The Tragedy of the Commons, the Case Study of Fishing in Lake Tana, Ethiopia

The problem of the Common Pool Resources (here after CPR), all member of the community jointly owns this resource, all the equal rights over the resources. The economic features of the common pool resources are rival by competitive and non-excludable (Professor XU Jintao Microeconomics & Policy course lecture, 2019), According to him, if this kind of situation continue the outcome will be misutilization of resources. The case of milk cow, ranch, commonly owned when the resources are commons, individual’s happiness due to the problem of free riding.

This is called the tragedy of common. of is a condition that leads to because of common goods. The origin of the idea comes from the theory classical thought that state do not regulate common goods (Dwi Wulandari1, and etal. 2018: 120). We can see the case of common ranch which use of grazing of livestock as the example, the owner of the cow divide to add a cow and who pursues to optimize his gain. Then, he will confront negative and positive aspects of adding one more cow to grazing land.

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The encouraging component is a function of the raise of one cow. Since the owner of the cow obtains all the progresses from the sale of the extra animal, the more utility is approximately +1. Conversely, the adverse section will be the function of the added overgrazing due to one more cow. The problem of the more livestock of the common land will spillover to other cow owner who are using the grazing land. In the sense that the negative utility for one individual choice will adversely affect the others a fraction of –1(Dwi Wulandari, and et al.

, 2018, Professor XU Jintao Microeconomics & Policy course lecture, 2019), )

When we add the sections of the partial utilities, the rational cow owner will decide that to have an additional cow to the common grazing. But this is the conclusion reached by each and every rational herdsman sharing a common. However, this decision will not be limited by the one person, the others will decide to do the same thing as the first one doing. Then this is rivals and the real feature of the ‘tragedy of common’. Accordingly, each owner enters into a system that induces her or him to rise her/ his crowd with no constraint while resources are limited. Devastation is the last stop toward which all men hurry, each following her/ his individual more benefit in a civilization that accept as trues in the self-determination of the shared. Freedom in a shared brings destruction to all of the tragedy of commons as crowd. Similar things happen in the case of the lakes and see fish resources. The devastation is similarly happening in the case lake Tana, Ethiopia which this term paper deal in the following pages. The foremost reason of tragedy of commons is the rival of competitive and non-excludability to from free access. In the sense that the tragedy of the common are the major factor which includes free access to resources for example sea or common lakes fish, fresh air, and forest, water, which directs to s to over utilization and degradations.

Literatures suggest solutions so as to manage and substantiable CPR and overcome tragedy. These includes; Communication and awareness creation the people, monitoring and sanctioning, cultural institution development specially the fishermen communities, transferring ownership from common to government or private, sharing the output to the subgroup, introduction of rules and regulations to administer the commons, punishment who violate the regulations, empower, and organize the people and establish the institutions and social capital developments are recommended.

Materials and Methods

This research used a qualitative based on the study and the observation when I was there, and quantitative secondary data from the relevant institution and the former research documents. Lecture notes also used as an input for the study. In the sense study of documents and observation are used for this term paper. In relation to the methods, the study used graphical models and the tables to discuss to review literatures and discuss the findings. Finally, I also examine appropriate literature to funding the conclusions

Results and Findings

Lake Tana is located in the north-western uplands of Ethiopia (12°N, 37°150E) on a basaltic plateau at an altitude of 1,830 m and which covers an area of ca. 3,050 km. “It is the source of the Blue Nile River with a catchment area of ca. 16,500 km. Seven permanent and more than 40 small seasonal rivers feed the lake with water…. the Lake Tana is shallow average depth 8 m, maximum depth 14 m” (Eshete Dejen, Wessie Anteneh and Jacobus Vijverberg, 2017: 1843). The blue contributor rivers in flowing throughout the year on the lake. These rivers heavy load silt and carry a into the lake in the rainy period. Due to the sediments which is suspended reduce light intensity the underwater and which affect the production and reproduction process of the fish in the Lake (Wondie et al., 2007) Bahir Dar which is the capital of the Amhara regional state located on the southern boundary of the lake, is about 300,000 populations. Its catchment and around the lake including Bahir Dar town, about two million people have been living. The land round the lake are suitable for the agriculture produce and has been used for cultivation of plants as the livelihood of the people. Besides to these this lake next to wetlands which serve indirectly and directly for the livelihood for beyond half million people (Eshete Dejen, Wessie Anteneh and Jacobus Vijverberg, 2017).