The Tragedy of the Commons
(March
/ April 2001)
This article was prompted by Carl Rosenberg's column in
Outlook
(Sept.-Oct. 2000), discussing a ruling by the B.C. Supreme Court that
there is no intrinsic right to unpolluted water. Apparently corporations
have the intrinsic right to pollute. In a strictly legal sense this may
be correct,
although I am sure that counter-arguments could be made, particularly
through international documents relating to human and environmental rights,
such as the 1972 Stockholm Declaration (particularly principle 1.6), U.N.
Resolution 37/7, 1982 (The World Charter of Nature), The Rio Declaration
(UNCED '92), and, of course, the U.N. Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
Most of the relevant sections in these documents invoke
"non-binding
principles", still another oxymoron, like "sustainable development." But
in
a fundamental sense, how can we guarantee any of the human rights and
freedoms such as life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, or equality
and equity, if we poison our air, soil and water? Like breathable air
and
fertile soil, potable water is absolutely essential to the support of
all
life, including that of the planet itself and even that of the polluters.
Just as trees have lost their standing and rocks their rights, water is
a
slave to the developer, whose doctrine is: pollute now and society will
pay
later. The current view is that pollution is profit and profit is God.
By
externalizing social and environmental costs, industry can maximize profit.
Everybody, and eventually the future itself, pays for this freedom of
enterprise.
Canada needs explicit legislation that makes the polluter
pay for
pollution, and the payment must be high enough to assure deterrence. We
must invest in natural capital for our own sake, but even more for the
future. We must begin to treat air, water and soil as the natural heritage
of humankind. Resource management is a false concept when its operational
meaning is dictated by the imperative of the bottom line. But we must
keep
in mind that we are dealing with a systemic disease-with capitalism itself.
Pollution is a natural partner of capitalism. It is that simple. There
is
no better way to describe the systemic rape of the planet, old-fashioned
as
it may seem to some. And finally, it is considered a crime for one person
to poison another, but not when the culprit is the intermediary pollution.
The "Tragedy of the Commons" is an appropriate starting
point to discuss
any essential resource. This concept, first analyzed in detail by
Garrett/Hardin (Science, Vol. 162, Dec. 13, 1968) states that when a
commons or common natural property is exploited disproportionately by
one
or more persons at the expense of all others, it is tragic. Theoretically
at least, a commons implies equal access by all, whether it is land, water
or even air. The biosphere is a global commons. A verse dating back to
the
Middle Ages is pregnant with political insight:
The man or woman who steals the goose from off the common
Is soon sent to jail
But the man who steals the common from under the goose is soon set loose.
This clearly identifies the problem, which is that where
a commons can be
privately rather than publicly owned, it is doomed to create a fundamental
inequity or anti-common situation. Ownership of natural capital, like
fiscal capital, permits over-exploitation by one at the expense of all
others. This is the tragedy of the commons.
An interesting example of the "tragedy of the commons" is
the case of the
Great Lakes. Here a commons borders two separate countries, one ten times
more populous than the other. There is nothing to prevent the U.S. from
taking as much water as it wishes from lakes which border it, even when
this means robbing a commons and taking Canadian water. This is exacerbated
by the fact that for the U.S., water, like oil, is a critical resource,
while Canada has plentiful water supplies. NAFTA (The North American Free
Trade Agreement) was a coup in this respect.
Under the former General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade,
Canada had the
right to withhold water exports to the U.S. Unfortunately, there is no
protection on the export of water for the provinces or the federal
government under NAFTA. There are numerous articles in NAFTA that
effectively give control of Canada's water to the U.S. Under Chapter
11 of
NAFTA, bulk water exports to the U.S. will tend to become inevitable,
particularly from B.C. to water-starved California. It is amazing that
the
responsible minister of that time, Pat Carney, should have continued to
believe that water was exempted in NAFTA.
It is of interest that as early as 1957, the U.S. Paley
Commission spelled
out the fundamental need of the U.S. for certain critical resources,
including those that are among the most critical-oil and water. This became
the basis of U.S. geopolitical policy, practiced strenuously in Canada
and
the Persian Gulf. Geopolitics fashioned the U.S. drive to create a "New
World Order." The NATO war in Yugoslavia was just another step in this
game, looking eastward to the great oil fields of the Caspian region while
serving the U.S. policy of ideological cleansing.
It is Canada's constitution, the British North American
act (BNA) which
describes and allocates jurisdictions over natural resources. Problems
arise when there are conflicts between provincial and federal
jurisdictions. All international phenomena are clearly under federal
jurisdiction. All exchanges that cross an international border are also
federal. Thus all transactions between the U.S. and Canada fall under
federal jurisdiction. In terms of water resources, this leads to some
interesting problems. It also leads to the ploy of jurisdictional jousting,
whereby both parties can avoid responsibility.
Also, one should not think that NAFTA alone is a threat
to Canadian water.
The WTO is negotiating a new agreement, GATS (General Agreement on Trade
in Services). A subtle aspect of this is that U.S. companies will be able
to take over the supply of municipal water and sewage systems, the water
for
the latter to be supplied by a private U.S. corporation. This corporation
would be entitled to tax dollars, since GATS says that if the government
supports public water supply, it must support private supply equally.
The
GATS game is to privatize every social service sector in Canada.
Finally, however, we must admit that no existing political
or economic
system has escaped the problem of pollution. In China, pollution
is the
direct consequence of uncontrolled economic growth, not unlike capitalist
countries. In China there have been some attempts to control pollution,
but
these attempts are forever besieged by the growth imperative. China is
also
being econonically seduced by external pressures, exerted mainly by the
policy of Pax Americana. The record of the Soviet Union throughout the
Cold
War period was much the same, i.e., imposed neglect of the environment
but
also a belief in the necessity of economic development without pollution
controls. Currently, capitalist Russia is an example of the worst of two
worlds.
Some of the smaller powers with social democratic regimes,
such as the
Scandinavian countries and New Zealand, did relatively well in controlling
pollution. Nevertheless, a complete system of economic development
integrated with the protection of the environment has yet to be seen in
any
country, despite its theoretical feasibility and the reality of its
necessity. Many countries with social government governments or strong
social democratic parties still carry the stain of NATO membership,
compromising their social democratic values. The Green party, which shares
power in Germany, supported NATO in Kosovo, showing that even shared power
corrupts.