The Tragedy That Need Not Happen

When a resource is open to everyone, such as a fishing ground, a grazing pasture, or a groundwater aquifer, each user has an incentive to take as much as possible before others do. The fish one fisher leaves in the sea may simply be caught by another. The ecologist Garrett Hardin called this the "tragedy of the commons" and concluded that shared resources must either be divided into private property or regulated by the state. The political economist Elinor Ostrom challenged that conclusion. Studying communities around the world, she found many that had managed common resources sustainably for generations without either privatization or central control. Fishing villages agreed among themselves on seasons, gear, and zones; they monitored one another, applied graduated penalties to violators, and settled disputes through local institutions. Such arrangements worked best, she observed, when the boundaries of the resource and its users were clear, when the people affected had a say in making the rules, and when outside authorities respected the community's right to organize. Ostrom did not claim that communities always succeed, and many fail, but she showed that "tragedy" is not inevitable. Her work earned her the Nobel Prize in economics in 2009, making her the first woman to receive it.