ABSTRACT
William Forster Lloyd was a mathematician and economist best remembered for developing the economic paradox known as The Tragedy of the Commons, later widely applied in political ecology. Lloyd was from a privileged background – the son of a wealthy rector – and was educated at Westminster School and Oxford University Neither Lloyd nor his paradox were particularly well known in his time but became popularized over a century later when in 1968 the ‘Neo-Malthusian’ US ecologist Garrett Hardin adapted the tragedy of the commons to global commons such as clean air, fresh water and high-seas fish stocks, endangered by states continuing to exploit or pollute them oblivious to the fact that the cumulative effect of this would eventually be their depletion for all. Hardin’s solution to the problem, like Lloyd’s, was population control, and this subsequently became a major international political concern in the late 1960s and early 1970s.
