by Robert Moss

Created on: April 04, 2009

Concerns about the sustainability of the means of subsistence to support the population date at least back to Malthus in the early 19th century. Malthus proposed that "the power of population is indefinitely greater than the power of the Earth to produce subsistence" and his law stated that "population presses against the means of subsistence" (Harvey 1974, p399). Unease about the ability of the World to sustain a rapidly

increasing population became more widespread in the 1960's and 1970's, and this was accompanied by a resurgence of neo-Malthusian arguments. Prominent among them was "The Limits to Growth" which predicted that the carrying capacity of the World would be exceeded, within 100 years, if the then current trends and pressures continued. (Meadows et al. 1972).

Garrett Hardin summed up the neo-Malthusian view particularly well using the "tragedy of the commons" which is a parable to highlight the threat to the carrying capacity of the land, upon which humanity ultimately depends for its sustenance. Its premise being that all will try to extract the maximum profit from the grazing land, leading to its despoilment from overuse. The scenario "is tragic because people naturally tend to be selfish" and "individual freedom in the commons has brought ruin to all". (Hardin 1968). Unfortunately the tragedy of the commons has been seized upon by certain extreme free market capitalists as a vindication of the argument to privatise the World's resources. "Private property rights ensure that individuals will not overuse their resources for fear of devaluing them. However, common property rights over resources lead to overuse because no individual feels specific interest in protecting them". (Goodin 1992). This argument fails to account for the fact that degradation of the environment, and some times the wider economy, does not always lead to profit devaluation for the protagonist. As examples, with the activities of mining, oil extraction, and logging there is always an externalised and unsustainable cost to the environment and society.

Hardin himself does not appear to have advocated privatisation, and to do so is probably to get the interpretation of the parable completely the wrong way around. Common grazing land is a very important strand of farming for the sustainability of populations upon marginal land, and this is often where common land occurs. Because of its very nature marginal land must be farmed with respect if it is to support any human population,

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