‘Global commons belong to global society and requires global attention.’ Comment. (150 words) (2013, 10 Marks)
The global commons are domains beyond the jurisdiction of any single state: no one holds exclusive title, and every state may use them. The statement makes two claims. One is normative: the commons belong to a global society. The other is about governance: they need collective management. Both hold in principle, but each is contested in practice.
What counts as a global commons
- International law recognises four: the high seas, the atmosphere, Antarctica and outer space. The deep seabed was declared the “common heritage of mankind” under the 1982 law of the sea convention, an idea that Malta’s Arvid Pardo put to the UN in 1967.
- The list has widened to resources of “common concern” such as tropical forests, biodiversity and the climate system, although these lie mostly inside national territory.
- Regimes cover each domain: the Antarctic Treaty (1959), the Outer Space Treaty (1967) and the high-seas biodiversity agreement, in force since 17 January 2026, which provides for marine protected areas and benefit-sharing beyond national jurisdiction.
Why global attention is needed
- Garrett Hardin’s tragedy of the commons (1968): under open access, each user gains from extra use while the cost is shared. The results are collapsing fish stocks, the ozone hole, orbital debris and a warming atmosphere.
- Sinks such as the atmosphere are overused as dumps, and no single state can protect them, so free-riding is rational without shared rules.
- The Montreal Protocol shows that collective rules work: it has universal ratification and the ozone layer is recovering.
Qualifications
- Elinor Ostrom (Governing the Commons, 1990) showed that communities often manage commons without either privatisation or state control. Hardin had confused open access with common property. Her cases, however, involve small groups, so for nearly two hundred states her idea translates into polycentric governance.
- Who is the “global society”? Hedley Bull distinguished an international society of states from a still-thin world society of peoples. The South fears that commons language could internationalise its forests and genetic resources. The 1992 biodiversity convention therefore reaffirmed national sovereignty over them.
- Unequal capacity: deep-sea and space mining favour technologically advanced states. A 2015 US law lets citizens own the space resources they extract, and an April 2025 US executive order promotes seabed mining outside the International Seabed Authority, straining the “common heritage” principle. India, by contrast, explores seabed nodules under an Authority contract.
Conclusion
The commons belong to all, but global attention must mean equitable governance under common but differentiated responsibilities. It must not become a licence for the capable to appropriate them or for the rich to police the poor.