Tragedy of the commons

By the time Hardin s "Tragedy of the Commons" (ref. 12a) and Commoner s "The Closing Circle Confronting the Environmental Crisis" (ref. 12b) were published, the environmental movement had taken on a... 

Jasanoff, "American Exceptionalism Sagar, Daemmrich, and Ashiya, Tragedy of the Commoners. ... 

Sagar, A., A. Daemmrich, and M. Ashiya. The Tragedy of the Commoners Biotechnology and Its Publics. Nature Biotechnology 18 (January 2000) 2-4. 

The tragedy of the commons is what you get when everybody s individual best next move becomes the cumulative worst move for everybody (Eno, 2004, p. 62). 

Also, brief consideration will be given to Tragedies of the Commons -environmental disasters where everyone and no one are to blame the biggest of these may yet face us in the twenty-first century, in the form of global warming. 

An example of an incipient Tragedy of the Commons is the gradual failure of antibiotics to control bacterial infections. We all want access to antibiotics when we need them. Some countries keep control over their prescription, but in other countries people may buy antibiotics over the counter in any pharmacy. Also, some doctors have historically been too wilfing to prescribe antibiotics to insistent patients with non-bacterial infections. The net effect is that antibiotic-resistant strains of many common infections have developed, and there is now serious concern amongst many medical experts that it is only a matter of time before there is a pandemic of untreatable strains of bacterial infections such as gonorrhea or tuberculosis. 

Problems of pollution are also Tragedies of the Commons. For air pollution, the air is the commons . For each person (or country) the cost of discharging waste to... 

Tragedies of the Commons may also sometimes be versions of a Prisoner s Dilemma . The classic Prisoner s Dilemma [2] goes like this Two people are arrested for mnrder and are held in separate cells, unable to communicate with each other. Each knows if they both stay silent (or cooperate ), they will only receive short sentences. However, if one should offer to provide evidence against the other (or defect ), he will walk free and the other wiU be hanged. The best way forward for their mutual benefit is to cooperate - but they cannot commnnicate with each other. Does each trust the other sufficiently for both to remain silent ... 

Tragedies of the Commons are a different category of major accident from the others considered in this book. In other major accidents, the failures are mechanical failures, or system failures, or management failures, or human failures. By contrast. Tragedies of the Commons happen because of the small contributions of many, and hence they require organized and enforced collective action to prevent their occurrence. 

The Great Stink was another example of a Tragedy of the Commons. In this case the river itself was the commons . However, in this case, there was no Prisoner s Dilemma the cause was overpopulation, ignorance and lack of investment. 

Global warming is the ultimate tragedy of the commons. First, its scale is bigger we are in danger of changing our environment to such an extent that large parts of the world may become uninhabitable. Second, it is irrevocable we cannot hope to revert... 

Yaeger, P. (2010) Sea Trash, Dark Pools, and the Tragedy of the Commons , Publications of the Modern Language Association 125(3) 523-45. 

CoucleUs, H. (2000). From sustainable transportation to sustainable accessibility Can we avoid a new tragedy of the commons In D. G. JaneUe D. C. Hodge (Eds.), Information, place and cyberspace (pp. 341-356). Berhn Springer. 

Discuss the challenge to sustainability posed by the tragedy of the commons. 

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