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Abstract:
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"Global commons include such diverse things as space, climate, biodiversity, high sea marine fisheries, eco-systems and their services to human beings. They are all open access resources and are vulnerable to what Garret Hardin called 'the tragedy of the commons'. This is evident from increasing incidence and severity of such climatic aberrations as global warming, acid rain, depletion of ozone layer, droughts, floods, cyclones, and hurricanes. All these climatic aberrations are caused mainly by human activity and partly by natural processes. But they all adversely impact on human wellbeing and the quality of our environment. But times of crises are also times of opportunity. There is now growing awareness of the need for adoption of active global policies to create more sustainable economic structures and processes to mitigate the adverse impacts of climatic aberrations on human wellbeing and avert the 'tragedy of the global commons'. Consequently, several catch phrases such as green accounting, green gross domestic product, a global Green New Deal, low carbon economy and a green energy revolution have come into vogue and now find their way into governance and management of global commons. This paper attempts to characterise the nature of the problem of global commons, identify its root causes, assesses the impacts of the tragedy and propose a strategy for managing the global commons so as to minimise the adverse impacts of the tragedy. The strategy proposed comprises a mixture of market-based instruments and command and control measures. The paper is largely based on a review of the relevant literature available on the subject and partly on the empirical work done by the author over the last three decades or so."
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