Question

According to the theory called Tragedy of the Commons, certain public resources such as oceans or national parks will inevitably be subject to over use and perhaps eventual depletion of their resources. What is meant by defining these resources as “the commons” and what sort of remedies have been proposed by economists to deal with this problem of over usage or over exploitation?

Answer 1

The tragedy of common occurs where the resource is accessible to all or non-excludable but it is rival in consumption. Overuse by the one entity reduces its availability for other ones. Hence, all people tend to overuse such resources. Such resources depletes rapidly.

Following actions have been suggested by economists:

• Assigning property rights: Assigning property rights would make such resources and overuse would be automatically stopped.
• Controlling resources: The government might take control of all resources and rationalizing the use of resource so that overuse can be detected easily. Anyone who is misusing can be debarred from its use.
• Cooperative collective action: Collective action can reduce the overuse of common resources.