Commons without Tragedy: Protecting the Environment from Over-population - A New Approach

This book confronts a major contemporary problem - the fear of overpopulation. The classic analysis from which the population debate derives, Malthus's "Essay on Population", has largely been discredited by empirical evidence, but a new argument, not identical with the Malthusian analysis but related to it, has appeared in recent years. Thus it is now widely believed that the world's burgeoning population will soon reach - may already have reached - a level at which it imposes an unsustainable pressure on the natural environment. Not only is it believed that it will be impossible to feed the population, but man's desperate efforts to provide for himself are threatening the eco-system itself. While not denying the role birth control and other measures may have to play, the authors question whether overpopulation really is the main problem. They argue instead that the main factor is the inequitable distribution of the earth's natural resources, nature's gift to mankind. Thus a small minority of the world's population owns and enjoys the benefits of the great majority of the earth's natural resources, while the vast majority of the population is huddled together in overcrowded conditions (creating the illusion of overpopulation) on what remains, which is often poorer land, deteriorating with over-exploitation, thus exacerbating the situation, such as in the Amazon Basin or the Sahel. The authors argue that a new approach to property rights and taxation will have to be adopted if the apparent conflict between demography and ecology is to be resolved. This volume also goes beyond the conventional debate on resource exploitation. Space Age technology threatens the remaining commons - the oceans, the arctic regions and outer space - which dramatizes the urgency of the quest for a new approach.

Table of Contents:
The commons and property rights - towawrds a synthesis of demography and ecology, Roy Douglas; commons without tragedy - the congruence of Garrett Hardin and Henry George, Robert V. Andelson; the crisis of transition from the commons - population explosions, their cause and cure, Fred Harrison; post-communal land ownership - poverty and political philosophy, David Richards; commons and commonwealth - a new framework for the justification of territorial claims, T. Nicolaus Tideman; the remaining commons - a challenge to equity efficiency and ecological responsibility, Alexandra Hardie; the tragedy of the "Unmanaged" commons - population and the disguises of providence, Garrett Hardin.