Tragedy of the Commons

The Urban Naturalists learned about the idea of The Tragedy of the Commons. In short, the Tragedy of the Commons "states that when a resource is collectively owned by a group of people, each will exploit the resource, overusing it, and thus, ultimately destroying the resource." We learned about the concept through a book called Common Ground by Molly Bang

Afterwards, we discussed the meaning of the book. We played a game to help us understand the problem when people overuse the commons. We each took turns "fishing" for our resources in the common sea. With each generation, less and less of the fish were left to breed and add to the population numbers. This caused less and less resources for the future generations.