The Fate of the Commons and Sustainable Ancient Wisdom of Korea

초록

Garrett Hardin’s tragedy of the commons is an analogy that illustrates how we humans, when driven by self-interest, can end up depleting the limited commons resources we depend on. With the ever-worsening environmental problems of especially the commons both at domestic- and global-level and its subsequent growing awareness of the problems, Hardin’s theory of 1968 has become widely accepted as a matter of fact and the inevitability of such a tragedy has been continually credited in other academic fields such as economy, sociology, theology, and philosophy. Popularly suggested solutions for the tragedy of the commons has been directed in two ways--privatization and government control, the latter of which Hardin argued for. These two solutions, however, not only have proven ineffective and naive but also reflected a narrow concept of the commons, that is, the commons of no man’s land that anyone can make a free access to and exploit it. In fact, both in the West and the East there has existed a different type of the commons that has been taken care of by those in a community who have been granted the right to use it based upon a given regulation. This community-based traditional commons system worked well in the past and some examples of this commons, or at least its modern versions still survive even nowadays, suggesting some hints or lessons for a successful conservation and preservation of the sustainable commons. Song-Gye of Korea, or Pine-Tree Cooperatives is a good case in point.

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