"The Tragedy of the Commons"

Journal article

By: Garrett James Hardin

Date: December 3, 1968

Source: Hardin, Garrett James. "The Tragedy of the Commons." Science 162 (December 3, 1968): 1243-1248.

About the Author: American ecologist and microbiologist Dr. Garrett James Hardin (1915–2003) received his Bachelor of Science degree in zoology at the University of Chicago in 1936, and his Doctor of Philosophy degree in microbiology at Stanford University (California) in 1941. At the time The Tragedy of the Commons article was written, Hardin was a professor of human ecology at the University of California, Santa Barbara. This essay, for which he is well known in the scientific community, was based on a presidential address presented on June 25, 1968, before the meeting of the Pacific Division of the American Association for the Advancement of Science at Utah State University. Hardin published over 350 articles and twenty-seven books, including "The Immigration Dilemma: Avoiding the Tragedy of the Commons" (1995), "Stalking the Wild Taboo" (1996), and "The Ostrich Factor: Our Population Myopia" (1999). He was awarded the 1997 Constantine Panunzio Distinguished Emeriti Award by the University of California system. Hardin was also a founding member of Planned Parenthood and a strong advocate of population control.

INTRODUCTION

Hardin's paper, entitled "The Tragedy of the Commons: The Population Problem has no Technical Solution; It Requires a Fundamental Extension in Morality," was published in Science magazine in December 1968. The essay is broadly identified throughout the scientific community as a fundamental statement concerning such diverse subjects as ecology, economics, environmental science, conservation, political science, and population theory.

In his essay, Hardin introduced a hypothetical Commons, or open pasture, for all individuals to use. Animals were grazed by each individual on this common ground. Motivated by their own personal aspirations, each individual added to his flock in order to increase personal wealth. Each additional animal degraded the Commons by a small amount compared to the individual's gain in wealth. However, when all individuals comprising the group added animals to their flocks in order to gain wealth, the Commons, according to Hardin, would eventually be destroyed, thus the concept of "the tragedy of the commons." Hardin reasoned that, if left unchecked, the uncontrolled addition of animals—by well-intentioned though self-interested individuals—to a finite space would ultimately destroy the Commons.

PRIMARY SOURCE

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SIGNIFICANCE

The central thesis with regard to Hardin's essay was to describe to readers a simple thought experiment. Included within it, Hardin showed the terrible consequences from promoting incorrect moral theories with respect to permitting a growing population to steadily increase the exploitation of its ecosystem. Hardin claimed that Western moral thinking was flawed and would eventually lead to the downfall of its society in the form of destruction of its ecosystems such as waters, lands, animals, and natural resources.

Hardin believed that a priori ethics—that is, beliefs based on principles centered only on individual entities (such as humans, families, organizations, cities, and countries) and a system of equal justice for all such entities—always led to excess material consumption and unregulated population growth. Such faulty ethics, which are currently practiced in Western society, would inevitability cause the breakdown of the ecosystems that supported the entire society.

Alternatively, Hardin proposed replacing the a priori ethics system with the system-sensitive ethics system in order to prevent ecological disaster. Such an ethics system, according to Hardin, promoted the ability to preserve the ecosystem through promoting the health of the environment over the behavior of users of that environment. Hardin believed that any ethics or moral belief system that did not place success of the environment above the success of the individual would eventually end in tragedy for the environment and all individuals using that environment.

Hardin demonstrated within his essay how generally accepted and rational behavior within individuals would eventually lead to the downfall of the group if the system was centered around self-interested individual behavior. Hardin stated that individuals have been taught over generations that equal justice and universal human rights are essential rights for all people, along with the essential rights for such benefits as education, employment, food, home, safety, and health. Concurrently, individuals also believed that the environment must be protected. However, since human rights were deemed essential by individuals and viewed as more important than environmental protection, in order to provide these human rights to more and more people in the United States, the infrastructure of cities and towns has been constantly expanding. Because of this expansion, there has been a continual need to produce more drinking water, educational facilities, consumer goods, food, health care, sanitation, and other such perceived necessities. As human needs expand, the need for more luxury goods and services also add to the expansion.

Hardin concluded that the unending expansion of human rights is only possible in a world with infinite resources because only in this scenario is there never a conflict between individual, environmental, and societal needs. However, on a closed and finite environment, such as that on Earth, conflict of these three needs will result as constant human expansion that eventually destroys the finite environment of the Earth.

