Environmental Justice and the Tragedy of the Commons

Abstract

In "The Tragedy of the Commons," Garrett Hardin argues that those who can use a resource for free consume more of it than they would if they had to pay for it. Public resources eventually collapse because people overuse them. Hardin’s widely accepted argument seems correct as far as it goes, but he focuses on small-scale resource failures such as overgrazing, which affect people within a narrow geographic range and become evident soon after the resource is consumed. Modern environmental problems, and particularly global climate change, are more complex because they are more universal and there may be a considerable time lag between the exploitation of a cost-free resource and the consequences that result. Thus, the tragedy of the commons is a temporal phenomenon and not just a physical one.

Keywords: Environmental Justice, Tragedy of the Commons

JEL Classification: A1, D23, D52, D61, K11, K32, O13, P14, Q15, Q20, Q32, Q53, Q54, Q56, Q57