Global Governance: The Global Commons

The global commons are areas and resources that lie beyond the jurisdiction of any single state and are shared by all humanity. Governing these commons represents one of the greatest challenges of global governance — how do you manage shared resources when no single authority has control?

Key Definition: The global commons are areas and resources that are not owned by any nation-state and are available for use by all. They include the oceans (beyond national jurisdiction), the atmosphere, Antarctica, and outer space.

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The Tragedy of the Commons

The concept of the "tragedy of the commons" was popularised by ecologist Garrett Hardin (1968) in his influential essay in Science. Hardin argued that shared resources are inevitably overexploited because each individual user has an incentive to maximise their own use, even though this degrades the resource for everyone.

Hardin's Logic

graph TD
    A[Shared resource available to all] --> B[Each user maximises individual use]
    B --> C[Total use exceeds sustainable capacity]
    C --> D[Resource degraded or destroyed]
    D --> E[All users worse off]
    B --> F[No individual has incentive to restrain use]
    F --> C