What is the 'Tragedy of the Commons?'

        The Tragedy of the Commons refers to situations where a resource is available to all without societal restrictions on who is able to use or interact with said resource. Each individual is incentivized, in one way or another, to behave in a way which diminishes or damages the resource for the rest of the individuals. The result of this is that each participating party becomes unconcerned with the survival of the resource and is instead concerned with getting as much out of the resource for themselves before it is gone or destroyed. 

The Tragedy of the Commons can look different depending on the scope of the situation. On the local level, it may look like a fishing pond where anyone in the community can fish. However, there are no restrictions on how many fish can be caught and the fish are the only source of food for everyone in the community. In this situation, each community member is incentivized to catch as many fish as possible to ensure they have enough food for the year. Eventually, all the fish will be caught, leaving no fish in the pond to reproduce and replace the caught fish. Come next year, the only source of food for the community is now barren and no one has food. Ultimately, the lack of restrictions to ensure a healthy environment caused the resource to be used beyond its capacity and destroyed. 

Scaling to the global level, the main resources referenced with The Tragedy of the Commons are water and biodiversity. Often times nations share access to fresh water, such as the Nile River, which is used by 11 African nations as a source of fresh water (Richard, Kyle). Additionally, harming the biodiversity of one nation will impact the nations around it, and depending on the size and resources of the nation could impact the world as a whole, such as the deforesting of the Amazon Rainforest in Brazil. For these reasons, much attention is paid to ensuring the survivability of fresh water sources and the natural environment. However, because nations often act with their own self-interest in mind as a nation’s survival is their bottom line, the international community is frequently faced with problems involving protecting access to water and protecting the environment. 

        One example of national self-interest causing an issue for the international community in this regard is the various Nile River water sharing agreements. As previously stated, the Nile River provides fresh water to 11 African countries. However, Ethiopia is currently pondering a plan to build a hydroelectric dam in an area of the Nile River that flows through their borders. While this dam would more than double the electricity output of Ethiopia, bringing tens of thousands of their citizens a critical resource in modern times, it would hamper access to fresh water for many of the nations downstream from Ethiopia, such as Sudan and Egypt. This conflict has caused an issue in the international community, as Egypt and Sudan fight for access to fresh water, Ethiopia seeks new ways of producing electricity, and much of the rest of the international community seeks to ensure the protection of the natural environment and prevent a growth in political hostility and instability. (Richard, Kyle)

        While China and India have a greater population, neither have shown much if any interest in ensuring the protection of the environment. Therefore, it is the responsibility of the United States to be the leader in this field as the United States has the population, money, and influence to make significant progress. To this point, the United States has joined many international treatises relating to environmental protection and regulation, including the Kyoto Protocols and the Paris Climate Accords. While the domestic politics of the country are somewhat split on environmental policy, the foreign policy of the United States overall for the last several decades has clearly been to make strides on protecting and improving the environment. Following the sanctions placed on Russia since the outbreak of the Russo-Ukraine war, America’s position as an energy exporter has grown. The United States has helped filled the European energy void left by eliminating Russian gas by exporting more natural gas and oil to nations such as the UK. While this solves an issue in the short-term, it is important to not allow the economic gain of becoming a large energy exporter distract from the long-term priority of implementing greener alternatives. 

        By working with our closest allies and important trading partners, we are able to ensure that those under the influence of America carry out the crucial environmental practices that ensure not just environmental stability but political stability. However, one area America has had trouble, which will continue to be a challenge, is in transitioning poorer nations to cleaner energy sources and convincing them to adopt American practices and priorities regarding the environment.     

        In a nation where the energy to heat your home is billed to you at the end of the month and it is never a concern if there will be enough natural gas to heat the apartment, the safety and protection of the environment is easier to concern oneself with. In a nation where much of the population gets their water from a well and the home is heated with wood, the protection of the environment falls by the wayside as the burden of survival takes precedent. In other words, when a person has enough fish to feed themselves, they are open to the concern of ensuring the stability of the fishing pond for next year. When a person does not have enough fish to feed themselves for the year, they cannot be concerned about the pond being viable next year because they will not be here to be affected by it if they do not catch more fish. Once each person has enough fish to feed themselves, they no longer have to focus on the short-term issue of individual survival via diminishing or harming the resource and can instead focus on the long-term issue of collective survival via protecting the resource. 

        By economically elevating the poorest countries of the world, the United States will simultaneously reduce the reliance on the practices most harmful to the environment, such as coal and wood burning. Additionally, by elevating these nations economically, infrastructure will improve and make greener alternatives more realistic and viable. It is important to remember that the wealthiest nations did not go from burning wood and coal one month to driving electric cars and using natural gas the next. There were centuries of infrastructure growth, improvements, and implementation that took place as these innovations were developed. While modern innovation will certainly decrease the time needed to make the necessary improvements and changes, it will still take a good amount of time to elevate the poorest nations to the point of stability necessary to implement changes.

        The United States has demonstrated to the global community multiple times that it is a leader in global environmental policy. Early in the environmental movement, much attention was given to creating international agreements to ensure environmental regulation and protection. While these agreements remain important, the challenges of the future entail a different approach. Shifting from diplomatic actions and agreements between likeminded and economically similar nations to a strategy of economically elevating nations reliant on the most harmful environmental practices is vital to ensuring the nations of the world as a whole are jointly making strides to protect the environment. By providing the infrastructure and improvements necessary to pull these nations out of poverty, the individual incentive to survive at the cost of the collective will be more easily overseen in favor of protecting the commons as a means of ensuring survival for all. 

References

Richard, Kyle Paisley. “Why the 11 Countries That Rely on the Nile Need to Reach a River Deal Soon.” The Conversation, 13 Sept. 2022, https://theconversation.com/why-the-11-countries-that-rely-on-the-nile-need-to-reach-a-river-deal-soon-75868.