Question

Solving the problem of extinction of animals using the theory of Garrett Hardin or the theory of Paul Erlich. (Max. 200 words)

Answer 1

Q) Garret Hardin is well-known for his theory and coining the term 'Tragedy of the Commons'. In this economic context, the term 'commons' refer to any shared, unregulated resources such as the environment, the atmosphere, oceans, population of fishes, population of animals etc. These common resources include resources which are scarce, rival, and non-excudable. However, such common resources have always been subjected to collapse because of overuse, such as over-fishing, over-hunting, over-cutting of forests etc. The tragedy of the commmons is related to environmental issues such as sustainability. Common's are un-owned and commonly owned resources which are 'free' and self-interested, rational individuals are seeking to maximize their individual profits. Such individuals will exploit the commons, like polluting the air, over-exploiting forests, killing animals, etc. As Hardin explained, it lies in each individual's self-interest to maximize the use of the commons for his personal gains, at the expense of the community. Each individual extracts all of the benefit from hunting/killing one more animal, yet the costs of extinction of animals are distributed amongst all the environment/economy/society. So, without the control on the access of the concerned resoucer, the tragedy of commons is unavoidable as demand grows. Hardin gave two solutions to this problem, a) Mutual coercion/mutually agreed upon regulations with the govt which need to be adopted by everybody in order to avoid the fate of all open-access commons. Its more like paying taxes which are obviously not desirable, but its something mutually agreed on. So, it would mean regulating ecologies, building and preserving national parks, wild-life sanctuaries, regulating actions in forests and natural habitats of animals which would be mutually agreed on by the government as well the people. Another approach that Hardin had was b) greater dependancy on property rights. Hardin said that all those areas where there are well-defined, secure property rights, the tragedy of the commons is much lesser as each of the private owners have ample incentive to act as a steward and protect the underlying resource, preventing its over use. Hardin too felt that it would be quite difficult to define and defend property rights, especially when it comes to ecological resources, as such.However the potential benefits of ecological sustainability are large. So, just like Audubon Societies had created private reserves to protect birds from hunters who killed them for feathers for women's hats , it is the institution of property rights and needs to be adopted in case of a wider array of ecological resources to succeed in areas where the mutual coercion approach failed. So, animals and their habits can be divided into patches of personal properties and owners of sanctuaries, and national parks will have enough incentive to protect them.