Global Tragedy of the Commons at COP 6.

• Author: Hickman, John

There may never have been a larger collection of national free riders found at any multinational negotiation than at COP 6, the Sixth Session of the Parties to the Climate Control Convention held November 13--24, 2000 in the Dutch city of The Hague. The 160 nations represented at the conference missed the opportunity to make the kind of decisions which might save the people of this planet from serious grief. Their failure to reach agreement means that the billions who inhabit this planet will have to wait for the kind of concerted action by governments which would moderate and eventually reverse the effects of global warming. Unless action is taken, the world can expect severe flooding of low-lying coastal areas because of increasingly violent storms and rising sea levels, and the disruption of agriculture and ecosystems across continents which will result in famine, migration, and species loss. What makes their collective failure interesting, aside from its incalculable future cost, is that it appears to hav e been motivated by the rational pursuit of national interests.

At first glance, global warming appears to present a classic "tragedy of the commons." These arise when a collectively owned sustainable resource is wasted through individual over-use. Consumers of an otherwise sustainable resource squander it by failing to limit their consumption. Of course, no single act of consumption contributes much to the problem. But the result of all these individual actions is a collectively inferior outcome in which the commons can no longer sustain consumption. In the case of global warming, the sustainable resource is an atmosphere actually capable of absorbing the infra-red radiation of the sun without too much warming of the lower atmosphere and oceans. The consumption involves the release of greenhouse gases, especially the release of carbon dioxide through the burning of fossil fuels, and also the destruction of carbon "sinks" (forests, farmland and vegetation that soak up heat-retaining gases). Collective action will require using less fossil fuels--using them more efficient ly--as well as maintaining or even expanding the total area of forest cover.

But the problem of global warming is something more complex. First, the "consumers" of this resource are anything but equal. A minority of the 160 nations represented at COP 6 are responsible for releasing more carbon dioxide through burning fossil fuels than the majority of nations...