Gambling on the Commons

From Hardin to Ostrom, the clouds of the tragedy of the commons always are suspended over the fate of human beings. Conservation versus development, elite versus the poor, haves versus have-nots, meritocracy versus anarchy... Which is good? Which is better? Which is, in the end, the best? There is no way to define "good" but trade-offs after trade-offs.

What we know is that people must live, so does the next generation.

A lone Brazil nut tree remains in a deforested area of the Amazon, which loses an area the size of New Jersey to clear-cutting and timbering every year.

Brazil Gambles on Monitoring of Amazon Loggers - New York Times

By LARRY ROHTER

Published: January 14, 2007

REALIDADE, Brazil — A Brazilian government plan set to go into effect this year will bring large-scale logging deep into the heart of the Amazon rain forest for the first time, in a calculated gamble that new monitoring efforts can offset any danger of increased devastation.

The government of President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, in an attempt to create Brazil’s first coherent, effective forest policy, is to begin auctioning off timber rights to large tracts of the rain forest. The winning bidders will not have title to the land or the right to exploit resources other than timber, and the government says they will be closely monitored and will pay a royalty on their activities.

But how to monitor? And further more, what about the rural poor?

“To think that they can monitor violations in the absence of the state is a dream,” Sister Paes said. “The Amazon has no tradition of the poor standing up to the powerful. People simply don’t know how to do that.”

It's indeed a luxury gamble, with the future as the stake. If they lose, it's not they that lose the game, but us, because it's our Amazon.