IB Environmental systems and societies 6.3G Tragedy of the Commons in Action Notes

The Atmosphere Is a Global Commons No One Owns and Everyone Can Spoil

1. The Earth's atmosphere is a global commons, shared by every nation and every living thing.
2. The ecologist Garrett Hardin described the tragedy of the commons in a famous 1968 essay.
3. His idea is that a shared resource with no owner tends to be overused, because each user gains the full benefit of taking more while the harm is spread across everyone.
4. When one nation burns fossil fuels, it keeps the economic benefit, but the climate costs are shared by the whole planet.
5. When a nation invests in renewable energy, carbon capture or ecosystem restoration, it pays the full cost, but all nations share the benefit of lower global emissions.
6. Climate change is therefore a classic tragedy of the commons.

Why the Tragedy Is So Hard to Escape: Costs Are Local, Benefits Are Global

1. Nations are driven by national interests such as growth, jobs and political stability, not by the stability of the shared atmosphere.
2. Short-term gains from fossil fuels can outweigh long-term climate harm, which creates an incentive to keep burning them.
3. The benefits of mitigation are diffuse and global, while the costs are local and immediate.
4. A country can rely on the effort of others while doing little itself, which is the free-rider problem.
5. Governments react to near-term, visible threats, but climate change delivers delayed and cumulative impacts, so the sense of urgency is weak.
6. Because no single government controls the atmosphere, this is a collective-action problem rather than a national one.

Ostrom Showed the Tragedy Is Not Inevitable