ABSTRACT
This part introduction presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters. The part focuses on definitional issues and the history of common resource exploitation. It argues that common property management is an approach to solving resource problems rather than a source of problems. The correlative rights doctrine for groundwater, the public trust doctrine for both land and water, and fishing quotas were given as examples of such "commons solutions." The part addresses the role of welfare economics and economic optimizing in policy analysis. The scenario that Garrett Hardin so vividly characterized as "the tragedy of the commons" is familiar to every student of natural resource economics. Using Hardin's own device for describing the basic principle, consider a pasture open to many herdsmen without limits on how many cattle are grazed.
