A mythical tragedy
thirty-one years ago, Science magazine published the famous article on the tragedy of the commons by Garrett Hardin. The commons were defined as an expanse of land under collective or open use. Hardin's article argued that the commons necessarily collapse because of the inherent selfishness of people over shared resources. The example of an open pasture illustrates the thesis: every individual will add extra animals to their herd to maximise their benefits from the common pasture, so the pasture will end up being ruined. Hardin's article, which has become the reference point for subsequent discussions on the issue, argues that the commons and its inextricable tragedy have no technical solution, except privatisation or public-based coercion. Hardin's article was part of a long tradition of worrying about population growth. He even suggested anti-liberal policies against large families as a means of escaping the tragedy.
Hardin's argument works in the case of some commons, like air pollution, and is being increasing supported as a universal phenomenon. However, on the basis of field research that I conducted in 1998 (three decades after Hardin's article), the Tragedy of the Commons thesis can be challenged on two accounts. Firstly, many commons are relevant in several issues such as maintaining biodiversity, access to resources, food security and local development. Secondly, the tragedy of commons is a product of modern developmental discourses, based on individual and private enterprises and intensified by strong economic globalisation at the end of the 20th century. At the root of the tragedy lies not the inherent selfishness of people, but the imposition of practices, projects and discourses alien to the local ecological practices and cultural meanings.
Lessons from Amazonia The indigenous peoples of Pastaza Province in Western Amazonia have been traditionally involved in collective management, conservation and spread of biodiversity in their common ecosystems. They have not only conserved biodiversity, but also constructed it through ecological practices like plantation of many different fruit trees in abandoned family farms. However, colonisation of some communities have disrupted the commons. Agricultural and forest biodiversity, food security and cultural identity are now threatened in these communities. Private ownership, ecological degradation and resource exhaustion will follow.
The consequence of the colonisation processes became evident when we compared the family farms of the Amazon Quichua people