ABSTRACT
In Garrett Hardin's original concept the "tragedy of the commons" develops when no regime emerges to inhibit private party raids on the commons, the public land that everyone has right to. When serious attention turned to the management of ocean resources, only a decade or so ago, the fear of depletion of ocean resources quickly became "received wisdom." The new "tragedy of the commons" is the tendency to chop the commons into manageable pieces, thereby risking its resources not being exploited for the benefit of humankind, but instead being wasted; intensifying pre-existing inequities and providing a whole set of new occasions for international conflict. A very few companies, based in even fewer countries, have the capacity to harvest seabed minerals—and they face so uncertain a legal environment in the ocean commons that they are bound to be hesitant about investing the huge sums involved.
