Without regulations for their use, the condition of freely accessible resources such as fish stocks, water or air can deteriorate dramatically. In economics, this is referred to as the “Tragedy of the Commons.” In 2009, Elinor Ostrom became the first woman to win the Nobel Prize in Economics for her studies on this topic. Ostrom’s question of how to prevent this “tragedy” is just as relevant today as it was some 20 years ago.
This article was originally published on this website.
