Short version: humans are good at fucking things up.
Violence ahead as tragedies of the commons spreadTHERE is a growing feeling that resources vital to sustain human life, such as fresh water, land and fossil fuels, are being used too fast to ensure our long-term presence on the planet. It seems obvious that nations should cooperate on this problem, and yet successful cross-border solutions and agreements are hard to find. Why don't we act for the common good more often?
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Explanations such as poor forecasting of resources, the short-term mindset of politicians, or simply the refusal to recognise the problem are usually given.
However, what if these are not the real reasons and something more fundamental is at work? Game theory, an established way of modelling decisions involving conflict and cooperation, offers a way to seek answers. Traditionally, cross-border armed conflict over shared resources is sidelined in game theory simulations on the grounds that it is deemed more costly to a nation state than cooperation.
For example, imagine a depletable natural resource – such as a water basin – jointly owned by two countries. Both drain it for drinking, sanitation, irrigation and so on. Draining too quickly will result in it drying out. Most game theory work says that working for the common good is the optimum choice for both nations. But this does not square with conflicts we see, or the widely held view that more are inevitable.
To address this, I designed a simulation that allowed the use of violence to control resources (The Rand Journal of Economics, vol 45, p 521). In a world where force is a very real option and history suggests it is used or threatened more often than we might hope, this seemed reasonable.
The outcome offers an explanation for the gap between theory and reality. Having constructed a game-theoretical model, I found that when conflict is allowed it always occurred, but only when resources become heavily depleted.
And, crucially, the very expectation of impending conflict led to non-cooperation in the short term and sped up depletion of the common resource. I would argue that this resource-grabbing tallies with what we see in much of the world, be it disputes over fossil fuels, fresh water, land or marine resources.
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The conclusions I've drawn on the impact of over-use of resources today on future conflict are purely theoretical. So with economists Giacomo De Luca and Dominic Spengler of the University of York, UK, I am designing a lab experiment to see whether humans in a controlled environment do deplete resources faster when given the possibility to use violent control. Our early findings point that way. Such evidence would shed new light on the failure of international cooperation over the preservation of the environment.
Topic: Interesting study on conflict