The Challenge of Crafting Rules to Change Open-Access Resources into Managed Resources

Garrett Hardin’s (1968) “tragedy of the commons” is one of the most cited articles in environment science and is assigned repeatedly to undergraduate students in Environmental Science curricula. Whenever scholars and policy discuss the problems of overuse and degradation of natural resources—whether they be fisheries, forests, irrigation systems, or the atmosphere—Hardin’s article is apt to be relied upon heavily. Why has this almost metaphoric article captured so much attention? First of all, Hardin presents an extraordinarily clear and vivid picture of a pasture “open to all.” Second, his assumptions about the motivation of resource harvesters are consistent with the assumptions about market participants that have proved powerful in deriving propositions regarding highly competitive markets. Viewing resource users as trapped in a tragedy of their own making is consistent with many textbooks on resource economics and the predictions derived from noncooperative game theory for finitely repeated dilemmas (E. Ostrom, Gardner, and Walker 1994). External authorities are presumably needed to impose rules and regulations on local users since they will not do this themselves. The “scientific management of natural resources” that is frequently taught to future regulators of natural resources presents fisheries, forests, and water resources as relatively homogeneous units that are closely interrelated across a vast domain.