Global Commons: Can They Be Managed?

Abstract

Abstract The chapter discusses the global commons and attempts to answer the question of their manageability. The chapter states that the term resource implies either realized or potential scarcity which results from a situation of actual crowding or potential competition. It explains that the opportunities for managing global commons are diminished by the absence of community. The problem of management is made more complex by the fact that states are technologically and economically disparate, yet the international system retains the legal fiction of sovereign equality for all states. This results in the use of global commons resources being an ongoing source of dissension among nations. The chapter talks about global commons like oceans, from which topics of fishing, navigation, pollution, and the deep sea bed are explored, as well as Antarctica, outer space, the atmosphere, and global climate change.