Almost five decades back, Ecologist Garrett Hardin, published an article in December 1968 in a peer reviewed journal, Science and coined the challenging phrase “Tragedy of the Commons”- where he mentioned and explained that people who think only of their own self-interest eventually results in depletion of shared resources.
To elaborate it further, he used an example of overgrazing of pastures on an unregulated land, taken from the early English economist William Forster Lloyd.
Say, if there are bunch of ranchers who share a pasture openly. Each rancher may think of expanding the number of sheep in his flock (for an Individual gain), but since they all do it, they can exceed the carrying capacity of the land, leading inevitably to ruin wherein the cost is shared by all.
And to quote Ecologist Hardin here as he states eloquently: Therein lies 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 toward which all men rush, each pursuing their own best interests in a society that believes in the freedom of the commons.
To further put it in simple terms, tragedy is when each individual following their own interest takes up more than is sustainable and that leads to overexploitation and depletion of resources. And the commons refer to all the shared resources that are scarce, rivalrous and non-excludable.
We can see so many examples from our present lives that due to our self interest we have degraded the environment, resources to a point wherein we have to talk and discuss rigorously about the sustainable development before these resources are extinct. We need to preserve what we have for our future generations as well. To refer to some of the tragedy of commons from our present lives are:
It is clear from all the examples mentioned above that humans have only cared about the growth in general, individual interests and their own capacity to grow resulting into the problems that we are facing at large today.
So where lies the Solution?
Hardin had come up with the certain solutions, which can be summed up as follows:
- Collective Responsibility: wherein individuals were suggested to come together and decide collectively on the rate of consumption but at very outset of its nature this faced lot of criticism as it involved significant amount of trust on others especially in big cities.
- Privatisation which failed miserably because what if the private interests were not in sync with the public interest.
- Government Regulations
All these suggestions didn’t bring the anticipated change and three decades that followed, Elinor Ostrom and her colleagues came up with another phrase,Governing of Commons.
She was the first and only woman to win the Nobel Prize in Economics in 2009 for her ground-breaking research on the ways that people organize themselves to manage resources. To put it in short, she meant that if the individuals instead of self-interest start to self-govern themselves and there is an awareness all-around, then we might see a change in shift of the present scenario.
We all need to understand the larger perspective of it and have a strong affirmation that all that is good for all of us is good for the self. To make this clearer,Elinor Ostrom had come up with eight design principles in support of her theory and they all speak volumes about the governance of commons and self-governance at large.
We at Sushant University, one of the best private universities in North India don’t believe in just the academic development of our students but also try to inculcate this feeling of ownership among them, wherein they understand the sustainability is not in the books or theories but is in their collective action towards the society.To contribute our bit, to minimize these tragedies of Commons, to produce more smart-engineers,We, at Sushant University, have introduced the specialization course in Smart Cities for B.Tech(Civil Engg)keeping in mind the smart governance and sustainable management.
Let us all be more sensitive to our surroundings, believe in more of Self Governance and self-regulation as only here lies the key to sustainability.
Professor Inderjeet Kaur
Assistant Professor
Deptt of Civil Engineering, SET
Sushant University
