the person who adds a cow to the pasture knows that his/her fellow villagers might levy sanctions, there may be less of a likelihood of free riding.

So there are two issues here. One is the 'tragedy,' the second is the 'commons.' Understand what Hardin says about them, what his critics have to say in response, and get yourself an opinion (based on your reading and understanding of the issue, which you should be able to support).