(The column first appeared in The Telegraph on November 29, 2021)
- The success of CoP26 in Glasgow is difficult to ascertain. There were some positive moments: pledges of net-zero targets by countries, including India, the US-China agreement on emission cuts, and the declaration of phasing out of oil and gas production. But the conference did not engender the evolution of a strong climate governance. Garrett Hardin, an American ecologist, argued in his 1968 paper in Science that should we all exploit the natural resources to maximize our gains then it would lead to a tragic end of the world’s common resources. Hardin opined that humanity could save itself through mutual coercion or restraint. One of Hardin’s greatest critics, Elinor Ostrom, who received the Nobel Prize in Economics in 2009, also suggested mutually-agreed-upon, binding constraints to save nature. Institutions need to be developed to set these binding constraints…