OPINION/COMMENTARY

Economics for ecologists

In 1968 I had the immense good fortune to work with Garrett Hardin, a distinguished ecologist. His Science article, "The Tragedy of the Commons," is the most reprinted article in the magazine's history. Together, Garrett and I produced a book in print for nearly 20 years, Managing the Commons. (A second edition is published by Indiana University Press.)

Hardin noted when a resource is owned in common, there is little incentive for any individual to protect it. Garrett used this as a heuristic example we all intuitively understand. However, as Elinor Ostrom and other political economists have documented, traditional societies devise systems to resolve the problem. Systems evolve to generate information, coordinate and monitor use, and assign rights to a valued resource....