Hardin's essay and his significant ideas continue to serve as a useful basis for understanding how the human race, not as a group, but as individuals, has degraded the environment. Hardin also stated within his essay his views on how to reverse that degradation. Although Hardin uses a simple analogy of a common pasture land used by all individuals of a group, he immediately recognized that such a thought experiment could be widely applied to many environmental problems that existed at the time he wrote the article. Such environmental disasters—which are as prevalent in the early years of the twenty-first century as they were when Hardin wrote his essay—are just waiting to happen, according to Hardin. Such environmental disasters include acid rain; deforestation; desertification; emissions of greenhouse gases; excessive fishing of the oceans; global climate changes, high rates of species extinction; ocean dumping of wastes; overgrazing on public lands; and pollution of air, water, and other resources.

Hardin identified a major problem in the world: Self-interested individual behavior that maximizes personal short-term gain will—even though rational on the surface—if left uncontrolled (without the implementation of an effective plan of resource management) will result in long-term harm or even destruction to the environment, the group, and the individual.

Due in great measure to Hardin's essay, researchers have begun to compare public goods and common goods (or common-pool resources, CPRs). A public good is anything that is not consumed (so available to everyone), such as a weather forecast provided by a government to farmers. A CPR is anything that is consumed (which is only available to those who consume it), such as land for farming and water for irrigation. Thus, in response to the need to control individual behavior with respect to these common goods, managing bodies (such as governments) have begun to control such resources through the use of laws and regulations for the benefit of the group, but not necessarily for the benefit of each individual within the group.

Although a long time in coming, governments have begun to manage finite environments in order to maintain a healthy ecosystem. As a result, the individual is not allowed to infinitely expand his enterprise in order to maximize profits. As Hardin argued, governments use various forms of pressure to bring about cooperation within individuals. In other words, governments control the use of resources through laws, regulations, and other forms of principles. Although such a system does not assure the avoidance of ecological disasters, when managed properly, such measures help to reduce the possibility of such disasters.

The idea of the supreme importance of the individual is difficult to stop, but Hardin has helped to change thinking with respect to what is best for the overall health of life on Earth: that of a healthy environment over the behavior of the individual. His writings, especially his essay on the "Tragedy of the Commons," are seen as important steps to the fledgling field of ecological economics, a discipline that combines the study of ecology with the study of economics.

FURTHER RESOURCES

Periodicals

Smil, Vaclav. "Garrett James Hardin (Dallas 1915–Santa Barbara 2003)." American Scientist, 92, no. 3 (January-February 2004): 8. Available at American Scientist Online, 〈http://www.americanscientist.org/template/AssetDetail/assetid/29864/page/1;jsessionid=aaaco0tQIRFs3J〉 (accessed March 10, 2006).

Web sites

Elliott, Herschel. "An Abstract of 'A General Statement of Hardin's Tragedy of the Commons.'" Dieoff.org, February 26, 1997. 〈http://dieoff.org/page121.htm〉 (accessed March 10, 2006).

The Garrett Hardin Society. 〈http://www.garretthardinsociety.org〉 (accessed March 10, 2006).

Hardin, Garrett. "Ethical Implications of Carrying Capacity." Dieoff.org, 1977. 〈http://dieoff.org/page96.htm〉 (accessed March 10, 2006).

―――――. "Living Within Limits and Limits on Living: Garrett Hardin on Ecology, Economy, and Ethics." Interview with Frank Meile. Stalking the Wild Taboo. (Originally published in Skeptic 4, no. 2 (1996): 42-46. 〈http://www.lrainc.com/swtaboo/stalkers/fm_hardn.html〉 (accessed March 10, 2006).

―――――. "The Tragedy of the Commons." The Library of Economics and Liberty: The Concise Encyclopedia of Economics. 〈http://www.econlib.org/library/Enc/TragedyoftheCommons.html〉 (accessed March 10, 2006).

Partridge, Ernest. "Garrett Hardin, 1915–2003—A Tribute: The Renowned Biologist and Author of 'Tragedy of the Commons' is Dead at 88." The Online Gadfly. 〈http://gadfly.igc.org/eds/envt/hardin.htm〉 (accessed March 10, 2006).