Question

Explain how the concept of Shifting Baselines and Tragedy of the Commons applies to the overfishing of the world's oceans. In other words, how might each of these concepts contribute to our inability to sustainably harvest fish?

Answer 1

Shifting baseline is a concept of change on how a system is measured as compared to the previous reference points or the baselines. The change is measured on terms of significant changes from an earlier state of system. This is a phenomenon where expectation is lowered and was coined by Daniel Pauly. The phenomenon states that with each generation there is a decrease in the marine environment and has poorer natural world and that current generation considers it as normal as they have no idea of the past ocean or natural environment. The tragedy of the common is a condition where individuals try to get the best benefit from a particular resource and hence they don’t care for the future generation. In this situation a individual accts and used the shared resource system independently as per their convenience and leads to depletion of the resource.

Both of the concept applies to overfishing of the ocean fishes and hence leads to inability to fish without proper sustainment. In the first case, the current generation gets access to lower number of fishes which is normal for them as they have not seen the population that previously existed. There is a shifting baseline in terms of quantity of fishes and the decreasing amount is normal for the current population. The concept of tragedy of the common is related and an example of the overfishing of the world’s ocean as the individuals are undergoing overfishing as per their convenience and seeking maximum benefit. The concept of seeking maximum benefit in terms of finance causes over fishing.