Lesson 2: The Tragedy of the Commons

Lesson Overview

This lesson is designed to look at human behavior from an environmental perspective, with the focus primarily being on fisheries and the key role they play worldwide as a source of food, especially for low-income individuals. An understanding of this concept helps explain why people act as they do, which may not always be in the best interest of societal needs. The lesson concludes by looking at the economic principles of private property, property rights and incentives being used to promote higher long-term standards of living.   

Key Terms & Concepts

Commons	Incentives	Fishing Quotas: IFQ, ITQ, IVQ
Property Rights	Tragedy of the Commons

Objectives

Students will be able to:

• Understand the meaning of ‘commons’
• Illustrate the how a ‘commons’ can be over utilized
• Discuss strategies to preserve a ‘commons’
• Illustrate the role of ‘property rights’ in relation to preservation of a ‘commons’
• Discuss the role of incentives in relation to a ‘commons’
• Identify a variety of ‘commons’ we encounter in our lives.

Time Required

1 Class Period (50 minutes)

Materials

• Slides for Lesson 2
• Small table, preferably covered in inexpensive tablecloth
• 1 small box of goldfish crackers
• Small roll of either blue painter’s tape or masking tape
• 20 items (all the same) that might be valuable to students (small candy bars, $1 bills or quarters, a pass to waive turning in a homework assignment…)

Lesson 2 Key Ideas

1. Resources are scarce.
2. Some resources are owned privately, while others are owned in common.
3. People behave differently when they own a resource privately than when they own it communally.
4. To preserve a communal resource, ways must be developed and implemented that encourage resource preservation.
5. Tradeoffs occur when ways are developed to encourage resource preservation.
6. There will be costs incurred related to the resource preservation methods used.
7. Resource preservation leads to higher standards of living, including better health and improvement in longevity.
8. When resources are owned communally, they tend to be overused since there is no urgency for resource preservation.