Tragedy of the commons - Ground Water: Indiscriminate use of common resource, a real concern today

Author : Pavan Swaminathan

A recent discussion forum in the course of sustainability, organized by Wharton School of Business caught my eye, where Professor Tomkins brought forward the "Tragedy of the Commons". The term implies that in our inadvertent selfish nature (as implied by evolutionist Richard Dawkins in his book The selfish Gene) we tend to utilize a common pool of resource in order to increase our personal utility gained through exploitation of the common resource.

A case in point is the colony I reside in at East Anand Bagh. This colony had just independent houses hitherto, but the rising population (sadly, world population might reach 9 billion by 2050 much above the carrying capacity) puts a strain on resources, land being one. This had given rise to many new tall raise apartments. Now, the issue with tall apartments is that they need just as much water as the population they shelter and hence deeper bores. With bores getting deeper, the local population, with independent houses deemed it necessary to start drilling for more water, to reach deeper and exploit more of the common resource- Ground Water!

This has lead to a race amongst the residents and the whole area has become witness to myriad drilling trucks, all taking advantage of the panic and instilling fear amongst the residents to drill further. The whole place is in visible mess, and the entire area is covered with dust and every house having a huge drilling truck parked afront. This indiscriminate use of the common resource is a real concern, where as jevons paradox rightly illustrates, with more technological innovations and increase in efficiency (in this case of the drilling mechanism) man has started exploiting further, not bothered about the consequences.

I hope there is a solution to this competitive exploitation. (Similar to the drilling in the Arctic by major nations exporing oil resources)